Army Private Skelton in 1944.

Red Skelton’s radio career started on Rudy Vallee’s Royal
Gelatin Hour before joining NBC’s 1939 variety series
Avalon Time.

Broadcast from Chicago, Avalon Time featured country
singer Red Foley and Red Skelton’s wife and gag writer,
Edna Stillwell.

Red Skelton was drafted into the Army in March 1944, but
returned to NBC in December of 1945, with the same
sponsor and timeslot.

Richard Bernard Skelton (July 18, 1913 – September 17, 1997)

   
   
Portraits of Clowns by Red Skelton.

On March 9, 1985, the first-ever Adopt-a-Highway sign was
erected on Texas’s Highway 69. The highway was adopted
by the Tyler Civitan Club, which committed to picking up
trash along a designated two-mile stretch of the road.

The Adopt-a-Highway program really began the year before,
when James Evans, an engineer for the Texas Department
of Transportation, noticed litter blowing out of the back of
a pickup truck he was following in Tyler, Texas.

Evans got no takers for his idea; however, Billy Black,
the public information officer for the Tyler District of the
Texas Department of Transportation, took up the cause
and organized the first official Adopt-a-Highway program,
which included training and equipment for volunteers.

Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, expanded its
product offerings to include a microbus, which goes into
production on March 8, 1950.

Known officially as the Volkswagen Type 2 (the Beetle was
the Type 1) or the Transporter, the bus was a favorite mode
of transportation for hippies in the U.S. during the 1960s
and became an icon of the American counterculture
movement.