Flipping through the channels this morning, I passed Channel 13, New York's public television station, and an old man in a sweater sitting on the floor playing with two Matchbox-sized cars and a parking garage. The garage, made by Fisher-Price or some such manufacturer, features three (or just two?) levels, an elevator and a ramp. The man, of course, was Fred Rogers. You put the car in the elevator at the bottom, twist the crank and the elevator rises, a bell dinging all the way. At the top, the elevator opens, the platform tilts, and the car rolls out and onto the ramp, which curves around the other levels of the garage. It was one of my favorite accessories to my favorite toys, Matchbox cars, when I was little.

That was at 11:35 a.m. Twenty-five minutes later, I got in the shower singing Mr. Rogers' closing song. You know, "It's such a good [he pauses] feeling/To know you're alive..." The entire show was about things going up and down and included a trip with Mr. McFeely to a mall so they could ride up and down the escalator and the elevator. Mr. McFeely explained to Mr. Rogers how to use an escalator as if he was an eskimo entering a concrete and steel building for the first time. It was both sad and amusing, and I tried to remember how it sounded when I was 6. The elevator was a glass one that over looked the food court where people sat at tables. Attached to the bottom of each elevator was a colorful banner that came exposed when either elevator rose to the higher floors.

When Mr. Rogers returned home, he sat down on the bench and brought out the Trolley for a trip to the Land of Make-Believe. Handy Man was there, and Mr. McFeely brought a package for Lady Elaine Fairchild at the Museum-Go-Round. The package was a hydraulic lift, and Handy Man and Mr. McFeely took turns operating the lift with the other standing on it. Handy Man also talked to the owl in the tree and the guy at the factory, whose names I don't remember. There was no appearance by King Friday.

While watching the visit to the Land of Make-Believe, I tried to remember if I could tell all the puppets' voices were done by Fred Rogers when I was little. Listening through my 25-year-old ears, they seemed to vary little, and I found it strange that I wouldn't have picked it up any sooner.

So there you have it. I'm such a TV junkie. My VCR wasn't programmed correctly or something, so I didn't tape last night's Fox lineup, and I read a little and watched part of a bad William Baldwin movie on HBO before going to sleep. With nothing much to watch this morning, I was hooked by a rerun of a 1992 broadcast of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

I should read more books.