Former Noel Road resident Billy Blanton says that back in 1959 his face was used as a model for both the Lipton Tea guy and the Sunday Comics pipe-cleaner-and-block-of-wood wizard Cappy Dick.“Hey kids! Try for these prizes!” said the ancient and withered
Blanton as he tried to recreate the magic of 1960s color Comic strip culture from the game room of the Saddlebags Nursing Home near Montpelier. His room is decorated with numerous unrecognizable sculptures made of pipe cleaners and chunks of wood scraps.“I was a big fan of the Cappy Dick feature after my face was used as the model,” says Blanton (pictured). “It was a
Sunday tradition for me to do all the activities and enter the contests, even though I was by then 40 years old and competing unfairly with young kids, but what the hell did they know, I said, and my glasses were left back at the plant after the last fire drill.”After a bowl of potato soup served by a CNA, Blanton continued. “Funny story about how I became the Lipton Tea guy – in 1937, just before all the Jews came over from Europe and buried all those civil war artifacts, a man from the Lipton tea company was in Richmond auditioning for a spokesman. Back then I had the most impeccable moustache, waxed and groomed perfectly, and the man saw me on the street and proclaimed that my face was going to be the one to grace the boxes. What the hell does he know, I said, and refused to be photographed because their cameras stole your soul from your eyes. In 1959, just after I became Cappy Dick, That same fella appeared to me in a dream and I never got a dime from that Tea company.”
“Most people don’t know that Cappy Dick was in reality just a sailor head in a wheelchair,” Blanton continued after several minutes of awkward silence. “His body was riddled with cancer, and they cut it off to keep it from spreading. His contract called for him to keep doing the Sunday activity comic, though.”
Maybe we’ve heard enough from Mr. Blanton for now.
