Finding Waldo (Unabridged‪)‬

Social media sites are suddenly flooded with nostalgic photos of a freckled kid named Alfalfa and his chubby partner in mayhem, Spanky McFarland. Often in the same frame is one of Hollywood’s cutest femme fatales: Darla Hood. Rounding out the “Our Gang” quartet of pint-sized superstars is the brilliant Buckwheat and his drooping Afro.


I always feel a surge of pride that my dad was best friends with Alfalfa Switzer and actually enjoyed a childish romance with Darla. That’s a true story. For three Tinseltown seasons, Dad played “Waldo,” a nerdy kid with zero suntan, zero muscles, but plenty of bespectacled IQ and Shakespearean soundbites on the tip of his tongue. He got paid by Hal Roach to pal around with the Gang kids on their makeshift hotrod and forever correct their spelling.


But the story takes a poignant turn in 1944 when Dad abruptly decided to give his heart to Jesus Christ and be baptized. Even though he had just enjoyed a decent role in “Best Foot Forward” with Lucille Ball, he turned away from Hollywood, enrolled in a Christian college, married a devout classmate, and then made the choice to serve the Lord as a missionary to Thailand. And while other bit actors in the Gang fell into drug abuse, experienced multiple divorces, got locked up for petty theft, and even found themselves in courtrooms accused of murdering their own spouses (“Mickey,” played by Robert Blake), my father was literally hiking along dirt trails sharing Jesus with remote villagers and rescuing Thai teen girls from brothels. He stayed married to Mom for 51 years, and at his funeral in 2002, I choked back my tears and concluded: “Dad’s entire life was golden because his friendship with Jesus was golden.”


Being a kid in Thailand also gave me a whole bunch of awesome story lines for my series of Christian romance tales. Rachel Marie is a superstar teacher drafted to spend a term at Bangkok Christian School. Please do check out the plots at my web site, www.davidbsmithbooks.com.