When Fred Rogers came to my neighborhood via my TV set in 1968, I couldn't appreciate him.

Though a first-grader, I was too sophisticated, too jaded by my ghetto upbringing - too conscious of "cool" - to hear out the man in the red sweater.

In high school, my friends and I made fun of Mr. Rogers. To me, he was a grown-up version of the dorky kids who got picked on and bullied. I'd secretly feel sorry for them and wonder if they'd ever get the hang of this world.

Then, in college, Mr. Rogers got in big with some of my peers. They'd watch him on the big screen at the student union.

Mr. Rogers was still singing the same songs - about the beautiful neighborhood - and tinkling on the piano. But there was something kitschy, almost New Age, about him.

A man of the world

It was OK for worldly college kids like me to indulge a bit in his peaceful affirmations that everybody's a unique, invaluable gem in a neighborhood mosaic. As I studied international economics, national politics, sociology, that beautiful neighborhood grew to include the whole world. Mr. Rogers' ideas about valuing people near and far won my respect.

I invited my TV neighbor to my living room after my son was born. Even as an infant, my son seemed alternately fascinated and calmed by this man who, on the surface, oozed simplicity and spoon-size insight but who evoked a deep familiarity with the mysteries of imagination.

Only on Mr. Rogers' trolley could my son and I travel to a land where puppet princes, kings and queens share their lives with life-size people and everyday deliverymen, like the bicycle-riding Mr. McFeely

That nonsensical world today sometimes seems more sensible than reality.

In Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood of Make Believe, 13-year-old boys don't get their hands on guns and mow down their neighbors, young mothers aren't killed holding their babies, elderly men aren't tortured to death with scissors.

In Mr. Rogers' world, cities aren't fractured into "have" and "have-not" enclaves that keep people racially and socially ignorant of each other.

Not just fantasy

Each day in Mr. Rogers' school system, all kids get a decent education and a chance to learn from mistakes, and even grown-ups learn a thing or two. People are allowed their quirks. Cardigans are always in style.

I admit it. If I could, I'd climb into Mr. Rogers' neighborhood right now, just to glimpse how things could be if we didn't let society's barriers remain insurmountable.

This fantasy that Mr. Rogers sold us is too hard to let go. Not because we're immature or naÔve about the selfishness and evil that drive too many of us.

No. Grown-up fans like me refuse to give up on a neighborhood of beautiful days because, well, sometimes they happen.

After all, Mr. Rogers was the real deal. Jaded journalists I know say he really talked that gentle way off-camera. When he'd meet you, he'd hug you and tell you to call him Fred.

There aren't any tell-all books about Mr. Rogers. No rumors of pushing people around. No scandals creeping from his closet.

Education author Jonathan Kozol became friends with Mr. Rogers. And when they could, they'd visit schools together in the depressed urban areas that Kozol wrote about.

It didn't matter that some of those kids daily faced the harshest circumstances - loved ones absent or in prison, crowded and inadequate schools, too much violence, cheerless surroundings.

When Mr. Rogers visited, Kozol said, the kids would swarm around him, claiming him as their own. A prince among everyday people.

Goodbye, Mr. Rogers. We'll miss you.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395