The A-Team Cake and Buster Dog

Buster Dog and the A-Team Cake — by J Fox

A recent television ad for sports footwear featured actor Mister T. who an entire generation will recall from his years on a TV action series alongside George Peppard.

That humorous ad made me recall a story I published, almost 20 years ago, about the day my wife Marsha and I rescued our son’s birthday cake in a manner that would have made Mister T, George Peppard and the rest of the “A-Team” pretty darn proud.

At the time our son Jason turned ten, he and most of the neighbor kids were crazy about the TV show “The A-Team.” This series starred the grinning, cigar-chomping, actor George Peppard and Laurence Tureaud, (the Mandinka-Mohawk hair-styled, gold-chain-bedecked, “Mister T”) plus several other actors as hard-fighting, renegade soldiers-of-fortune.

Each week this team would rescue downtrodden citizens, like modern-day Robin Hoods. The A-Team would complete their mission, using their wits, ingenuity, and maximum Hollywood firepower with blazing guns, car chases, and explosions; just the type of TV series any young boy would enjoy. The team would usually escape in Mister T’s, seemingly indestructible, black van with the villainous Colonel Decker and his Army jeep left far behind!

When it came time to pick out our son’s birthday cake, Jason announced that he wanted an A-Team decorated cake! Marsha placed our order for the themed cake with the supermarket’s bakery section. The day of the birthday party when Marsha…