i rememeber seeing a segment that was done with Big Bird where he's indeed pretending to be an Admiral. wheile it looks like he's on the sea, but the boat he's on is on top of a car i think. you mention 1971 and i get a feeling it was more in the late 70s. besides seeing it for the 1st time back then, it was around that time they began to show skits were the SS cast would either do things or go places around NYC and video tape was being used for many of these skits. sucxh as Luis and the kids walking down the street waching the garbage men and realizing Oscar rented the garbage truck for the day. maybe the BB skit was from 71 though i doubt it since hand held video equipment either didn't exist or wasn't as common even though seeing SS reruns it was in 1972 when they began to use video for the opening credits.