Gene and Roy Rode Through the Snow!

By the time we got a t.v. down at the end of Stonewall Street Ozzie and Harriet were drooling over their oat meal. David and Ricky were near ’bout grown. The “Beave” was still getting in trouble but Wally was off in college. And Hopalong Cassidy was already in syndication.

’Course, they were all “first runs” for us!

We couldn’t figure out that “Father Knows Best” show. No family in the world could be that nice! Bud never socked Kathy. Mrs. Anderson never had a feather ruffled or a hair out of place. Betty would whine at the beginning of the show but her dad would always “make it alright” just before the last commercial. Leon said it was a Hollywood trick to get us to watch.

Well, it worked! Enticing us to tune in certainly wasn’t no problem! We were the last family in town to get a television set. We wore that thing out the first week! We were up before daylight on Saturday watching the Indian Head Test Pattern and waiting for the National Anthem. The Lone Ranger rode by that same rock at the beginning of every show and reared Silver up on his hind legs and then thundered down the trail returning us to “those thrilling days of yesteryear.”

People, we were so spell bound we’d forget to finish our Cheerios. We saw outlaws and greedy saloon owners chased from Texas to California. We cheered when Sky King flew in with the money just in time to save the poor girl’s ranch. We cried when Lassie fell down in the well. We yelled and shouted and waved our hands as we tried to warn Roy that the no good “drygulcher” was hiding behind the buckboard. Superman would stand and take bullet after bullet off his chest and then duck when the gangster threw the gun at him. It took us a while to discern the slight height difference between Heckle and Jeckle. We thought we could shoot a little bit……until we saw Annie Oakley!

And this was just on Saturday morning!

We had never seen anything like it. And there was not a bad program in the bunch! Dinah Shore invited us to “see the USA in your Chevrolet”. “Playhouse 90” had a different arrangement, and guest star, every week. Gary Moore couldn’t keep a secret worth a darn. The “Twilight Zone” would make you look funny at people the next day at school. Carol Burnette could curl your ears with her Tarzan yell. Lucy and Ethel could stomp them grapes. “Star Trek” carried us along at warp speed. You could “Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx. And glean a few useless facts from “The $64,000 Question”. Broderick Crawford kept the highways safe and Sergeant Joe Friday got “just the facts” on crime in LA. Jack Benny got laughs for not playing his violin. Perry Como was the most relaxed guy on tv. And Red Skelton was the absolute best entertainer the world has ever produced!

You could ride out west any night of the week with “Cheyenne”, “The Virginian”, “Bat Masterson”, “Hondo”, “Maverick”, “Wyatt Earp”, “Judge Roy Bean” or a host of others. You could get out there on a “Wagon Train” with Ward Bond, hop a Wells Fargo stage with Dale Robertson or join a cattle drive on “Rawhide”. You could stop in “Laramie”, “Cimarron City”, “Laredo”, “The Big Valley” or ramble up to “The High Chaparral”. Matt Dillon would pour some hot lead into a bad hombre on Saturday night and Daddy would say, “Don’t worry about him, son, ‘Ben Casey’ will patch him up on Tuesday.”

We were embarrassed when “The Beverly Hillbillies” hit the air. Shucks, we knew people like that! Jed and Granny won us over with their good sense; Ellie with her beauty and innocent charm; and Jethro because he could cipher all the way up to the fifth grade!

Just think how much better off the world would be if we had all grown up in Mayberry. 

It was an era of freshness, variety and entertainment that we may never see the likes of again. And folks, we didn’t have but two channels! We got WDXI, a CBS station out of Jackson, and WPSD, an NBC affiliate that came to us from Paducah.

It took four minutes for the set to come on. Leon would have to turn the antenna when we switched from one channel to the other. And usually we’d have to play with it a little to get the snow down to a small blizzard. It was all in black and white. A passing storm or a large truck turning the corner could cause major interruptions. But it took us to places far removed from 1162 N. Stonewall. It put new pictures in our heads. New characters in our hearts. And new dreams in our souls…..

I’ve got 96 channels today. And they come in digitally clear from an HD screen bigger than that old pie safe we had back home. Two of the channels are in some foreign language which renders them useless. Half of the rest are trying to sell you something or bringing you world news that you’d be better off not knowing. There are comedies that aren’t funny. Police shows with the same plot. And reality shows that are as about as real as me getting elected chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club or winning the Boston Marathon. There’s too much glitz and not enough substance! I reckon I’m paying for a lot of stuff somebody else must be watching. It’s like the cable and network people today are just in it for the money. And if you are paying for the cable and HAVING to watch the commercials too…..seems like that’s charging double!

If we’ve seen the Hallmark movie, Cathy and I end up watching “The Andy Griffith Show” reruns……and wishing someone would bring back “Whirlybirds” and “The Honeymooners”.

Where’s that “life goes in circles” thing when you need it?

Respectfully,

Kes