Ages before I got sucked into the wonderful Lorimar nighttime soaps of the 80s, I was drawn night after night to the "continuing story of Peyton Place."
When I was a kid, "Peyton Place" was one of the hottest TV shows on the air. It was so popular that, at one point, episodes were on three nights a week. It was full of incest, sex, backstabbing, and adultery.
So, who the hell was monitoring my evening TV use? Certainly not my parents, who both worked nights for most of my elementary school years. And, apparently, certainly not my grandmother. She was watching the saga of the Harringtons and the McKenzies right along with me.
It was probably a strange dichotomy. I had probably just wrapped up my spelling homework. Or perhaps a book report on the latest offering by Beverly Cleary. Something with Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy. It was time for television. And, yes, there were Munsters and Barney Fife and Red Skelton. But, there was also the town of Peyton Place. Where somebody had just been impregnated by somebody else's husband. Or there was another pregnant lady getting pushed off a cliff. Or teenage pregnancy. Or somebody cheating on somebody else's wife. You didn't see this with Herman and Lily. It certainly didn't go on in Mayberry. But, it was captivating to me.
"Peyton Place" is probably how I learned about all the stuff that nobody talked about in my house. The quiet conversations my parents would have in the kitchen late at night when I was supposedly cuddling Zippy The Chimp to sleep. Indeed, "Peyton Place" clued me in to all the things I was missing around me. And, in a very bizarre connection, the folks of that New England hamlet taught me about morality. What was right and what was wrong. How to treat people and how not to treat people. And, all the while, I was enjoying it. The show was damn fun. Maybe my grandmother was not irresponsible letting me watch this with her. Perhaps, in her own way, she was even wiser beyond her advanced years.
Later on in my life, I would come to enjoy the original movie that the "Peyton Place" TV show was based on and regularly like to revisit the sheer campiness of it all. But, I have never gotten the opportunity to follow the TV program again. Because most of its episodes were filmed in black and white, a lot of cable networks have refrained from programming it. Also, the run of the series lasts over 500 episodes, which would be a sizeable undertaking for any network. But, still, I would love to take a trip one more time.
To see what I learned. To experience again a sense of innocence.
To understand fully why my grandmother never changed the channel just because I was in the room.
Dinner last night: Mongolian Beef/Honey Shrimp at Panda In..
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