The Sunday Memory Drawer - TV Shows I Watched When I Was a Kid

Well, this is a strange photo.  At least strange to me.

A family gathered together at the end of a long day.  Enjoying the best and the worst that television has to offer.

Yeah, this never happened in my house when I was a kid.

Okay, if my mother was watching television, she did have a cigarette going just like the lady above.  P.S., my mom was usually wearing a housedress and certainly didn't get all dolled up to go to the living room.

My dad in a suit?  And the next question I would ask is "who died?"

And, frankly, we never really watched television as a family unit.  Rarely were we all in the same room at the same time.  My father worked nights.  As soon as I hit the fourth grade, my mom went back to work.  And she worked evenings as well. 

When my grandfather died, the house---and the television---was comandeered by two people only. 

Me and Grandma.

The nightly routine was set in stone.  We'd eat dinner around 430PM.  Once the dishes were cleared, she'd head into the living room and catch up on the world with Walter Cronkite.  I'd use that time to do my homework on her kitchen table, usually while listening to WABC or WMCA on the radio.

I was always done promptly at 730PM.  Why?  That's when my prime time television grid kicked into high gear every week.  I had shows to watch and stars to behold. 

Usually, Grandma and I were in total sync on what we would enjoy together.  There were some shows that she'd turn up her nose at.  Usually dismissed with a single phrase.

"Silly."

"Too confusing."

"If I couldn't do better than that, I wouldn't try."

For those programs that were not Grandma-friendly,  I'd head upstairs to our end of the house and watch them by myself.  Whatever the case, my evening television viewing was as intricate a procedure as NASA sending an astronaut into orbit.  To this day, I can remember certain shows as if they were produced just yesterday.

Hazel:  Grandma and I watched this Shirley Booth sitcom together.  It was indeed an alien world to us since she did all the cooking and cleaning herself.  Who were these ordinary people, the Baxters, that could afford to have a live-in housekeeper?  That certainly wasn't the case in this household.  I always marveled at the fact that this was one of three shows that NBC broadcast in color.  Chevrolet was one of Hazel's sponsors and wanted the color hues to show off the new cars.  It's not like it was really necessary to see the color of Hazel's bowling shirt.

The Wonderful World of Color:  Broadcast on Sunday night, this Disney anthology was one of the only shows that I viewed with my mother.  It opened with that beautiful kaleidoscope.  "The world is a carousel of color..." 

Not in my house on our black and white set.  I'd always ask the question.  And always get the same response.

"We're not made of money."

Peyton Place:  Yes, I did watch this.  With Grandma.  I've written about this before.  The show was a big hit and probably the very first prime time soap with up to three airings a week.  Murder, teen pregnancies, and other sordid goings-on dominated the plot lines.  Most of it went completely over my head.  But, it was delicious nonetheless.  And I was watching it with adult supervision.  Heck, she was using this to teach me about life and the difference between good and bad.  I remember the episode when Betty Harrington, as played by Barbara Parkins, turned up unmarried and pregnant.  Grandma summed it up succinctly.

"Tramp."

And so she was.

The Lucy Show;  This was the first time I got to enjoy Lucille Ball in a first run production.  Heck, I was already immersed in I Love Lucy reruns, but now this was the show everybody and I was seeing for the first time.  The very first season was the best when Lucy and Vivian Vance wound up stuck in a shower or on a roof or in a coal bin.  Grandma seemed to enjoy it, but then would always seem to recoil a bit at the end of the show.

"Lucy acts too silly sometimes."

Yeah, but then she wouldn't be Lucy, would she?

The Andy Griffith Show:  One of my true favorites as a kid.  It landed at #15 in my list of Top 25 Favorite TV Shows.  Yet, it presented me with a weekly dilemma.  As I wrote previously...

Here comes an odd admission.

I used to have a crush on Ronny Howard. Oh, not in a sexual way, since I was not even in double digits of age at the time. But, I really wanted to be his friend. Well, maybe Opie Taylor's friend. So, I could live in Mayberry, hang out with the kid, and do everything you can do on a summer's day in your average American small town. With Andy, Barney, Floyd, Gomer, Goober, Helen, Thelma Lou, Aunt Bee, and Otis.

My weekly desire to be a part of this world resulted in a fairly regular battle with the Warden of Bedtime, namely my mother. You see, for a while, "The Andy Griffith Show" aired on Monday nights at 930PM. The problem was that, in those formative Wonder years, my bedtime on school nights was 830PM. After much negotiation, my mother added an amendment to the Parental Constitution and extended my bedtime on Monday night to 10PM. Sweet. Of course, there was the fine print disclaimer that often now follows most TV ads for pharmaceuticals. I could stay up to watch Andy provided I had gotten to bed at the regular time on Sunday night.

It didn't take me long to figure out that I had been snookered on this one. Because, indeed, we were always visiting some relative on Sunday and usually never got home until 9PM or later. The biggest fly in the household ointment was if we had traveled to visit my aunt and uncle in Deer Park, Long Island. Over an hour away. This is not the way you learn to love your relatives. If we had gone out to Suffolk County, I would be relentless in my behavior. Starting around 5PM, I would start the patented whine.

"Can we go soon?"

"Can we go home now?"

"I'm tired."

It became a race to get home so I could hit the hay by 830PM. After a while, my bedtime on Monday was permanently unrestricted. Perhaps they were tired of hearing me bitch, moan, and groan at some family gathering. And I didn't really lose that much sleep since I always managed to catch up on the ZZZZs in class the next day. It also helped that CBS eventually bumped Andy up to 9PM.

The Beverly Hillbillies:  Another delight that Grandma and I watched together.  Grandma got a big kick out of Granny's "rheumatiz medicine."  She likened it to her favorite elixir for what ailed her---blackberry brandy.

"Oooh, my stomach's feeling queasy.  I need a little blackberry brandy."

For years afterward, I would think that all liquor had medicinal purposes.

Green Acres:  I didn't really appreciate the brilliant absurdity of this Paul Henning masterpiece until I was an adult.  Back then, Grandma and I just soaked in the stupidity of the crazy residents of, as Eva Gabor would say, "Hootersville."    At the conclusion of the show every week, we would almost apologize to ourselves for watching another episode.  Let's face it, one of the characters was a pig named Arnold Ziffel.

Petticoat Junction:  And the Hooterville trilogy is complete.  This was one show that reminds me of a strange quirk my grandmother had with regard to her TV favorites.  Sometimes, she would talk to the screen as if the cast was actually in the room with her.  When the lazy Edgar Buchanan character would shirk his responsibilities and try to take a nap, Grandma would scold him.

"Oh, come on, Uncle Joe, do some work for a change."

Huh?

Bonanza:  A Sunday night ritual in millions of American homes and definitely ours as well.  I would watch downstairs with Grandma and, ironically, this western always signaled a tinge of sadness for me.  The weekend was over.  Aw, crap, there's school tomorrow and probably a spelling quiz.  For years, every time I would see Lorne Greene or Dan Blocker in something, I would immediately worry if I had done all my homework correctly. 

Bonanza, of course, was broadcast in color.  Another problem in my house, as referenced above.  But, as I've written previously....

Arguably, "Bonanza" did more to sell new color television sets than any appliance store salesperson could hope to do. When this show, with its lush filming of the Lake Tahoe area, was the only program broadcast in color, folks clamored to buy one so they too could be enveloped by the splendor of the scenery.

You can count my parents in that group. You cannot count my grandmother among those sales.

Actually, my parents took their own sweet time moving out of the black and white TV world. There was one token color television in our family. My aunt had one and we all descended on her living room if ever there was a "must see in color" program. The only problem with her set, which might have been one of the first off the assembly line, is that the colors were never coordinated properly. Grass was blue. Tree trunks were red. Faces were green.

Once my parents were content that the technology had all the bugs worked out, they were buyers. And so, on one March Saturday afternoon, this super clunky Zenith console got delivered to our home. And then, for the rest of the weekend, we watched everything and anything just to see what it looked like in color. And, unlike my aunt's set, people actually had flesh tones that didn't make them look like third degree burn victims. We absorbed it all. But the focus of that weekend was Sunday night at 9PM on NBC. When we finally could watch an episode of "Bonanza" on our very own color TV.

"Bonanza" was one of the few TV shows that got two floor viewing in my house. My grandmother was watching downstairs and we were tuned in upstairs. I would act as Kissinger. One week, I would watch it with my grandmother and then the next week with my parents. It was a tradition I held to for many years. But, with the purchase of that huge Zenith, I would be multi-conflicted. Black and white vs. color. A major dilemma.

My mother, in a rare display of multi-generational family unity, had a solution. Grandma could come up and watch "Bonanza" in color with us. So, on that first "colorful" Sunday, my grandmother mounted the three flights of stairs to our living room. She sat down and wasn't there more than five minutes into the program.

"This doesn't look right."

She gave a cursory wave at the dastardly television set and went back downstairs. And never returned on a Sunday at 9PM ever again. To the day she died, she was one of the few stalwarts in America who would not cave in to that crazy fad of color TVs.

So, I spent many a Sunday watching "Bonanza" in black and white. Nevertheless, it didn't diminish my love of this classic western. As I got older, the tradition held, but I came to appreciate that the better episodes were written and directed by co-star Michael Landon, who clearly was a gifted creative force. As soon as Dan "Hoss" Blocker died, the show pretty much lost its cohesiveness. But, given that, it still had an amazing run with close to 500 episodes.

Most folks remember the theme song to this day with the Cartwrights riding up across the meadow to a conveniently placed Eastman color camera. But, oddly enough, I much preferred the different opening and theme that they used for several of the final seasons. Most people don't remember this, but I do.



 I'm not sure which version of the opening my grandmother liked better. She probably didn't care.

As long as it was in black and white.

Fair Exchange:  Never heard of it?  I am not surprised.  It wasn't on long and probably has not been seen since.  It was a CBS Friday night sitcom about a family in New York and another family in London.  They swapped teenage daughters.  Judy Carne, soon to be of "sock it to me" Laugh-In fame was one of the kids.  Sounds ridiculous, right?

For some bizarre reason, this little kid loved it.  I was undoubtedly the only one in America.  From my faint memory, this thing hit the bottom of the Nielsen ratings.

Even then, I was in tune with the TV business.  I heard that Fair Exchange had been cancelled and it would air its final episode the following week.  I was devastated.  My parakeet had died all over again. 

Bad became even worse on that final Friday of Fair Exchange.  We got hit with a major snow storm and my mother made the dreaded announcement around 730PM. 

"Come help me shovel the driveway so it's clear when your father comes home from work."

Er.........

Now, my presence was really not needed for snow removal.  I essentially would stand there and move little mounds of the white stuff while Mom did the heavy lifting.  So why can't I stay inside and watch my show?

Yeah, that argument worked. 

I stood outside in the cold and flaky air.  I watched my mother shovel snow as slowly as anybody has ever done it.  Jeez, can't you move that thing any faster?  I've got to see the last episode of Fair Exchange.

I never did.  The sadness that had enveloped me was devastating.  I felt as if I had not been there to watch a dear friend move away.  Heck, I wasn't home the day the parakeet flew out the kitchen window forever.  I was sickened.

I vowed that day to never get too attached to a television program ever again. 

You see how well that worked.

Dinner last night:  Chicken fingers at Go Burger.