So, um, guess we still have a blog here. Story time – when I was twelve or thirteen one of the three networks kept putting this movie called The Legend of Billie Jean on its Saturday afternoon rotation. It was basically Pat Benatar: The Movie and I thought it was the awesomest thing ever. However I have no plans to watch it again because I fear it might not hold up to our refined modern standards.
Your turn! Share some absolutely mundane fact about your childhood. If you did not have a childhood then you have to wait until the next thread.
Peale
Fine. There was a show in syndication called “Fury” which was basically Lassie but with a horse. Because we still had a black and white television set into the early 80s (my mom isn’t one to get caught up in “fads”, especially ones that are expensive and may cause cancer of the eyes), I thought it was a first run show. Oddly, I have not met anyone who ever watched this show, even in Southeast Wisconsin. I think my sister and I were the only and last Fury fans.
Tom The First
When I was 10ish, my friend and I watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off eight times in one day (the VHS tape thankfully held up). We were doing other stuff, of course, but it amazes me how the young brain can (and wants to) watch/experience certain things over and over again.
beltane
Is the Legend of Billie Jean similar to the Ode to Billy Jo, another mainstay of late 1970s TV moviedom?
redshirt
Bring back the Creature Double Feature!
greennotGreen
My sister and I bonded at the dinner table when we had to continue to sit there after my parents were done because I wouldn’t eat my peas and she wouldn’t drink her milk.
We got our first tv when I was four, and I watched the Flash
Gordon serials on it. I thought Buster Crabbe was the handsomest man in the universe.
Wrb
Pat’s cousin, Denise Benatar was in my freshman dorm. She was my secret Santa, and showered me with those penthouse porn mags in which people describe their fantasies.
Mundane enough?
Comrade Mary
@Peale: I think I saw Fury when I was a kid in Montréal, but it was dubbed in French only.
Seanly
As a kid I loved Star Trek, but really hated the Batman show. I remember getting upset because he always had the right item in his tool belt. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was when he had a thermos for alphabet soup. I must’ve been a joy to be around as a 5-year old.
HeartlandLiberal
When I was 7 or eight years old, we watched the Gene Autry serial “The Phantom Empire” on our little black and white TV, and were totally immersed in it. For some reason, I was sick or something and missed the last episode. And never got to see it. Until last year, at age 69, we found a shortened compressed version of the entire serial on a channel via Roku, and I got to see how the story ended. At that point, I felt a certain fulfillment and joy that was hard to describe, as that had been one of the most bitter disappointments. Since then, I have found where people have restored the entire series, all episodes. I may watch part or all again, but especially the non-compressed last episode. It is such a classic cliff hanger, but was really ahead of its time in is mix of sci-fi, western, romance, and just general good fun.
glaukopis
I kept my guns and holsters in my doll buggy. I had had a doll, but it was taken away after I took it apart to find out how it worked inside. I’m a software developer now if anyone wants to draw any conclusions.
SuperHrefna
When I was little in 1970s Britain freezers weren’t common household items yet. Us wee folk were so excited when we heard the “Dee-Di” of our local ice cream truck in the evening and could run out to get some ( on our own, aged 4,5,6..) You could get vanilla with either red sauce or green sauce. The night before my mum and I emigrated to America the ice cream man was so sorry for me he gave me both sauces on my ice cream and I felt like a princess in grave peril.
lgerard
I’m all excited that one of my favorite movies from back in the day, The Tall Blond man with One Black Shoe has finally been restored and issued on DVD.
I will be picking it up tomorrow at the library…..I’ve waited a very long time for this moment….it better be as good as I remember it.
Gin & Tonic
My father drank a beer called Prior Double Dark that, by the time I was old enough to drink beer, seemingly had vanished from the face of the Earth. I’ve never seen or heard of it since.
Old Dan and Little Anne
I’ve wanted a slide from my bedroom window into A backyard pool ever since watching The Legend of Billie Jean. And a scooter. Also, too.
Jane2
When I was 11, we moved from the TV-less Yukon back to Canadian civilization. When we arrived at my grandma’s house in Dawson Creek, BC, Bonanza had just started. I was awestruck, and Adam Cartwright was my first and enduring crush.
Jane2
@Peale: My little brother had a model Fury!
Frankensteinbeck
I used to get up early to watch European cartoons, I think on Nickelodeon (definitely not sure) because at the time they were so much better than American cartoons.
SuperHrefna
@beltane: I remember watching Ode to Billy Joe and being gravely disappointed that it wasn’t as good as the song.
? Martin
I was fucking terrified of Sleestaks to the extent that for some period of time (months) I wouldn’t watch Saturday morning TV out of fear that I might turn it on and catch a glimpse of one before I could change the channel. I was probably 6 or 7.
Eric U.
OT: I was watching a standup comedian on netflix, and decided to turn on subtitles. They had subtitles in French, so I got all excited. But it turns out to be really rare that there are subtitles in French. Really wish more movies had them, particularly French movies. Sort of tying it back to this thread, I think I would learn French a lot better if French movies I have seen before had French subtitles, and I would watch them over and over again
patrick II
@Peale:
I watched “Fury ” when I was a kid. Remember “Uncle Pete” the cook? It was on right after cartoons and just before “Sky King”.
gogol's wife
@Peale:
Oh yeah, Fury, with the kind who was on the Chuck Connors show later. Let me google that for you.
I was wrong, Johnny Crawford wasn’t on Fury. But I remember Fury.
schrodinger's cat
I could not sleep for a week after I read an illustrated version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I was about 12 or 13. I had to wake my mother up even if I wanted to go get water or go use the restroom.
RSA
When I was a teenager my parents used to drive our entire (large) family from Baltimore down to DC, to spend the afternoon walking through boring museums. Can you believe it?
Of course, today I remember those trips more vividly and with more enjoyment than most other random stuff I did as a teenager…
TaMara (BHF)
I was a Batman (tv show) fangirl when I was little. When we were stationed in Washington, my dad did some part-time bartending on Friday nights to bring in a little extra cash (even then, enlisted didn’t earn enough to support a small family of wife and one kid). One of his regulars was Adam West. I BEGGED him to let me meet him, but he refused. I was as pissed as a six year old could be.
But I think he didn’t want to shatter my image of him, I think he was kind of a lush back then.
Mike R
I watched fury in the mid 50’s on saturday mornings. Now I have horses of my own, my word how did I get this old.
TaMara (BHF)
And also, to this day, Adam-12 Pete Malloy is my biggest crush. Was very sad when Martin Milner died recently.
piratedan
growing up in the metro Washington DC area was awesome… field trips every other month, be it The Mint, one of the monuments, the Smithsonian, wolf trap, civil war battlefields… u name it, we got to do it…. plus, when you got home from school, we had WTTG, one of the most awesome non-affiliated stations in the country at the time, so my afternoons, while doing homework because I was a latchkey kid, also tasked with keeping my younger sibling from burning down the house, was filled with the sounds of Ultraman, Kimba The White Lion and Speed Racer, although for my money, the coolest thing evah was the theme music from Jonny Quest….
ruemara
I’ve always had a wish to learn how play games like Scrabble.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Ultra Man was the shiznit.
wmd
I liked to hike along a creek by my home in Bloomington, IN. At home I kept pet boa constrictors. One day I found an abandoned boa constrictor in a can near the creek, which I took home and fed.
raven
This sums up my kidhood.
Tim F.
@Eric U.: That actually sounds like a really good idea. The millions of homonyms and sounds-like phrases make learning French a real pain in the rear.
Mustang Bobby
@Peale: Nope, I watched Fury. Peter Arness (Jim Graves in the original Mission Impossible TV series and Captain Oveur in Airplane!) was the adult. I loved it.
raven
When I was a kid in LA you could rent horses and run them in the river beds. I wasn’t more than 10 and went unsupervised!
The Golux
My father used to read James Thurber’s “The 13 Clocks” to us about once a year. He was active in local theater, so he was quite good at reading, especially at giving each character his or her own voice.
My sisters and I like to speculate on who would be cast in it if it were made into a movie.
Eric NNY
If you remember Sesame Street from the 70’s, the only character who ever saw Snuffleupagus was Big Bird. Whenever anybody else showed up, he’d be gone. As the baby of the family, my parents and siblings also couldn’t see Snuffleupagus. I’m pretty sure they owe me some therapist money…….
RandomMonster
As a small boy I wanted an EZ Bake Oven, but my parents wouldn’t buy me one. I would’ve been a great professional chef now had they encouraged my interest in cooking!
patrick II
I love going to jazz clubs. Just hanging around having a drink and watching a band. Sadly, there aren’t nearly enough of them anymore. Anyhow, a couple of years ago I found “Peter Gunn” on Netflix (it’s not on there now) and I remembered that, when I was a kid, how cool I thought it would be to be a private investigator who hangs out at a jazz club, have a beautiful singer girlfriend who worked at the club, and meet various interesting, if sometimes shady, characters who hang out at the club.
I had forgotten that show (except for the theme song) and remembered when I saw it again how much I liked it as a kid. The things you see as a child are carried with you even if you don’t consciously remember.
? Martin
@Tim F.: Try Mandarin. I did 8 years of french – cakewalk next to mandarin.
Randy P
@lgerard: Are you talking about the good one, the French original? Or the American remake with Tom Hanks? (Just checked the title, the remake has a slightly different title).
We had “Monster Movie Matinee” on Saturdays at 1 pm. I swear there were movies I saw there whose existence I have not been able to verify elsewhere. One I would love to track down was called something like “The Eye of the Cat” in which a cat manages to revenge its owner by causing the “accidental” deaths of the people who murdered him or her.
catclub
@? Martin: At age five, I was terrified of the part of the Wizard of Oz, in the forest, when nothing happens – but right before the flying monkeys arrive.
Also, I remember from childhood, an island horror movie where the dogs had poisonous saliva and hunted the people.
I do not know that name of that one.
Marc
On Sunday afternoons in the 70’s, I would go to a friends house and watch the monster movie of the week – we sat in rapt attention as Godzilla or some other thing did their best to destroy (Tokyo, small midwest town) or take over (the Earth, a military base), or steal (our minds, our bodies, our women). Those alternated with the early 70’s disaster movies on TV – Airport, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure, etc. In between we caught the Sinbad movies.
Hildebrand
Every Saturday at the Lake Theatre in my hometown we had a double feature – the first movie was always The Late Great Planet Earth.
Hillary Rettig
DARK SHADOWS.
Totally obsessed.
Also, I loved Night Gallery, but got so scared by some of the episodes that I literally was afraid to go to bed. I stayed all night in the Living Room with the lights on.
seaboogie
Sunday mornings were Davey and Goliath, The Thunderbirds, Skinny and Fatty, and then my Dad would be up to watch Laurel and Hardy with us.
tybee
many moons ago i lived next door to the man who was The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Eric U.
@Gin & Tonic: apparently Prior disappeared during a corporate takeover. My dad always drank Bud, PBR or Schlitz, so I didn’t get my beer snobbery from him. I remember when I was 8, he made me drink some Bud, and I hated it so much I didn’t drink again until I was 16. Tried that with my kids and it didn’t really work
Mustang Bobby
Toledo, Ohio, in the late ’50’s and early ’60’s, had two TV stations. One carried CBS and the other carried ABC and NBC. Everything was in black and white, so even if we had a color TV, we couldn’t see the shows in color. We got a lot of syndicated shows like “Whirlybirds,” about a helicopter crew that solved crimes, and “Ripcord,” about parachutists that solved crimes.
We had a big antenna so we picked up stations from Detroit and CKLW Channel 9 out of Windsor, Ontario, so I watched all my Popeye cartoons from there. It wasn’t until I was about ten or so that I figured out that Canada was another country, eh?
Just Some Fuckhead
I couldn’t pull myself out of bed before 11am on Saturday’s so I missed most of the good cartoons.
beltane
@SuperHrefna: For all its length, the movie failed to address the central mystery of the song.
debbie
@raven:
Is that a baseball mitt? It’s almost half your size!
When I was about 12, my mom gave me, a cousin (my age), and my brother (9) money to go to the theater for the afternoon movie. She just wanted us out of the house. The movie was “The Haunting.” By the end of the film, all three of us were sitting in the same seat, terrified. I’ve seen it a couple times since then and it still creeps me out. My cousin and my brother both refuse to see it again. My mother came to regret that move, considering the nightmares that followed.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@The Golux:
Your nym makes that clear! I adore The Thirteen Clocks. Always loved the tears that turned into precious jewels, and then two weeks later turned back into tears at Just the Right Moment. And of course Saralinda is the only possible name for a Thurber princess. Love that book.
EDIT: Shit, I forgot my most important question for you — what were your casting choices?
Kathleen
@Peale: I sort of watched Fury. My mom limited the number of hours I could watch TV. When we lived in Wichita I read a biography of Amelia Earhart (“Amelia Earhart: Kansas Girl”.Does anyone else remember those little orange biography books?) I wore a scarf around my neck when I rode my bike and pretended I was flying. Her story still fascinates me. I’m sure either Obama or the Clintons were responsible for her death.
M. Bouffant
@schrodinger’s cat: When I was maybe six or seven I merely read the short history in the assembly instructions from a Revell (Aurora?) Dracula model kit that someone had opened in the toy section in the supermarket where I was killing time while the units shopped. I knew it wasn’t real, but it freaked me the hell out for some time anyway.
A Ghost To Most
In the early 70s, I was a hockey fan and player, and the only hockey on American TV in WNY was the occasional Sabres game. So every Wednesday and Saturday I would watch Hockey Night In Canada across the lake on a 13″ b&w with rabbit ears . Ken Dryden and Jacques Plante were my(smudgy) heroes.
Mike J
In the 70s the Village Cinema in Memphis would show Hammer horror flicks on Saturdays. My friend Dino and I would go and hang out with 100 other screaming kids.
Just Some Fuckhead
In 1982, me and a friend snuck into the movie theater to see what we thought was going to be the teen movie Spring Break. After 25 minutes, we realized Spring Fever was a coming of age story about a female tennis player. So we snuck into the theater next door and were blown away by The Gods Must Be Crazy.
raven
@tybee: THAT is cool!
Matt McIrvin
WDCA-20 in Washington DC played all the great Japanese cheese, anime and live-action. Ultraman, Marine Boy, Speed Racer, Kimba the White Lion, Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot (Giant Robo). Also Star Trek reruns, and these shows were all hosted by Dick Dyszel as “Captain 20” (early on he wore Spock ears). At other times he was horror host “Count Gore De Vol”, but I never watched those; it was the Captain 20 block for me and my next-door friend whose parents would let him watch that stuff all afternoon long.
One of those channels also showed original Mickey Mouse Club reruns from the Fifties, and we faithfully watched those as if they were first-run.
Ripley
As kids raised in Los Angeles, my twin brother and I were exposed to a lot of classic Mexican horror films on local TV (dubbed and edited, terribly, by exploitation king K. Gordon Murray). Their weirdness, a mix of culturally-specific monsters (and social understandings) and novela-level emotionalism, freaked us the hell out but we couldn’t look away. Scarred for life, happily.
We also once set fire to a dry-grass field, which quickly got out of hand; we rolled our bodies on it to finally put it out. I don’t think the two are related, but I’m still not sure….
Karen
Zoom
Zee Double Oh Em
Box 354
Boston, Mass
Oh two one three Four!
Get you SASE and send it to ZOOM!
? Martin
@Marc: For me they alternated between american and japanese kaiju and Abbot & Costello. ‘Them’ was one of my favorites on the American side, and King Ghidorah on the Japanese side. But I always loved the Japanese films the best. And then Star Cruisers (Space Battleship Yamato) arrived and I remember thinking ‘Wait, the Japanese make cartoons as well? Who knew?’
Kathleen
@Mustang Bobby: I remember Whirlybirds! I loved Rescue 8 with Jim Davis and Lang Jeffries. I picked that for one of my allotted shows.
lgerard
@Randy P:
The good one, in French with subtitles.
I refused to watch the vapid remake or even the crappy semi-bootleg, poorly dubbed versions of the original movie that have circulated, waiting for the perfect experience. The time has come!
is the movie you are thinking of The Shadow of the Cat?
It is on you tube and daily motion/
raven
@debbie: I think it’s two! Not as big as this rock though!
beltane
@Karen: I remember that! Do you remember Wonderama and those bagel necklace things?
K488
@Peale: I remember Fury! Wasn’t the dad the same actor who went on to head up the team on Mission Impossible?
raven
M Squad with Lee Marvin was badass.
JPL
@Peale: Finally someone I can relate to. I loved Fury but watched it much earlier. The first tv show that I can remember is a drawing program. You put the special film on the TV and had special crayons.
Fury was on Saturday mornings.
cmorenc
@Peale:
Fury came on right after the “Ruff and Ready” TV show, featuring host Jimmy Blaine and puppet birds Rhubarb the parrot and Jose the Toucan. That show always closed with the following sung ditty: “That’s all for today, from Rhubarb and Jose, and your buddy Jimmy Blaine. We’ll all be back next week, with Buffalo Bob you bet, and now you kids will surely, stay tuned here for Fury…which follows on most of these N-B-C…stations”.
And yes, it was in black & white.
? Martin
@seaboogie: A few years ago I showed Davey and Goliath to my (atheist) kids. Their only and repeated response “What the fuck is this shit? Why would anyone find this entertaining?” My observation – Downton Abbey is faster paced.
M. Bouffant
@raven: My youth. We didn’t have a telebision until I was ten. The parents bought a tee vee then so they could see all the sessions of the ’64 G.O.P. convention for which they didn’t have tickets.
Plus I was home-schooled from third to sixth grade.
It’s been tough to resist the siren song of becoming a serial killer, I’ll tell ya.
Mike J
@Ripley:
When they were building a mall near my house as a kid,
several of ussome local nogoodniks discovered that the bulldozers that were left out in the middle of the field they were leveling were drivable. Nobody involved was old to have ever driven a car except sitting on dad’s lap.Crusty Dem
@Gin & Tonic:
Beer guy here – Apparently Saranac brewery (upstate NY, very good brewers) have a very similar (though not completely identical) beer – “Saranac Black Forest”, if you want to give that a try. May be missing the point of the whole nostalgia, but I bet it’s worth a try, I’ll drink anything Saranac brews…
NCSteve
I truly wish I had made the same decision not to re-watch “Logan’s Run” as an adult. Even at 18, it didn’t hold up.
@HeartlandLiberal: Was that one of the serials in the 1980’s “J-Men Forever” mashup?
beltane
Please do not use this to start a primary war, but the guy who finished second to Bernie Sanders in this race was my high school Health teacher.
Karen
@beltane:
Yes! Wonderama came to the Grammercy Theater in NY and my dad brought me and my sister and I remember being really sad that Bob McAllister never picked me.
Are you from downstate NY?
Roger Moore
@Seanly:
That always bugged me, too, until somebody pointed out that he’s supposed to be the world’s greatest detective. His real super power is preparation. He knows who he’s going to be going up against, and has different things to keep in his utility belt (and other storage places) depending on who he’s going to be facing. So, for example, the Joker loves using weird gasses, so Batman knows to have defense against poison gas handy when dealing with him. When you think of it that way, it seems at least a little bit more plausible.
Gindy51
@Peale: You’d be wrong. I have the books from which the tv series was taken from and LOVED Fury and Snowfire (cheesy western about a white mustang)
beltane
@Karen: NYC born and raised! My college boyfriend’s sister was one of the lucky ones who got picked on Wonderama and the family still made a big deal about it years later.
Scout211
@Peale:
I loved that show! But I am not a young person.
There was also My Friend Flicka and Sky King. Good times.
ET
I remember a show called Manipal and another called The Secrets of Isis. Don’t remember details but I remember watching both.
Karen
@beltane: I lived in Queens and Long Island until I moved to Maryland in 1988.
raven
@M. Bouffant: Oh yea, my old man and his dad were die hard DuPage County Republicans. Gramps told me Joe McCarthy died of a broken heart!
scav
Parents took us to watch Caberet on the first release. Mom apparently wondered what she had possibly done when all the way home my six-year old sister was singing Money-money-money-money-money-money and I’d chime in with ‘she doesn’t look Jewish at all!”
Bill Arnold
@glaukopis:
First LOL of the day. Thank you.
Karen
Does anyone remember Disney movies in the summer where they’d have a different one every week and it would be a double feature? I don’t even think they charged extra!
Ruckus
When I was a kid I was sick a lot. Got to stay home and read, which was better than school, which really seemed like they didn’t want you to learn. I heard many times that kids were too young to learn. Now I see in other countries that young kids 5-10 yrs old learn multiple languages, something I wish I’d been able to do.
We got our first TV around 1953, a little box with about a 9 in screen, B&W of course, came complete with ghosts/shadows/shimmers and I think maybe 3 channels. It was crap, even for then. We still had that thing until the mid 60s. Never did work any better. About that time my grandfather gave me his old B&W for my room, something like 20-21 inch in a huge box. I’d go to bed when mom wanted me to and get back up at 11 to watch movies after she was asleep. Maybe that’s why I’m a night owl.
redshirt
@Roger Moore: There’s a guy on twitter named Batman66 (@batlabels) who’s posting every single labeled item from the show, things like “Deepest Secret Extractor” and “Instant Costume Change Lever”. It’s a riot.
That show had an infinite amount of charm.
Steve in the ATL
@SuperHrefna:
When my mother was growing up, she used to sit on the Tallahatchie bridge and shoot snakes down on the riverbank with a .22 rifle.
FYI you have to be a crack shot to do that.
The Golux
@Eric NNY:
My kids were at the Sesame Street age when they did the big reveal and Snuffleupagus was shown to be real. It was quite emotional, really.
I remember dozens of bits from that show, and I’m sure my kids don’t remember a single one.
beltane
@Karen: Manhattan, Brooklyn, and LI until I moved to VT in 2000. The Manhattan part, birth to 18, is not as glamorous as it sounds. My mother lived in a rent controlled dive that lacked heat and hot water much of the time and was not wired for air conditioning until I was well into my teens. Summers were spent in the bathroom running cold water over my wrists.
Ruckus
@glaukopis:
Didn’t have any dolls but did take most things apart because if you don’t how do you know how to put them together? Helped in being an industrial designer. A lot.
beltane
@Steve in the ATL:They should have made your mother the star of the movie. I would have liked to see that.
M. Bouffant
@Ripley: Channel 13 when it was good!
Steve in the ATL
@beltane: She looked just like Mary Tyler Moore in the sixties
? Martin
@glaukopis:
If anyone questions some of the reasons why only 1 in 5 students that apply for Engineering schools are women, that toys for boys are routinely designed to be taken apart, and toys for girls rarely are, is a good starting point.
I was proud of my daughter when she took her Barbie apart. My mother wasn’t disappointed, but she also never understood why she did it.
beltane
@Steve in the ATL: This was a missed opportunity for your mother and for American film history.
Matt McIrvin
@Karen: I watched Wonderama on Channel 5 in DC. I think it played on most of the Metromedia stations, a chain of independent TV stations that much later became the core of the Fox network.
Gindy51
When we were kids the local theater had a summer movie series every Wednesday from noon to 3 PM. The whole neighborhood would show up for 3 hours of cartoons, monster movies, and all the candy your allowance could buy. It was one of those HUGE old theaters that don’t exist anymore.
The single scariest movie (not shown at the above mentioned theater) was The Haunting with Julie Harris (1963). I was so scared for years I could not sleep with my door closed.
Also I read a short story around that time that was about a television that ate people’s brains, the screen went from “FEED” to “FED”. It scared the shit out of me so badly, I moved the TV out of my bedroom. Even now I cannot have a TV in the bedroom and we’ve never bought a house with sold wood doors.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Eric U.:
Once in Canada I watched The Wizard of Oz on one of the French-Canadian channels.
The dialogue was in French (dubbed). The songs were in ‘Murcan. It was an odd experience.
Ruckus
@M. Bouffant:
It’s been tough to resist the siren song of becoming a serial killer, I’ll tell ya.
With a story like that I’d imagine so.
Do you think you are on a list somewhere?
Or are now?
piratedan
nfi why I’m in moderation, but apparently I is…
oz29
Sunday mornings before mass, I always hurried to get dressed so I could watch Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and the Lone Ranger.
Howard Beale IV
For those of fortunate to have Kaiser Broadcasting-Lou Gordon and The Ghoul! (Hiya gang, hiyahiyahyahiyahiya!)
So ya want to play football overdey, do ya Froggy?
Ok, let’s play football-you be the ball!
A Ghost To Most
@Ruckus:
I also spent my youth taking things apart and putting them back together. Became a software engineer.
@glaukopis:
AndiG
When I was little, I was once terrified by the intro to The Outer Limits. Aliens had taken control of the television, which meant I could never watch Mr. Ed ever again!
While I never watched the TV show Fury – a bit before my time – I now own several versions of the Breyer model. (Breyer never made a Mr. Ed, despite all my letters to the contrary.)
Gindy51
@beltane: Might have saved some snakes too.
raven
@AndiG: The gremlin on the plane wing was the freakiest!
The Golux
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
They’ve changed over time, as the actors have aged out of the roles, but here are some:
The Duke – Jeremy Irons, Kevin Kline
The Golux – Michael Palin (I mean, who else?)
We went round and round on Zorn and Saralinda. For the latter, someone like Kate Beckinsale would be quite good now.
I’m sure you’ve seen The Princess Bride. Did you get some of the same vibe from that? I sure did.
ETA: A few years ago I read “Here At the New Yorker”, by Brendan Gill. In it, he mentions how Harold Ross hated it when his writers used the word “indescribable”. (“Anything is describable!”) So I’m sure Thurber was tweaking Ross with the “indescribable hat and describable beard” of the Golux.
? Martin
@redshirt: I love that twitter feed. GIANT LIGHTED LUCITE MAP OF GOTHAM CITY
raven
I guess the gremlin was Twilight Zone.
carlita carrota
@Peale: I remember Fury. Wasn’t there a boy named Timmy who owned the horse?
delk
Chicago childhood:
Garfield Goose
Ray Rayner
Gindy51
@AndiG: At one point I owned over 800 of the damned things. I sold them all for a hefty profit when I got a real horse. Paid for board for over 3 years.
A Ghost To Most
@raven:
Will! Iam! Shat! Ner!
seaboogie
@? Martin: @beltane: I had to miss my “family group” first communion because I got to be on Lunch with Casey, which was basically a couple dozen kids sitting on bleachers, cheering for the cartoons, letting the adult hosts do their weird schtick, and get a goody bag. Was all about the goody back as I recall – and I don’t remember a single thing that was in it.
Also, since I missed the family study group first communion, I had a private first First Communion with familyduring a mass, before the second, class-wide First Communion. All of this religiosity might explain why I’m not a Catholic and a few years in therapy. I think I liked Davey and Goliath because of the dog.
raven
And then there were the local rock and roll dance shows like 9th Street West in La
Vheidi
@Karen: Loved zoom. My brother sent away for the raft you make out of sticks and cover with something. It didn’t seem practical to his older sister.
raven
@delk: Two Ton Baker! Laugh your troubles away!!!
lol chikinburd
The Mr. Yuk PSAs on TV SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME when I was little. I mean I’d run out of the room cowering until I was sure it was over.
raven
Dick “Two Ton” Baker: “Bert the Turtle (The Duck and Cover Song) 1953”
Ruckus
@seaboogie:
Dad used to watch Soupy Sales with me. Other than work it was the only bonding thing we ever did. Mom hated Soupy. That may have been part of the attraction.
lgerard
@srv:
Charlie Chan had the coolest cars
raven
Riverview Park – Chicago, Illinois – Laugh Your Troubles Away! – Remember The Fun! Share The Memories!
raven
@Ruckus: White Fang!
Johnnybuck
The Gong show came every day after school. It was cheezy, and I didn’t get a lot of the jokes, but it was funny as hell to a ten year old kid. Gene Gene the dancing machine, the Unknown comic, just plain stupid.
but I guess that was the point..
Howard Beale IV
@Ruckus: Good old Soupy: “Why is it whenever I see F, you see K?”
raven
Stock car races in Soldier Field!
Bill E Pilgrim
@beltane:
And all of them pale imitations of the original “Ode To Billy Joy”.
By Bobbie Ray Beethoven, Ludwig’s redneck brother.
delk
@raven: Heh, a bit before my time. Born in ’62.
Kind of funny, but they are finally tearing down the Western Avenue overpass they built to deal with Riverview traffic. It opened in’67 just in time for Riverview to close.
beltane
@seaboogie: I don’t remember Davey and Goliath much except that I did enjoy watching it. It was peaceful and always had a happy ending. Being surrounded by malfunctioning adults can do this to a kid.
joel hanes
@Kathleen:
Does anyone else remember those little orange biography books?
Yes. Elementary school was boring, and my fifth-grade classroom had dozens of them; I probably read ten or twelve of them over a couple months. That’s probably the only reason I know who Clara Barton was.
That same year I read the wonderful Mushroom Planet books by Cameron, and the Mad Scientists Club books by Brinley, and The Enormous Egg by Butterworth, and a juvenile SF I’ve never been able to locate since: boy on jungle-Venus has a pet/ally/native informant resembling a blue koala; these Venusian animals have (glowing?) blue claws that are hard and valuable, like diamond.
I was saddened to see my son’s elementary school discard almost all the Lois Lenski books that depicted the diversity of American ways of life as they existed just prior to the Depression — apparently the gender and race norms of the time are not suitable for today’s kids.
raven
@delk: I was traveling abroad at the time if you know what I mean! My dad got trapped on the parachute ride for a couple of hours in the 30’s.
Thillens was pretty close to there was’nt it?
divF
@RSA:
I went to high school in DC (Gonzaga). After the last day of the school year a friend and I would go down to the Smithsonian to watch the tourists watching the two-story-high Foucault pendulum as it knocked over little cones one by one.
(I know, pretty nerdy).
delk
@raven: Wow, looks like they had a full house at Soldier Field. Never knew about the races.
CaseyL
@seaboogie: Omigosh – I did the same thing! Not lunch with Casey, but went to a studio recording of what was my favorite cartoon show. Which I no longer remember the name of – but it had Speed Racer, Astro-Boy, and Tobor the 8th Man.
Tobor was my first crush. I think I was six.
Ruckus
@Howard Beale IV:
I remember that but I think it sort of went over my head.
It doesn’t now of course that my language skills have managed to stabilize in the four letter word area.
Roger Moore
My local library had movie screenings for kids when I was growing up. When I was about 5 or 6, they showed Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which I did not like because it seemed too silly and childish.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@The Golux
Yes, of course.
I would have chosen the late lamented Alan Rickman as the Duke, or the late and equally lamented Ian Richardson. I’m thinking Stephen Fry for the Golux, though I have no quibble with Michael Palin. At this point, I think Beckinsale might be a little long in the tooth for Saralinda, although she would have been fine back in the day. Have to give that some thought.
Palin would be GREAT as the Golux.
Would love to see one of the fine character actresses as Hagga: Maggie Smith or Judi Dench or Glenn Close or Meryl Streep or somebody. Frances McDormand would be wonderful.
EDIT: As would Vanessa Redgrave.
delk
@raven: @raven: A little more northwest. The Chicago Park District took it over and the Thillens family asked to have their name removed. The giant baseball was taken down as well.
Vheidi
When my parents’ marriage was falling apart we watched tv at the dinner table, on a nifty 6″ b&w Sony that dad had brought back from Japan. Walter Cronkite, Vietnam, and stars where that day’s battles were.
raven
@delk: Stockers, fights, all kinds of stuff. You know the Bears played at Wrigely until 1971?
nutella
When I was about 13 I read ‘Gone With the Wind’. I was so wrapped up in the story that I read it straight through with no breaks except when I fell asleep or was dragged off to eat a meal. Fortunately it was summer vacation and I didn’t have to go to school.
I have tried once or twice to re-read it as an adult but I can’t. Now I’d say that ‘This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. ‘
raven
@delk: I guess Riverview was where Roberto Clemente College is huh?
RSA
@divF:
I was one of those tourists! In the mid- to late 1970s, at least. In other contexts (parks, shopping malls, cafes with street seating) I think that people watching is one of the most interesting things in the world.
raven
W is explaining why 400,000 people are dead, so far.
NotMax
Andy Devine, Andy’s Gang.
“Pluck your magic twanger, Froggy.”
@Matt McIrvin
Don’t think anyone today would be nuts enough to produce Wonderama as it originally was aired. Sandy Becker did 3 hours – live – on Saturdays and 2 hours – live – on Sundays, in addition to hosting multiple live shows for Metromedia every weekday. The host most remembered by my age cohort, though, would probably be Sonny Fox.
Mr. Fox also hosted an additional kids’ show on the weekend, Just For Fun>/em>, which ran 2½ hours.
kdaug
Banana Buggy, anyone? Daaaah-vie? (That’s my claymation voice)
maurinsky
@Karen:
I was going to say that my mother would only let us watch PBS in the afternoon, so we watched Sesame Street (I hate Elmo and miss Grover), Mister Roger’s Neighborhood (which I can’t watch now without crying); The Electric Company (HEY YOU GUYS! Rita Moreno, Morgan Freeman and the reason I know when to use apostrophe S) and ZOOM! I can still do that weird arm twisting move that they taught me.
On Sunday evenings, we watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney; and my mother was a fan of variety shows, so we watched Johnny Cash specials, Bobby Vinton, Flip Wilson, Sonny and Cher, The Mandrell Sisters, Sha Na Na, and I’m sure some that I’m forgetting. My mother loved Soupy Sales but I’m sure the dirty jokes went over her head.
When I was a little older, I remember there was a show called Boomer, a friendly mutt who went from town to town helping people. “Cause he’s Boomer, he’s never going to settle down, wandering from town to town!” My sister says she has no recollection of this.
catclub
besides Davey and Goliath, I watched “The Big Picture” which was either US Army or US DOD show and tell of weaponry. I remember them showing flame throwers, if little else.
The My Lai massacre or the pictures of Vietnamese on fire did not impact that series.
khead
@? Martin:
I, too, know the fear of the Sleestak. I used to get rid of it with some Shazam!/Isis Power Hour on the way to Fat Albert.
Ruckus
@raven:
My dad told me once that he used to go to the board track motorcycle races as a kid around LA and to Ascot in Gardena for the flat track. Met a man when he was 95, in 1991 who was the last living board track racer. He and my dad passed within a year of each other. One used to race, the other watch and I’m the one that got to meet him. It is a small world.
raven
@Ruckus: @Ruckus: Those were incredible. Ever see this shit with the lion in the sidecar on the board track?
AliceBlue
When I was a kid in the 60’s, there was a show called Thriller. It was hosted by Boris Karloff and featured a spooky story every week.
For some reason my parents would let me stay up and watch it, even though I would lay awake all night with the light on. I still remember the episode called “Pigeons from Hell.”
delk
@raven: Clemente is a bit further south. Riverview now is a strip mall, a circuit court house/CPD and DeVry University.
raven
@catclub:
The Golux
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
I agree on Frances McDormand. Probably due to Mark Simont’s brilliant illustrations, I think of Hagga as being very plain, so I’m not sure about Maggie Smith, and as much as I love Judi Dench, I’m not sure that’s right. Helen Mirren? For some reason, I’ve often imagined Elaine May as Hagga.
Ahhnuld as Krang, if he were ever to be onscreen.
maurinsky
I forgot – when my mother was pregnant with our younger siblings, she liked to sleep in on Saturdays, so my older sister and I would watch American Bandstand as a warm-up to the far superior Soul Train.
Esme's Mom
@catclub: Killer Shrews? Had a great finale where the remaining victims hide under wash tubs and duck walk to the ocean to escape.
raven
@delk: Ah, time is a thief. Last time I was up there we drove on Devon and I though I has in Dehli.
Mike J
@AliceBlue: Thriller is on one of those TV networks that the locals use for their second channels. MeTV or Antenna or GetTV or something. Of course it’s on at 3 or 4 am, but you can record.
NotMax
Also too, Zacherle (a/k/a Zacherley).
Could never stomach more than about five seconds of Davey & Goliath. Same for Gumby.
@AliceBlue
Most people who watched that never noticed that the hand which rose from the muck in the opening sequence had 6 fingers!
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@HeartlandLiberal:
You know the genre blending was due to the odds and ends left in the property room.
WaterGirl
All these memories… I loved Fury, too. Sky King, also. Flash Gordon. We never ever ever got to watch TV at the dinner table, with one exception. Batman! We had a little portable TV in the kitchen and my sisters and I got to watch Batman during dinner. Such a thrill. My parents owned a tavern (we lived upstairs) and we got to stay up as late as we wanted on Friday and Saturday nights, so we watched a lot of TV.
A big deal to me was that Al capon lived in the apartment building next door. There was a little slip of paper with his name right by the doorbell. I’m sure it was the famous Al Capone, and please don’t try to spoil that for me. I did live in the closest suburb to Chicago, right next door to Cicero, so I’m sure it was him.
We lived across the street from a movie theater, and on Saturday afternoons we would go and watch every movie that was playing until it was dinnertime.
Bill
Back when I was in middle school (early 80’s), a local TV station would run “scary movies” in the afternoon for a week or two during the summer. It became a thing in my neighborhood for kids to gather at someone’s house and watch. Most of them were Vincent Price type shlock horror, that we could easily laugh off. Then one day we watch “Bad Ronald,” which apparently was a 70’s era made for TV movie.
Basic plot: Ronald was a weird loner kid, who lived alone with his mom. One day while being picked on by a neighborhood girl, he pushed her, she fell, broke her neck and she died. Mom, fearing that the police would take Ronald away, shut him in an interior bathroom in their house and bricked up the door. Mom then promptly died, leaving Bad Ronald living inside the walls of a house bought by another family. Bad things ensue.
I don’t think I slept for a week. And I thought about that damn movie very time I moved in to a new place my whole life.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071186/
ThresherK
I was a weird tot who destroyed normal demographics with my consumption of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, and the Jim Hutton / David Wayne “Ellery Queen Show”.
kdaug
@maurinsky: ah, Zoom. I can still sing the theme. And 02134 has got to be the only zip code seared permanently in my brain
Ruckus
@raven:
That looks more like a wall of death than a board track. Wall of death for those that don’t know is a cylinder 20-30 ft high, 50-75 feet in dia that people would ride motorcycles in. On the vertical walls. As I understand it not all that dangerous as long as the engine kept running. Looks dangerous as hell though.
Raven, I did find that picture and it is a wall of death.
This is board track. And it was very dangerous.
Johnnybuck
@Bill: Bad Ronald was awesome!
delk
@raven: I live in what was once skid row. Now it’s all expensive lofts. We bought 12 years ago when the area was still iffy. Doubt we could afford to buy these days, lol.
Three things changed the ‘hood. Oprah opened her studio there, Michael Jordan, and the ’96 Democratic Convention. Daley wanted a nice ‘clean’ drive down Madison Ave so all the remaining flop houses were torn down.
catclub
@Esme’s Mom: Maybe so. Was Killer Shrews out by 1970?
Thanks! That sounds likely.
Bill
@RandomMonster: I wanted one so badly when I was very young. My father objected to his boy getting one (which is weird for him, he’s quite progressive), but my mother won the argument.
I burned myself on the bulb so many damn time.
NotMax
@Mike J
Have always liked the opening theme of Journey to the Unknown.
Brachiator
When I was a kid growing up in Texas I watched “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” I thought I was really cool because I caught the wordplay of stuff like the college name, “Whatsamatta U.” I kinda got that the team’s adversary, Boris Badenov, was a takeoff on Russian villains, because Cold War.
Some years later, I was in a branch library, reading about real literature. I startled everybody when I guffawed out loud when I came across the name of a work by Alexander Pushkin, “Boris Gudunov.”
Nobody had every splained it to me before. Delayed action, multi-level pun.
Culture of Truth
There was a time period (a few years) when we had no television, no radio, almost no movies, etc. I ran around the fields and read a lot. As a result I was a bit ignorant of pop culture later. Also I now find cable and internet all the more amazing.
gogol's wife
@patrick II:
If you liked “Sky King,” you have to read the description in Bill Bryson, Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. You’ll weep with laughter.
All boomers from the Midwest have to read the Thunderbolt Kid.
WaterGirl
Does anyone remember Garfield Goose? Anyone remember The Storyteller, or something like that? I remember the guy being dressed kind of like Robn Hood with pointy shoes and he would read stories with Greensleeves (no words) playing in the background.
NotMax
@ThresherK
Also watched and enjoyed the Ellery Queen show.
A bit earlier, but was hooked on both Checkmate and The Defenders.
gogol's wife
@Randy P:
I once watched (?) that movie while having a bad attack of the stomach flu. It turned me off cats for quite a while. Luckily that passed. I think Michael Sarrazin is in it. It’s scary.
dexwood
The local teen dance show in the movie Hairspray is based on the Buddy Dean show in Baltimore during the early 6os. My cousin, who was also a neighbor, and her best friend, also a neighbor, were semi-regulars on the show dancing to the tunes. They hung out at my house a lot because my mother was fucking cool. They taught me to dance which gave a 13 year old boy attending CYO dances in 1965 confidence on the dance floor and made me popular with the girls. They were the same pair who let me tag along to see some up and coming lads from Liverpool when they appeared at the Baltimore Civic Center in September of 1964.
Just One More Canuck
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: we used to watch the Flintstones dubbed into French
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Mustang Bobby:
Peter Graves was his stage nsme. Though he was James “Matt Dillon” Arness’ brother. Arness was a stunt man who got his big break playing The Thing in Howard Hawks cold war paranoia film.
M. Bouffant
@Ruckus: I’m sure I’m on plenty of lists. Not, however, in a paranoid way, justthe not-being-off-the-grid-so-it’s-inevitable way.
NotMax
@Bill
Was fascinated with The Visible Man toy, but always rebuffed when requested it as a present.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@The Golux:
I think Smith and Dench can both do “plain” very well. Elaine May? Hmmmm.
The Todal always seemed to me like a more sinister version of Bartholomew Cubbins’ Oobleck. Or Silly Putty gone bad.
gogol's wife
@lgerard:
No, it’s Eye of the Cat (1969), with Michael Sarrazin and Gayle Hunnicutt.
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
Oh, God, I loved that thing.
delk
@WaterGirl: Frazier Thomas and Garfield Goose.
Hot dogs, hamburgers, spaghetti and meatballs!
gogol's wife
@JPL:
Where the hell is Bystander, he remembers what that’s called. Winky Dink, I think.
beltane
This was a Manhattan-only thing, but in the 1980s one of the public access channels was dedicated to poorly produced DYI porn shows late at night, with the bulk of the advertisements coming from various escort services. There was one guy called George who hosted an all-nude talk show for many years. It was all so skeevy that us young folks rarely watched any of it.
Steeplejack (phone)
@patrick II:
Lola Albright, “How High the Moon.”
Loved the music on Peter Gunn. Even the incidental background music was very West Coast bebop cool. The show was in rotation on one of the retro TV channels recently, but not now, I don’t think.
delk
@gogol’s wife: I worked for Interand, the company that invented the telestrator. The owner was inspired by that show.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@oz29:
A few years ago I was at the RCMP museum in Regina and impressed the hell out of our docent by singing the theme music to “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” Apparently they didn’t get all that many visitors old enough to remember :-)
gogol's wife
@AliceBlue:
Remember the one about the little girl who was an heiress so all her relatives were trying to kill her off?
raven
@WaterGirl: One of his machine gunners lived in Villa Park when my dad was a kid.
WaterGirl
@delk: Oh, no, I forgot about Captain Kangaroo. WGN had the best after school shows.
Mwangangi
Didn’t really start forming memories until 1977 so I remember 70s Sesame Street. I also remember Star Wars and Jaws because my parents liked the drive-in and would position the car (hatchback) so I could see a movie that I wanted while they could watch what they wanted. I want to say the Saturday morning line up from 1978 – 1984 was spectacular. One of my favorite afternoon stretches was 1982 on either WWOR or WPIX with the afternoon monster flicks, the Three Stooges, then Tom & Jerry, then Scooby-Doo. That was before Hasbro took over my 9 – 11 year-old brain with Transformers and Gi-Joe.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
in the 60s in small town ND, there were only two (black and white stations) – and one was from Winnipeg, mostly showed wrestling –
BUT: We got Tom Jones. My first Crush, I tell ya, the guy STILL does it for me. Blatant sexuality and a gorgeous open baritone – what’s not to love?
Also, though, we got Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. . And I get scared at scary movies. (still, to this day) And I STILL remember the nightmares after the episode about the Sin-Eater – anybody remember that one?
And I just looked it up – the actors were Richard Thomas and Geraldine Page! And it aired in 1972 – when I was 18 and too OLD to be as petrified as i was!
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack (phone): If anyone notices Peter Gunn showing up anywhere… netflix, oldies channels etc please let us know.
JPL
@gogol’s wife: Winky Dinky and You Thanks. I wonder how many little ones got in trouble for drawing on the TV. Surely I can’t be the only one.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Peale:
HA! I was in the hospital as a kid and the boy from Fury stopped by to visit sick kids. I used to have a “signed” photo of him & the horse. I also got to meet “Sky King” and remember being much more impressed with him.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@delk:
Kukla, Fran and fuckin’ OLLIE!
Culture of Truth
@Bill: I’ve only read your description, and now I’m going to have nightmares.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
Winky Dink and You.
There was also another long running drawing show hosted by John Gnagy.
@beltane
You may be thinking of Robin Byrd, who hosted the nude talk show.
Ugly George would take cameras around Manhattan and inveigle women into showing their breasts.
gogol's wife
@JPL:
Yeah, you can’t always have saran wrap at hand, for God’s sake!
gogol's wife
@WaterGirl:
Peter Gunn was the shiznit, as they say around here.
This is an amazing thread, too bad I have to go eat dinner now. And no Winky Dink tonight, just the Grammys, which I would not normally watch, but there’s supposed to be a live number from Hamilton on it.
M. Bouffant
@Brachiator: That ain’t all w/ Jay Ward.
Peale
Driving home in the mucky snowstorm today I was sliding all over whenever I came to an intersection. I had a difficult time accelerating from standstill, which made me love all those stoplight halfway up the hills. As much as I miss my Subaru on days like this, I wouldn’t trade my current front wheel drive car for anything we had growing up. The ford fairlaine, the Grenada, the omni and the rambler. My parents always drive cars that were a decade older than me.
I do remember the hassle of the rear wheel drive cars. Putting bags of salt or sand in them on days like today. I remember my mom parking one of those cars on a ramp in the garage so that we could Run a space heater in the morning as the accelerator would freeze to “petal to the metal” mode if we didn’t.
I’m wondering what the advantage was for real wheel drive cars that they made so many of them. It seemed like such a hassle to own one when it snowed. There’s no way that ford fairlaine would be able to handle this slush without chains or snow tires and 100 pounds of sand. Was the whole point of making a rear wheel drive to force the consumer to buy special tires?
When the country goes driverless soon, I wonder at what point your car will decide that it’s stuck or that it’s too unsafe to drive. Fog and rain aren’t a big problem since the car won’t technically need to see. But I wonder if these driverless vehicles will be designed out in California in Silicon Valley and never learn to drive in winter weather. Will your car decide that it is stuck? Pull over and apologize for being too powerless against six inches of snow? Blame the rider for ordering it out in a blizzard and refuse to budge? The driverless car might be worse than the ford fairlaine for this kind of weather.
Robert Sneddon
Anyone here remember a TV series, “Champion the Wonder Horse”? It was a Lassie-type story if that helps. I can still remember the first part of the title tune. I presume it was American but I’m not sure.
There were a lot of animal-sidekick TV shows broadcast on British TV back in the late 50s and early 60s, usually of US origin. The Empire did strike back with the Australian “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo” which was like “Champion…” but with a wallaby (not actually a kangaroo but…) as the generic kid-rescuer and crook-thwarter. Unfortunately I’ve also got that show’s opening title song embedded in my memory even after all these years. I once stunned GRRM by singing it to him in a late-night/early-morning bar session at an American convention.
Mark McManus, the actor who went on in later life to start in the cop crime series “Taggart” emigrated to Australia as a kid and became a child actor. He got some appearances on Skippy and he later recounted his first meeting with the star of the show, being driven up to the only tree in an area of the outback. Under the tree’s shade was a canvas sack filled with a wriggling Skippy.
It turns out wallabies are not very smart and not very trainable but luckily they all look alike and they’re cheap. The Skippy that jumped off the back of the villain’s speeding truck was not necessarily the one that was filmed landing safely on the dirt road after a camera cut, a bit like the General Lee car in “The Dukes of Hazzard”. This led to the show being famous for the phrase “One Trick Skippy”.
oz29
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: I saw it during the 80s, but evidently nobody else did. My sisters say they never saw any such show. You’re the only other person I’ve ever come across who remembers it.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Gin & Tonic:
I know it was around as late as 1977 here is the ad for it. Double Dark Prior was originally from Schmitts, in St. Paul, MN but they have been dead and gone since at least 77, the name has been sold a million times. I am surprised nobody has reintroduced it.
Seanly
@Roger Moore:
Well, and the only way they could do Batman at that time was an intentionally campy kids’ show. I was wound pretty tight as a kid.
In my sophomore dorm in college, there was a guy who was a huge comic book fan (turned me on to Alan Moore’s stuff). His favorite was Batman – when I talked about my dislike of the TV show, he discussed about the intentionally campy aspects, etc, etc.
Different thought – in the early 70’s my dad would make this tuna & rice casserole. He also always watched CBS Evening News. I guess it was made a lot as I always smelled the casserole when I heard Walter Cronkite’s voice.
Joel
I used to watch a show called Kidd Video back in the day.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@raven:
When we were in Chicago last fall for family reunion, my cousin and I drove to Western & Belmont just to pay tribute. Nothing left now that you would ever know was Riverview — it’s all stores and shopping and shit. But some of my best childhood memories are from there. Also Brookfield Zoo.
seaboogie
@WaterGirl:
My first cat (who lived to be 24) used to sit next to us to watch Captain Kangaroo – only show she really dug, but dig it she did.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Lemont quarry? Santa Fe Speedway? Toboggan Run at Palos? Peabody’s Tomb?
Esme's Mom
@catclub: 1959 – a great year for supershlock. Giant from the Unknown (1958) was another. Spanish conquistador falls asleep for 400 years, wakes up and terrorizes Big Bear Lake. Pretty freakin disturbing then, and now.
“On an isolated island, a small group of people are terrorized by giant voracious shrews in the midst of a hurricane.”
Bill
@Culture of Truth: Welcome to the club.
joel hanes
I’m wondering what the advantage was for real wheel drive cars that they made so many of them.
Mechanically simpler because of separation of steering and driving power.
In a rear-drive front-steer car, the front wheels just roll on bearings and
the rear wheels are fixed to the end of a non-pivoting shaft.
Any kid with an Erector set can devise and build such a design.
In a front-wheel-drive car, the designer must figure out how to conduct drive power through a pivot joint.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@RandomMonster:
My folks had no such inhibitions. I had to save my own money (who eles ran around the neighborhood collecting empty pop bottles for 2 cents?) from birthdays etc and buy it myself. But I got bored with it very fast as it was extremely limited & my my ran a catering business so I was cooking at real ovens at an early age. I remember getting a grease burn from frying bacon for my breakfast at age 5.
raven
Palos Hills Tobbagan Run.
lurker dean
@beltane: wonderama – wow, thats a show I haven’t thought of in decades!
JPL
@gogol’s wife: haha.. I was four… I can remember wax paper before I remember saran wrap.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@tybee:
COOL!
They used to run those old horror movies after midnight & in summers I would stay up and watch them. I was obsessed with Werewolf & Dracula and Creature. In retrospect they were not great movies but as a kid it was great. I even build model kits of all of them.
@M. Bouffant: YEAH! Those kits. It was Revell
beltane
@NotMax: You are right! The Robyn Bird show and Ugly George.
joel hanes
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
We had a “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie at the County Fair” kids’ record.
IIRC, it was a 78.
delk
@raven: We went every year. My mom would always wait at the bottom with a thermos of hot chocolate. It’s been closed for a while.
Roger Moore
@Peale:
A big one is that they’re mechanically simpler. The front wheels have to turn when you steer, and a mechanical linkage that can handle that and handle the power from the engine is inherently harder to design and less robust than one that splits up the two tasks. There’s also the flip side of the front wheel drive car’s advantage of having the weight of the engine over the driving wheels, which is that rear wheel drive has more even weight balance between front and rear, which is supposed to help handling.
M. Bouffant
@WaterGirl: I hope this doesn’t get you binge-ing, but hulu has all 114 episodes. Free!!
lgerard
@seaboogie:
Captain Kangaroo lived in the town I grew up in
On Halloween he would hire rent-a-cops to protect his house from the harmless vandalism we enjoyed participating in so much.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@HeartlandLiberal:
You know the genre blending was due to the odds and ends left in the property room.@Brachiator:
If you remember the old Underdog cartoon, the villain was Simon Bar Sinister. In heraldry, a bar sinister on a coat of arms indicates bastardy in the lineage. Thus, many years later I learned that villain’s name was Simon Bastard.
lgerard
@WaterGirl:
many episodes can be downloaded from you tube
raven
@delk: Yea, I haven’t been since 1965! Cool that you went.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Beany and Cecil!
raven
@NotMax: The Thea Thick The Therpant!
Bill
@beltane: I grew up a bit north of the city, but my father worked in Manhattan. I remember staying in town at a friend of my father’s for a weekend once in the mid 80’s and finding nude talk shows and porn on public access. I was simply amazed, as back home we had to resort to watching a scrambled Playboy channel and hoping to catch a glimpse of a very wavy boob.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@cmorenc:
Gawd! I had forgotten about Ruff and Reddy! The only thing I remember right now was the theme song line “Get set get ready Here Comes Ruff and Ready – something something they’re something and steady”
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@raven:
Your memory for specifics is much better than mine. But, like your dad, I also got stuck on the Ferris wheel for a scary while, although not for anything like two hours (maybe, at a stretch, 15-20 minutes).
delk
@raven: There was another one in the Dan Ryan Woods on south Western Avenue. Wasn’t as big.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Whoo hoo!
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@JPL:
Wax paper? Oh yeah, me too.
Do you remember oil cloth?
M. Bouffant
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Ah-ha. I
builtpainted & glued an Aurora Superman kit, easy to confuse.I s’pose The Kidz Today just make CGI models on their devil-boxes instead of sniffing glue & getting paint all over?
raven
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: The quest for Peabody’s Tomb
raven
@delk: Nice
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@WaterGirl:
There is an episode or two on the Internet Archive.
There is some 50s – 60’s TV there.
Yancy Derringer, Sheena Queen of the jungle, etc.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hillary Rettig: Dark Shadows was on right after General Hospital, which my grandmother watched. I watched as well so as not to miss a moment of Dark Shadows, which was both scary and thrilling to a young me. During my undergrad, soaps were in fashion will college kids (WTF? even then to me) and I was held in high esteem for my superior General Hospital historical knowledge.
Ascap_scab
My parents divorced when I was ten. As a reward,to myself, I skipped school for a month to watch the Cubs on Superstation WGN. It was great ’til dad got my report card showing I only attended on the days the Cubs didn’t play.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: White Tiger has oil cloth on the outside tables.
Brachiator
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: My favorite was when Rocky and Bullwinkle were looking for the fabulously jeweled Ruby Yacht of Omar Kayamm.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@raven:
I know, it’s hardly even a story, but one of my clearest memories. I was in a car with my sister (I think — might have been my mom) but I was just at the age when I was beginning to be a little bit interested in boys, and I remember wishing that I had gotten stuck up there with Chuckie Zimmerman from school :-)
lgerard
There was a daytime program on one of the NYC local stations back in the late 50s, early 60s. It was an Italian couple…the woman in the kitchen making food, the man in the living room singing operatic arias.
I have been trying to find out who these people were for years.
i have no idea why I want to know this.
raven
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: Yancy and Pahoo! Bad ass sawed off shotgun under his cape!
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Ruckus:
We got a TV about 57 or 58 and the old radio made its way into my room. I spent a lot of late summer nights pulling in stations from around the country. It taught me real rock & roll, not Pat Boone bullhockey.
FIrst TV show I remember was George Gobel. Anyone remember him?
raven
@lgerard: Scorcese has a film called “My Voyage to Italy” where he discusses watching and Italian TV staion in NYC with his Sicilian grandparents who spoke no english.
Bill Arnold
@beltane:
That was Ugly George probably. I saw him on the street once. Also saw the skateboard guy-with-no-legs, once. Manhattan was and still is an odd place.
Edit: NotMax says the nude talk show guy was Robin Byrd. I honestly don’t recall because there was no cable at home.
Three-nineteen
I know I’m way too late on this thread for this, but I’m going to anyway:
Fair is fair!
Roger Moore
@jake the antisoshul soshulist:
Actually there is no such thing as a bar sinister. A bar is, as its name implies, a horizontal band across the shield. It is left/right symmetrical and thus can’t exist as a dexter (right) or sinister (left) form. The thing that’s supposed to indicate bastardy is a bend (diagonal stripe) sinister, i.e. a diagonal stripe going from the upper left to lower right. Note, though, that dexter and sinister are defined from the view of the person carrying the shield, so a bend sinister starts at the upper right from the point of view of somebody looking at the coat of arms./pedant
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@seaboogie:
LUNCH WITH CASEY? Are you from the Twin Cities? WTCN 11!
You have to remember Clancy the Cop if you are from around St. Paul/Minneapolis. But the king, the original and by far the best was Axle and his Treehouse.
Birdy with the yellow bill,
hopped upon my window sill
cocked a shiny I and said
– various puns – like
What did you do with the light bulb? SOCKET?
Scott Alloway
@Peale: Watched Fury as a kid in Connecticut. 1960 or so.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Heh. I was an expert on Another World in the late ’60s-early ’70s. I was a late-blooming college student and planned my class schedule around AN‘s broadcast times. It was my totally guilty secret. Don’t think I ever confessed it to my husband.
Fifteen years, one divorce, three cities, and two careers later, I moved to Atlanta to live with my dad. He had spent the past decade taking care of his elderly aunt (lung cancer), mother (God knows what, she was Christian Scientist), and wife (Alzheimer’s). For years, his only reprieve from all this sadness and sickness was to smoke a joint every afternoon and watch Another World. It was a long time before either of us discovered the other’s secret TV vice :-)
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@raven:
Whoa, cool! I love oil cloth! Will really have to make a pilgrimage to Athens one of these mornings.
Gin & Tonic
@Ruckus: They ride bicycles on board tracks. It’s called a velodrome; it’s an Olympic sport.
Trinity
One of my very favorite movies growing up was “The Pirate Movie”. I’m not sure if anyone but me remembers it. I watched it on Youtube a couple of year ago and I still remember the words to every.single.song.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Stanback headache powder? Speaking of wax paper…
beltane
@Bill Arnold: I remember the skateboard guy without legs very well. He was a regular on the east side IRT.
Gin & Tonic
@lgerard:
Babylon, huh?
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Brachiator:
I credit Rocky & Bullwinkle for giving me a life-long love of bad puns & awful jokes. In High school I wrote a spy agency story sort of like Man From Uncle full of the worse stuff – “Please come in and take a chair” “No,I don’t want one, they don’t match my decor.” Had things worked out better people would be talking about “The Man From Auntie” instead of “Airplane” which was derivative of my earlier work.
A Ghost To Most
@Robert Sneddon:
I had never heard the term,thanks. In our family,in similar situations (e.g. another red shirt kicks it), we say ‘You’re gonna need another Timmy’ from the TV series ‘Dinosaurs’.
lgerard
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
that’s hilarious
I have a little secret…I love old radio soap operas (complete with swelling organ music and soap commercials)…One Man’s Family, The Story of Aunt Mary, Kay Fairchild, Stepmother. etc
I stream them through a speaker on my nightstand and they put me right to sleep
Steeplejack (phone)
@Brachiator:
And the Kurward Derby, a magical hat. For some reason Durward Kirby, the co-host of Candid Camera, threatened to sue. Go figure.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@lgerard:
I’m a member of an opera discussion group on FB, and I’ve just posed your question. If anyone knows the answer, it’s that bunch of opera fanatics!!
NotMax
@Schlemazel
Was a big fan of ol’ Lonesome George and his low-key delivery with pitch perfect comic timing.
lgerard
@Gin & Tonic:
yes
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
Well I’ll be a dirty bird! Of course I do!
AliceBlue
@gogol’s wife:
I remember that one. And there was one about a woman who had a painting of a skeleton, and the skeleton would periodically leave the painting and kill people.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Of course.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
Lonesome George Gobel. Of course.
Peale
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: one summer in the mid 80s all the kids in my high school went nuts for Days of Our lives and Another World. Bo, Hope, Patch and Kim from the one soap and Some caper involving Fellicia, Lilly, Cass, an evil twin Vicki and Wallingford. I think everyone on Another World was kidnapped that summer. Jackee and Linda Dano were so much fun.
lgerard
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
that would be amazing
watching it is one of my earliest memories and I have never been able to find anything about it despite a few tries at researching old schedules
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@lgerard:
Oh, cool way to drift off! I tend to listen to audiobook CDs of favourite classic murder mysteries. Similar principle, I imagine.
NotMax
@Robert Sneddon
The Adventures of Champion.
Different concept, but Brit kids, of course, were subjected to Blue Peter (name still makes me giggle).
Gin & Tonic
@lgerard: IIRC, his house was really close to Argyle Park, just on the south side of Montauk Highway.
Chat Noir
@Karen: I remember Zoom too!
Kathleen
@joel hanes: Oh my gosh! I had totally forgotten about Lois Lenski. I remember her name but I don’t remember any of her book titles. I, too, read about Clara Barton, and Jane Addams, and Juliette Lowe. Could not get enough of those books.
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
On the No Bikini Atoll.
Kathleen
@NotMax: Yes!!! Both of those shows!!!
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack (phone):
To this day, it’s really Boris Badenov, not Boris Godunov, and it’s Kerwood Derby, not Durward Kirby, that are the REAL names for me.
NotMax
@Igegard
Not technically a soap opera, but am a big fan of Vic and Sade.
Would often dip into the positively surreal. Quite a shame that literally thousands of episodes (most ran only 10 or 15 minutes) are lost.
At one point so popular that it ran at different times on multiple radio networks.
gogol's wife
God, Taylor Swift is really vacuous, isn’t she
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Stanback? Never took it, but I certainly remember it.
How about some old commercial jingles? Anyone remember this?:
(To the tune of the Merry Widow Waltz):
Or this:
lgerard
@Gin & Tonic:
yeah it was on the corner, but set back off of Montauk Highway a bit
Kathleen
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): They’re tough, but steady. Always rough and ready. They sometimes have their little spats. Even fight like dogs and cats. But when they need each other tha\t’s when they’re rough and ready!!!!!
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@NotMax: @Steeplejack (phone): @SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
I remember thinking he was hilarious but I don’t remember why. I think a lot of it had to do with his pauses & expression.
I remember some friends of my grandparents saw his act in Vegas around 1960 & were horrified that he told “off color” jokes. I had no idea what that meant but they were shocked that that nice man would do that.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Kathleen:
I can sing that now! Thanks! Nobody wants to hear that
Kathleen
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I think we had this discussion before but I think you listened to my Dad on KDWB in St. Paul in the early to mid 60’s. The Professor James Francis Patrick O’Neill. His sign off was “Don’t take any nickel nickels and see you out there”.
Kathleen
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Of course we do!!! And I can’t believe I remembered the words to that. I can’t remember my name half the time.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Kathleen:
Oh gawd I forgot that! Yes! I even met him one time when my dad was running for County Commissioner. He was very kind to a starry eyed kid
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
You’ll wonder where the yellow went
When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent
Remember Bucky Beaver for Ipana?
Brush-a, brush-a, b rush-a
Here’s the new Ipana
With the brand new flavor
It’s dandy for your tee-ee-eth
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
Velodromes are smooth wood. Board tracks were just sawed lumber. Splinters would be thrown up and hit the riders, who were unprotected by full face helmets, gloves, thick leather clothes, etc. They were also nailed down and the nails were not always below the main surface. The tires were not nearly up to the task. The speeds were also higher, 100mph was not uncommon on the board tracks, velodrome speed is considerably slower, even today. Now velodromes of those days were not much better as were the bicycles/tires they used. But the speed made a huge difference. For both the participants and the spectators.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@NotMax:
You know, I was almost going to post both of these in my comment above, but thought it might turn into a tl;dr post. But yeah, I remember words and tunes to both.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@NotMax:
You’ll wonder where the yellow went
when you brush your teeth with Pepsident!
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Brylcreem
A little dab’ll do ya
Brylcreem
You’ll look so debonaire
Brylcreem
The gals’ll all pursue ya
They’ll love to run their fingers through your hair
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Shredded Ralston for your breakfast
Starts the day off shining bright
Gives you lots of cowboy energy
With a flavor that’s just right
It’s delicious and nutritious
Bite size and ready to eat
Take a tip from Tom
Go and tell your mom
Shredded Ralston can’t be beat.
NotMax
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
You’ll wonder where the rancor went
When you vote for Baud for president
:)
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@NotMax:
From the Land of Sky-Blue Waters (Waters)
From the land of pines, lofty balsams
Comes the beer refreshing — Hamm’s, the beer refreshing (BA-da-dum-dum).
Kathleen
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Awww. Yeah, he was a nice guy. And very involved with the DFL. Don’t know if you remember when Tom Byrne ran for mayor. I was a “Byrne Girl”, and we dressed up in red dresses and sang at DFL events (a friend of mine wrote parody about George Vavoulis to “Downtown”. I played guitar and we all sang. It was a blast. Also worked for Joseph Karth.
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: And the Bear! The Hamm’s Bear!
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
“I want my Maypo!”
(Vile tasting goop.)
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Kathleen:
Yes!
@NotMax:
Yes!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: My grandmother took it, shaking the powder into her mouth and then chasing it with water.
A jungle from my childhood was
Doublemint gum; two mints in one. or was it “two, two, two mints in one” – not a clue.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Kathleen:
What’ll you have? Pabst Blue Ribbon!
What’ll you have? Pabst Blue Ribbon!
What’ll you have? Pabst Blue Ribbon!
Pabst Blue Ribbon beer!
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Knock on any Norge
Knock on any Norge
Hear that sound of qual-i-ty
Knock on any Norge
Local to Philadelphia market:
Oh, there’s something about a Muntz TV
Poplar 9- oh three oh three
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@NotMax:
When the values go up, up, up,
And the prices go down, down, down,
Robert Hall this season
Will show you the reason:
Low overhead, low overhead.
dlwchico
When I was a kid I knew that ‘adult movies’ had something to do with people running around naked so I thought ‘adult communities’ were places where adults ran around naked all the time, doing naked adult things.
I was disappointed to find out later that they were really mostly just trailer parks for old people :(
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Yes!
Always aired during lesser tier programs or on independent channels.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Yeah, I think it was “Two, two, two mints in one.” There was also the related Doublemint campaign, “Double your pleasure, Double your fun, With Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint gum.”
Fun fact: The twin models for one of the Doublemint campaigns were Randroids. One of them ended up marrying Ayn Rand’s acolyte Nathaniel Branden (after he very messily broke off his affair, ugh, with Rand). I knew both twins, Leisha and Patrecia, very slightly in New York in the late ’60s. Patrecia, the one who married Branden, sadly drowned in their private swimming pool in California years later. Supposedly she had an epileptic attack, or her meds misfired, or something.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@NotMax:
Hmm, don’t think I ever heard either of those.
J R in WV
My Dad worked a second shift all his life, editor of a morning newspaper that went to press around midnight. So my Mom wanted to be awake when he was, and so napped a lot and stayed up late a lot.
One night I tiptoed into the den where they were watching a late night SciFi movie while they talked. I barely remember this whole event as I was quite young, and it was over 50 years ago. I hid behind the big easy chair and peeked about it to see the TV.
The movie was classic invasion by evil hostile aliens, who flew in clam-shell looking space ships, and shot energy beams that caused either explosions or opened up the earth to allow lava to spew all over the landscape. The flying saucers may have even opened up like clams do, and have had lava-hot interiors… it was a long time ago, and I was barely awake.
I have no idea what the name was, who made it, anything. I remember Dad carrying me back to my bed, so I expect I fell back asleep while snooping on the grown-ups one late night.
Anyone have any clue what movie was out in the 1950s with flying saucers attacking earth with energy beams? That one scene with the saucer attack is all I remember about the whole thing. And getting carried back to the bedroom.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Also too,
(kettle drum: boom, boom)
Sooner or later
You’ll own General
NotMax
@>a href=”https://balloon-juice.com/2016/02/15/filling-some-column-space/#comment-5666672″>SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
Re-creation
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
The wife is from Southern Iowa & they would vacation in Northern MN. She said she always knew they were getting close when they started seeing the Hamm’s bear. I grew up about a mile from the brewery. I hated when they were malting, it stunk! On hot, humid summer nights when the wind was from the South you could get the stockyards & Hamms, truly a loverly aroma
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Didn’t Schlitz Beer have a commercial with a bass voice singing “Schlitz Beer”?
tybee
some great stories/memories.
and for the soap opera fans, remember mary hartman, mary hartman?
ed_finnerty
@Hillary Rettig: late (really late) to the thread but “the hands of borgis reames” really got to me
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Do you remember pop beads? I got my pop beads at Robert Hall. When I was 8 my dad took me to the radio station and I recorded a promo for the station. My payment was pop beads from Robert Hall.
Shana
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I think the “two, two, two mints in one” was Certs, not Doublemint gum.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Kathleen:
Could be! Despite my quoting from memory both the Hamm’s and PBR jingles, I’m not really an expert on beer commercials.
(Although the heavenly yodeling strains of “Busch Bavarian Beer….” are now floating through my eardrums.)
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Kathleen:
Crap! We probably met. Dad had worked with Joe Karth before he was a Congressman & they were life-long friends.
My first campaign I was 5 years old & it was Karth of Congress. It might have been his first election.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Kathleen:
OH MAN, pop beads!! I had them in every pastel colour you could even imagine!! I loved them!
My grandmother was a buyer at a locally-owned department store, so we were discouraged from patronizing any other dry goods emporium. The one exception was Marshall Field & Co., but even so, we were not allowed to enter Gilmore’s (where my grandmother worked) with a shopping bag from Field’s or any other competitor.
So anyhow, my pop beads came from Gilmore’s :-)
NotMax
@JR in WV
The lava wasn’t a part of it, but to a young child’s eye some scenes might have seemed lava-like.
So guessing it was The War of the Worlds.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Shana:
Oh, you’re right! Certs, of course.
Original Lee
My parents were very odd about what they let us watch, so I have very vivid memories of Julia Child, Lawrence Welk, and Masterpiece Theater, but also Roy Rogers, The Electric Company, and Zoom! They thought Batman was too violent, but they let us watch Zorro, The Three Stooges and Hogan’s Heroes. Wide World of Sports was a staple, as were Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Animal Kingdom, General Hospital and All My Children. WGN used to show black-and-white movies around Cubs home games, and I remember being terrified by The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. That, and the “It May Look Like a Walnut” episode of the Dick Van Dyke show, were the TV experiences that gave me nightmares.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Kathleen:
You must have been to a few of the corn feeds at Highland Park I bet.
My Dad was friends with Vavolous & I think he voted for him but we had a Byrne sign in our front yard, dad was DFL & Union all the way & would never have publicly disagreed.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Original Lee:
I was an adult, pretty much, by the time the DVD Show aired, and wasn’t watching a lot of network TV in those years, but have seen every episode multiple times on cable reruns. “It May Look Like a Walnut” was and remains one of the scariest and cleverest episodes ever. There’s something about the way Danny Thomas rolls his eyes and bares his teeth and walks robotically that creeps me out every time I see it. Fantastic writing and acting. I really need to get the entire series on DVD.
Edit: Heh. DVD on DVD.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Hmm.
I think I was five when, in a spectacular demonstration of the lack of judgment five-year-olds have, I climbed on the back of a neighbor kid’s bike for a ride, got a foot caught in the spokes, and was flung across the front yard.
I escaped with some bruises and a sprained ankle. To keep me sitting while I healed, my mother gave me one of my birthday presents early: a castle playset complete with a little royal family and a few guards and horses.
I promptly pulled out everything I already had that was even close to the proper scale and besieged the castle with my game-token army.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Shana: Oh, of course. As SD,AS recalled correctly gum was
Double your pleasure double your fun…
Lynn Dee
@Peale:
I remember Fury. I would’ve watched it in either California or Washington state.
Tom
@WaterGirl: Last I saw Peter Gunn was on Hulu (US) – Just checked and it’s still there.
KS in MA
@The Golux: Oh, gosh, my parents loved “The 13 Clocks,” and of course so did we kids.
KS in MA
@gogol’s wife: Yep, Winky Dink. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Sent off for the magic film and everything.
bemused senior
I remember listening to the radio Saturday mornings sitting under the table where the radio sat — Big John and Sparkey (theme song, Teddy Bears’ Picnic), The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers. I think it must have been 1951 or 1952. We got a TV in 1953 but there were few stations. In 1956 we moved to Yokota AFB in Japan, and the only TV show in English was I Love Lucy with Japanese subtitles. Otherwise, Noh dramas, Sumo wrestling. When we returned stateside in 1959 all my sisters and I wanted was to watch TV.
ShadeTail
My first nine years, we lived in Modesto CA, where George Lucas was born. His sister lived in our neighborhood, and he occasionally showed up “incognito” as it were to visit her.
mohagan
@Matt McIrvin: I remember when I was in 6th grade (early 60s) a local station showed the reruns of the original Mickey Mouse Club in the afternoon after school and I too was a faithful watcher. And on weekends, the local station showed Shirley Temple movies and other classics from the 30s. The cartoons I really loved was Rocky and his Friends. I still remember the shock I got in high school when my history class was studying Russian history and I learned there had been a Tsar named Boris Godunov (so I finally got the joke about Boris Badenov)
mohagan
@The Golux: I loved The Thirteen Clocks, also The Wonderful O, but I especially loved Many Moons.
mohagan
@joel hanes: I read all those biographies also. Probably what got me started on bios and memoirs and non-fiction in general. And Landmark Books! The Story of the Secret Service, the Story of the Alamo, … must be why I almost ended up as a Reference Librarian. I actually ended up as a computer programmer, but only after I went to Library School and then couldn’t find a job in a library in the mid 70s .
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: I watched it during the Bob McAllister years. It was still three hours long! Similar format to the Bozo the Clown show, only longer and with a magician instead of a clown.
mr_gravity
Quick Draw McGraw? I believe he was a contemporary of Yogi Bear. Had a sidekick named Baba Looey. Also featured a character called Deputy Dawg who did a wicked Joe Lieberman impersonation.