Thursday, September 07, 2006

Thanks to Jenna...

I was reading Jenna’s Blog today and Wow, what a punch to the old nostalgia button!!!

Sure I remember Sesame Street! And I remember The Electric Company and The Muppet Show--the grumpy old guys in the the opera seats were my favorite along with A N I M A L!.

My 13 inch, black and white (well, not all of it... but a good portion), cable-free childhood was not so much "You can't do that on Television" as it was a show called ZOOM on PBS, ...
Box three Five Oh, Boston, MASS, 0-2-1--3-4... Send it to ZOOM! ...
That was their sign-off jingle where you could Mail letters to the show; That address will stick with me forever. They did cool things like show you how to build a boat out of sticks and and plastic trash bags, or how to make a tripod bike... all kinds of stuff like you'd find in Mother Earth Magazine, but for kids. Greatest show ever.

Come to think, though, those episodes of Fraggle Rock I was able to catch on HBO over at Grandma's house were as influential as any public television show that I can remember. Dun dun! Down At Fraggle Rock!

I also remember evening shows like "That's Incredible!" and "Real People" that were these spin offs of "Candid Camera" style shows. And HEE HAW! There's nothing like Hee Haw.
Well, I searched the world over and thought I found true love, YOU met another and THBBBB! you were gone!

Thn there were Flipper, Skippy, Gentle Ben, Airwolf, Knight Rider, MASH, All in the Family, Buck Rogers and the 25th Century, BJ and the Bear, CHiPS, the Dukes of Hazzard, Simon and Simon, 21 Jump Street, Fantasy Island, Hardcastle and McCormick, Incredible Hulk, MacGyver, Quantum Leap, Magnum PI, Newhart... Some real favorites here.

And how about Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom! Dun dun dun, Da--Da, Dun dun dun dun, da-da, da-da, da-da-DA! Does anyone even remember Mutual of Omaha?

Then there was the not-so-good side: with only three channels on the TV, sometimes you got stuck with yuckie stuff like The Lawerence Welk Show or Donnie and Marie Osmond. Sunday mornings didn't have Cartoons, only church, or politics, or news about farms and plants.

But Saturday mornings?!? Now that's pure nostalgia... Fog Horn Leg Horn, Peppy Le Pew, Porky Pig, Felix the Cat, Mr. Magoo, HeMan, The Flinstones... Every Saturday morning from 6am until noon... cartoons. Ah, the good old days.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You forgot to include The Beverly Hillbillies and the rather odd Benny Hill show you used to watch.
Humm-that could explain quite a lot of things now.
Hee Hee
Mom