Monday, January 2, 2012

Thrilling TV Tales


Sometime in January 1954, homework finished and dinner over, my brother Dick & I settled down for our daily ration of TV. Often that meant the evening news but we didn't care. We were watching the one-eyed monster. That was all that mattered. We were hooked. The beginning of the TV generation. Since it was a school night, we had to go to bed way too early and in order to cut down on bathroom fist fights, Dick who was 18 months younger had to head upstairs a half hour before me. This had been a minor problem before Christmas when the TV arrived but in the week after school had started up again it reached a crisis. Dick staged a whine-in at the top of the stairs. The stairwell acted as a megaphone and filled the living room with the screech of a 9-year old's whine:  "IwannawatchTV IwannawatchTV IwannawatchTV IwannawatchTV IwannawatchTV IwannawatchTV..."

Finally, unable to ignore it any longer my father yelled, "Go to bed! There's nothing on but Eddie Fisher and he stinks!"
Immediately and without a pause, the whine changed to "I wanna watch Eddie Fisher stink..." We really didn't care what was on. We just wanted to watch it.

Through the even more addictive magic of the internet, you can watch Eddie Fisher stink too.
http://www.archive.org/details/CokeTime1953

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