Thrilling TV Tales #2

My sons Tom and Bill are in their 40s now but in 1968-1969 they were precocious pre-schoolers. I worked long hours early in the week and finished up around Noon on Thursday. Their mother worked Thursday and Friday evenings and we had family days on Saturday and Sunday. It was a nice schedule for a couple of years. At some point the boys had become fans of Dark Shadows with a bit of a twist. In the show, just before Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins made an appearance, a certain theme music played. When the music started the boys hid behind the couch until he was off screen again. This was all explained to me the first Thursday after they became fans. 

Later that day, the boys were playing in the "toy room" and I was reading. Then it started, "Dad, can we watch Dark Shadows?" "No, you'll just hide behind the couch." "No, we'll watch, we promise." So, of course old Dad relented and turned on the TV. The boys sat on the couch and I sat back in my reading chair and the show started. 

The boys were acting a little nervous and I said, "You're going to hide!" They answered, "No, we promise." 

Things were fine for a few minutes until that music started. There was a rustling sound and before the 4th note there was the sound of two bodies hitting the floor. I looked around at the couch and they were gone. I don't think they ever did see Jonathan Frid. 

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

A Christmas Story

This is the city. Bangor, Maine. I live here. I'm a kid. December 24, 1953. 5pm. I was working the day watch out of the living room when a big white truck pulled up in front of the house. A tall man with sculpted bronze hair and glasses held together with what looked like a band-aid got out and opened the back.

"Swede's here," my mother said and my dad was out the front door like a flash. Together they wrestled a large box from the truck to the front porch where they peeled off all the cardboard and packing material revealing a beautiful Bendix Television Set about the size of a kitchen stove. Dad and 'Swede' Nelson eased the new TV through the front door and into a corner of the living room that had been cleared to make room. That explained why the Christmas Tree was not in it's usual corner this year.

The men tilted the case this way and that while my mother spun the legs on and finally there it sat. Huge, awesome, unbelievable. We finally had TV! Dad plugged it in and Swede played with the knobs in front until finally a ghostly, snow covered John Cameron Swaze appeared extolling the virtues of Camel Cigarettes.
Swede said, "We'll need to do some fine tuning," and stepped behind the TV. He fiddled with something back there and the picture magically cleared to (17" diagonal) glorious black & white and we could hear Swaze reading the news. Exciting stuff but the real  excitement was about to begin.

Swede called to my dad to join him behind the TV and showed him the rod that came out beside the picture tube and explained the fine tuning. Then he pointed to the back end of the picture tube and said, "Whatever you do, don't touch th...BAM! Swede slammed off the wall behind the TV and crumpled to the floor. Before anyone could react he shook his head and climbed unsteadily to his feet. Like Boston Blackie's fedora, Swede's sculpted bronze hair was undisturbed.  "I hate it when I do that. But that was why you never want to touch that." Dad said we would all learn from his experience and be careful. Dad & Swede retired to the kitchen (probably for some lemonade) and we all stared bug-eyed at the new one-eyed monster in the corner. All the wrapped gifts under the tree were totally forgotten.

Swede & dad came back into the living room and Swede reminded us that although there were channels 2-13 on the dial, we only had one channel in Bangor so we wouldn't have to change it. Dad walked Swede to the truck and then we all sat down to dinner, rushing to eat so we could go watch TV.

Finally we settled down and heard the famous "Dum-de-Dum-Dum" sound as Dragnet started. You can watch the very same episode here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls5GfZVJHXo

Get your kicks...

Early on a chilly Tuesday morning in October 1963, the 4th day of our adventure, my friend Jerry & I were woken by an Indiana State Trooper pounding on the window of Jerry's old Rambler station wagon.  He informed us that it was illegal to not bother anybody by sleeping in the car in a State Police parking lot along side US 40. We thanked him for the wake-up call and continued our Westward journey, crossing most of Illinois before the sun came up. At about 9 am we stopped for breakfast in East St. Louis, and in an hour we crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri. There, as we made our way through morning traffic in St. Louis, we came upon the famous Route 66. The next three days we got our kicks. Westward through Springfield and Joplin we rode through small towns and farmlands spotted with more fireworks stands than Jerry & I had ever seen. Somewhere along the way we found an all night gas station that let us park and sleep. And then we hit Kansas. Grazed it actually. Route 66 cut through the Southeast corner of Kansas and at 60 miles an hour we were through with just a fading memory of roadside sunflowers and a sign that said Galena. We headed Southwest across Oklahoma past Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and into Texas. It had been a hot and dry Summer everywhere and that area was burned brown. Cactus, scrub brush and oil wells were all that grew along the road. It wasn't long before the countryside started to sprout neon and sleazy looking bars & motels. We stopped in beautiful downtown Amarillo for the night. Sleazy or not, a shower and a real bed felt good.
Thursday morning we headed West into the mountains of New Mexico. We had Buffalo Burgers in Tucumcari and pushed on through Albequerque into Arizona to the Petrified Forest, Winslow and Flagstaff where we stopped for the night. Friday was a long, busy day that began at 5 am. We headed north to the Grand Canyon, about which I will only say, "No picture can capture it. You MUST see it." Way too soon we were back on Route 66 and crossing the Great Divide at 5 mph, pushing the poor old rambler over the crest. (No, I am not kidding.) Then we crossed the Hoover Dam (Incredible!) into Nevada. We stopped for gas and played our first one-armed bandits. The gas station had a dozen five-cent machines. I won 60 cents. It was getting dark as we crossed the Mojave desert through Barstow and into Bakersfield and the end of Route 66. One more night in the car and in the Saturday morning fog we headed North through the San Joaquin Valley lettuce fields to San Francisco. 48 years ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYApJtsyd0

...and More Pizza

In a previous lifetime, when I attended the University of Maine in Orono, I often visited a tavern/pizza joint in the town called Pat’s Pizza. Pat Farnsworth had originally opened a tavern there in the 30′s and it had evolved into a beer and pizza place for the nearby University. Back in those days, alcohol was forbidden on campus so everyone walked the mile or so to the town center and at some point during the evening would end up at Pat’s. The beer was cold, the pizza was hot and the music was loud. One of my fondest memories from that time is of my last beer at Pat’s. I was sitting downstairs in the Tap Room with 2-3 friends and about halfway through a beer when Pat came over to the table and whispered iin my ear, "Tommy, I know you are underaged. Put the beer down, get up and say goodnight to your friends and get out!" By the time I could have gone back, I lived in California.

I mention this because on the 1st, as we do once a month, Don & I went to Pat’s for a pizza. Pat has passed on, but his family keeps it going. The pizza is still the best and I suspect it is because it’s the same oven and the same pans from 50 years ago. Come to think of it, some of the waitresses may be the same too. Not so many students now in this age where University cafeterias have beer on draft, but lots of people my age who just can’t stop eating that pizza.

Pizza

When I was a kid there was no Pizza Hut, There was no Pizza-Roma. There was no Tri-City Pizza. There may have been pizza but NOT in Bangor, Maine. The idea wasn’t even alien. It simply didn’t cross anybody’s mind. One evening in 1949 that all changed.

We were all gathered in the living room after dinner, doing what ever we did before television. I was probably abusing my younger brother and Mom & Dad were reading. I’m sure Dad was engrossed in an adventure novel (10 cent paperback) and Mom was reading a magazine. (Family Circle, Woman’s Day or Good Housekeeping.)

There must have been a lull in the bullying of my brother because I remember my Mom ask Dad, “What are anchovies?” He glanced up from his book and said, “Little fish, like sardines.” Then Mom asked, “What is Mozzarella?” Dad answered, “It’s cheese, a soft cheese from Italy.” (Dad had been to Italy so he was an expert.) In another minute, Mom asked. “What is Marinara?” Dad answered without looking up from his book, “Tomato sauce, Italian style, with oregano.” “What’s oregano?” “It’s like pepper but leaves.” Quiet descended. In a few minutes, Mom got up and magazine in hand headed for the kitchen. Cooking sounds followed.

Mom came and went from the living room for an hour or so and finally yelled for me to help her in the kitchen. I helped carry 4 plates of something square and colorful to the living room and we all tried something Mom said was Pizza for the first time. It was an odd, but not unpleasant taste and we all made short work of it. She said, “I didn’t have everything in the recipe so I made some substitutions. The bread is just a regular bread dough stretched to fit a cookie sheet and flattened out. I didn’t have Marinara which Dad said was tomato sauce. I didn’t even have any tomato sauce in the cupboard so I used tomato paste and spread it over the bread, The only cheese I had was Velveeta so I used that instead of mozzarella. I’ve never even seen an anchovy so I used sardines. I just used black pepper instead of oregano. How did you like it?”

We loved it. And it became a regular item at our house. It was about another 10 years before I had what we call pizza today. It took a while to get used to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6-b7CONDI