Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Boob Tube Times

 


I’m grateful to have grown up in a time period when tv was so new, parents didn’t worry about what it might be doing to their kids. Granted, for me it also helped that I was mildly neglected by my mom and so was pretty much left to my own devices.

Captain Kangaroo had just hit the airwaves and I remember watching a few minutes of it every morning at my neighbor Rusty Shipe’s before we walked to Patrick Henry elementary school at the end of our block.

(Funny, Sesame Street was born just a year before my daughter was.)




Saturday mornings were magical – Mighty Mouse on his way to save the day, and Looney Tunes full of rascally rabbits and daffy ducks. I can still hear the sound effects for Gerald Mcboing boing. And I think even as a child I realized back then that Tom and Jerry cartoons were incredibly violent.

 





Over time, I’d probably also seen every episode there was of Roy Rogers (Happy Trails to You),






 



The Cisco Kid (Oh Poncho! Oh Cisco!), 

Superman (Is it a bird? Is it a plane?), and The Lone Ranger (Hi-yo, Silver. Away!).


 

I realize screen time is a real issue in today’s world, and even though Saturday afternoons usually found me playing outside for the rest of the day – you know, till the streetlights came on – I wouldn’t have given up my time on the living room floor with my sugar cereal for anything.

11 comments:

  1. Ok, so you are probably much too young to remember Bobby Benson and the BRB Riders and Sky King because those were radio on Saturday mornings in the early fifties.

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    1. My older sister used to recall radio shows but Sky King rings a bell.

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  2. We had a bunch of different shows, Rin-Tin-Tin and F-troop besides all the usual cartoons, I don't remember seeing Mighty Mouse, though we had Looney Tunes and Donald Duck, we also had Top Cat and Tweety Bird. "I tawt I saw a puddy tat"

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  3. We didn't get a television until late and I never developed the habit. Many of the shows you mention I don't think I have ever seen.

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  4. PS: And no sugar cereal either. Breakfast was at the table on weekends too.

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  5. I well remember going to the matinee and watching Flash Gordon and his cohorts. It started a lifelong love of science fiction.

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    1. Yes, I remember walking down to the neighborhood movie theater to see The Blob.

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  6. Some great memories here. I'm sure many people would have similar stories about TV in those days.

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  7. I agree -- I loved our Saturday morning programs as well. (For me it was "Super Friends," "Land of the Lost," "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters," "HR Pufnstuf" and "Shazam/Isis.") Even then, as you said, there came a time around 12:30 p.m. (after "Fat Albert") when it was time to go outside. Some kids today play video games nonstop, and I just couldn't do that.

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  8. Fury and Sky King and of course Lassie:)

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