One of our friendly neighbors (who is seldom in the neighborhood, but that is another story) send us an email which had information about Bob Hope. What a comedian he was. Today, a lot of young people unfortunately do not even know who he was. Probably a good thing that he is not performing now since he made funny without being a “potty” mouth. He would not be good for prime TV anymore, and would most likely have to make his money coming to The Villages where they appreciate real humor.
The article made me think of others who were around “back in the day”. I can remember our oldest son sitting in his high chair and just loving it when the Three Stooges came on. His main problem then was that the show would get interrupted by commercials, and he would start hollering “Three Stoogies, Three Stoogies”. We would tell him that it was just a commercial. So after a while when one came on, he would just shake his head and say “commercial”. We thought it was kind of funny that he was not even two yet and was worried about commercials. It is a good thing that he is not watching “The Three Stoogies” today with the amount of time that is given to commercials.
Now our youngest son was not concerned with the Stooges, but rather he loved Mr. Rogers as a child. Mr. Rogers was a Pittsburgh lad so obviously he had a head start in being good. He was also a war hero. Those of you who watched with your kids – or watched yourself may recall that he always wore a sweater. The reason for that was to cover his tattoos, which he felt were not appropriate for young kids. He was undoubtedly correct in that assumption. Naturally, it would not stop some performers today, but then you do not have a Mr. Rogers around anyhow – or a Captain Kangaroo!
I can go way back and even talk about my mother and early TV. When television really got going in the 50’s, we lived in Western Pennsylvania about half way between Pittsburgh and Cleveland as the crow flies. Thus by moving our antenna around we could pick up stations from both cities. In fact, we could even pick up a couple of UHF stations from Youngstown, OH. What this meant was that my mother could watch her favorite program, the Liberace Show on three different stations. They all carried Liberace, but at different times. Thus, we would be subject to the same show three different times during the week. That was definitely enough Liberace for any of us – except for my mom.
As for me, my favorite show of all time was the original “Star Trek”. I did not watch it three times a week though. Of course, I might have, if it had been on that often!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com
