Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts

Friday, May 31, 2019

How to create middle-age stranglers

May 30, 1966.

Buddhist monks were setting themselves alight as the war in Vietnam intensified apace. Surveyor 1 headed for the first soft lunar landing of an unmanned American spacecraft. The Klan was being the Klan in Denham Springs, La. -- which meant that Denham Springs was just being Denham Springs.

And "A WOWIE ZOWIE ZING-A-LING SWING-A-LING THING" had just hit Baton Rouge. The Teen-Age Rattler apparently was "the new fun sensation sweeping the nation."

The reaction to this, no doubt, from every person old enough in 1966 to have spawned a teenager was "Oh, joy." Note the lack of an exclamation point.

THE TEEN-AGE RATTLER was billed as being some sort of bad-complexioned, ill-tempered, bastard child of a hula hoop and maracas.

The "bad-complexioned, ill-tempered and bastard child" parts of the description are solely mine.

I gotta tell you that, as a 5-year-old kid in Baton Rouge on Memorial Day 1966, I would have loved this shit. My parents, not so much.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

For just a measly extra buck, you could buy a 45 single of the original Teen-Age Rattler song, "as recorded by the sensational Happy Four quartet." As opposed to the sensational Happy Four septet.
Considering that you could go down to the TG&Y dime store and buy a hot-off-the-record-press copy of the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" for something like six bits, I can't see the Happy Four's rattlin' wreck of a hack promotional song as much of a bargain.
THEN AGAIN, this is the 58-year-old me talking and not the 5-year-old me talking. On the other hand, the 5-year-old me had his share of Beatles' records. Until July 1966, that is.
July was the month John Lennon's "we're more popular than Jesus" interview hit the States, and Mama busted up my Beatles records. It was Louisiana; she was far from alone. Apparently, cracking up commie records from Limey purveyors of beatnik music was less inconvenient than actually attending worship services.

Not that I'm still bitter or shit.

BUT BACK to May 1966 and the Teen-Age Rattler.

At the time, the Teen-Age Rattler made no impression on the pre-kindergarten me whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I'd never heard of the things until . . . well . . . today.

My best guess is that the "Rattle in the morning . . . rattle at night . . . rattle anytime . . . it's dynamite!" sensation was a sensation in the same vein Donald Trump is sentient -- hardly.

After all, there DID come to be a Generation X. That could not have happened had the "greatest generation" quite understandably been driven to cut short the rattling lives of their rattling teen offspring.

Now let us speak no more of this. We wouldn't want to give rogue youth social-media "influencers" any ideas.

Friday, August 03, 2018

Look, it's everybody's mama at Winn an' Dixie!


Well, this looks like just about everybody's mama makin' groceries when I was a young'un.

(Midwestern translation: "This is amazingly close to how nearly everyone's mother looked when they were grocery shopping when I was a child.")

Add some curlers to the hair of that lady on the right, stick a cigarette in the mouth of that lady on the left, maybe add some cat-eye spectacles to that lady in the middle . . . and you'll be knowing that your butt is so gonna get whipped when you get home if you don't BEHAVE RIGHT NOW!

Welcome to domestic life in Baton Rouge, July 29, 1968.

And you just wait until your daddy gets home.

Friday, January 12, 2018

Monday will never be the same


NOTE: This first ran in March 2009. It's running again because the man who was a big part of the life of just about every kid in Baton Rouge, La., for 35 years -- three generations of kids in some families --  died Wednesday.

It's just as well that I don't start from scratch. For one thing, I don't think I'd express myself any better now -- I said what I had to say.

For another thing, I'd be writing through tears. That just takes too damned long, frankly.

If you didn't grow up where, and when, I grew up, this story from The Advocate might give you some idea of how big a deal was "Buckskin Bill" Black:
One of Baton Rouge’s most beloved figures, William “Bill” Black, known to most as “Buckskin” Bill,” died Wednesday, according to family members.

For decades, Black appeared daily on WAFB-TV in his cowboy character, charming generations of children with his homespun, good natured presence. His children's shows, "Storyland" aired in the morning and "The Buckskin Bill Show" aired in the afternoon on the television station Monday through Friday from 1955 to 1988. At the time, it held the national record for the longest-running children's show. It shifted to a Saturday morning only show, but was canceled a year later. He retired from the station in 1990.

Black reentered the public eye in 1994 when he was elected to the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board as part of a school reform initiative, replacing most of the sitting board member. Representing the Broadmoor area, Black remained on the board until 2010.

Ed Elkins, master control operator at WAFB, remembers moving from New Orleans to Baton Rouge in 1977 to work on Black’s TV show as a cameraman and later doing audio. Elkins said he knew nothing about the legend of “Buckskin Bill,” but learned quickly. When they met other people, “I would be invisible,” he recalled.

“(Black) was the star of Baton Rouge. He was the man,” Elkins said. “Just think how many children that have grown up to be icons of the community that watched his show.”

Donna Britt, WAFB’s anchor, came to the TV station in 1981 and had a similar experience.

“He was an icon from the word go,” Britt recalled. “He carried himself with dignity. He seemed to know everyone in the world.”

A family member told WAFB that Black died after getting an infection in the wake of partial hip replacement surgery that he had after breaking his hip in November. His wife, Elma, died April 5. Black is survived by a son and two daughters.

Black’s granddaughter Megan Musso said the family is still making funeral arrangements for Black.

Though Black’s show went off the air before she was born, Musso grew up with stories of her pawpaw and watching VHS tapes of his performances, but she said he never boasted about himself.

“I had lots of teachers who would ask me to do school reports on him because they admired him so much,” said Musso. “Even though I knew how much he meant to the community, he was still just my pawpaw.”

Musso, daughter of Black’s youngest child, Ginger Musso, said Black was a true performer even with his grandkids and she grew up playing the game, “Hully Gully,” before she even knew where it came from on Black’s TV show.

What will she miss? Musso offers a quick list: “His stories, his jokes. He would sing very well. And his laugh.”
ONE MORE THING. I added the above video, from Buckskin Bill's later days on "big, booming, powerful Channel 9" because it just captures what Buckskin Bill meant to all of us Baton Rouge kids . . . kids of all ages.

As Buckskin starts his trademark Monday Morning March, we see him joined in the studio by parents and their children -- a mama and a daddy who no doubt marched in front of a big black-and-white television in their living room years before. And now here they were with The Man himself, passing down a legacy of televised love to a new generation.

At the end of every show, he'd would sign off with a little advice: "You're never completely dressed until you put on a smile."

This early morning, I'm sitting here half naked as I write through my tears. Damn.
 

*  *  *


I know it's not Monday morning, and Lord knows I'm not a kid anymore. But sometimes you wish it were, and you were, because you'd like to do the Monday Morning March just one more time.

See, if you're of a certain age, and if you grew up anywhere reached by "big, booming, powerful Channel 9" in Baton Rouge, La., you most certainly grew up watching Buckskin Bill.

"Buckskin" was Bill Black,
and he did his kiddie show for something like 35 years until he got canceled in 1990. For most of those years, Black donned his buckskins twice a day -- in the morning for the little kids on Storyland and then after school for the older kids with The Buckskin Bill Show.

IT WAS A Baton Rouge rite of passage for a kid to go before the WAFB-TV cameras -- to actually share the stage with Buckskin! -- on his birthday, with a Scout troop, or in a line of kids doing the "Elephant Walk."

I'm sure no one today would be particularly impressed with a never-ending loop of Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk" for a soundtrack as legions of kids filed by a barrel, dropping in their saved-up pennies to buy a pair of elephants for the city's brand-new zoo. Ah, but they forget that magic is made of equal parts simplicity and cheesiness. Yes, it is.

For his first 15 years on the air, getting a zoo for the underachieving Southern city was Buckskin's cause célèbre. For years, he signed off the Buckskin Bill Show with "Remember . . . Baton Rouge needs a zoo!"

A few miles away, the competition on Channel 2, Count Macabre, would spoof this by saying "Remember, boys and girls, Baton Rouge is a zoo!" Both statements were demonstrably true.

Anyway, my turn on the Buckskin Bill Show came in March 1965. It was my fourth birthday. I brought a bottle of Bayer aspirin for Amazon relief.
 

BUCKSKIN sat me on his lap and started to ask some basic toddler-level questions. The cameras were huge. The lights were bright. I was silent.

My mother was crouched on the studio floor whispering "He's four!" Buckskin, no doubt, was wondering "Who is this woman?"

Why should the fambly be the only ones scratching their heads?

I never did say a bloody word, and Buckskin sent me on my ignominious way -- the redneck equivalent of a dumbstruck Ralphie being dispatched down the Santa slide some decades later in A Christmas Story. On the other hand, he bought us all Coca-Colas after the show.

Even preschool humiliation went better with Coca-Cola. And Holsum Bread.

Why am I writing this? Beats me. I was just thinking about Buckskin Bill -- again -- and how it's sad local television doesn't bother to make magic and memories anymore. Who does?

So there you go, the wistful musings of a middle-aged Southern boy . . . and some vintage video of the Monday Morning March from sometime near my arrival on planet Earth. It seems to me that, during a time when we fear our many crises will overwhelm us, we all need us some Monday Morning March.

Even if it is Wednesday.

Oh . . . one more thing. "Remember, you're never completely dressed until you put on a smile."


Thursday, January 09, 2014

Because Satan never sleeps


This is horrible.

This is sick.

This is so not safe for work.

This is so, so very wrong -- depraved. No, depraved doesn't quite cover it. There are no words strong enough to denounce what's been done here.

But it is what it is. The Omaha Police Officers Association has reposted a Facebook video from a local "thug" that basically shows how to raise your kid to be a gangsta. This is part of a grand racist plot by the Man to keep the people down and portray every black male as a public menace -- obviously!  

Somebody cap they ass!

RACISM. Hate. That must be it. What else could it be? Snark Upper Middle-Class White Hipsters Like Gawker said. And so did some African-American pundits and groups, finding that condemning some Omaha cops who illuminated the cultural cancer at the heart of the black underclass -- specifically, the criminal black underclass -- was a much better use of their time and energy than actually doing something about the cultural cancer at the heart of the black underclass.

This is because it would be hasty to assume that a diaper-clad toddler who is called a bitch, a "ho" and a pussy, is told "Fuck you!" and "Suck my dick!" then learns to parrot the same for the camera -- with an extra added middle-finger gesture thrown in -- will grow up to be highly dysfunctional, and probably criminally so. It's always hasty to assume the obvious.

Just because you're raised to be a foul-mouthed, moronic thug is no indicator that you might turn out to be a foul-mouthed, moronic thug. The "logical outcome" is a racist construct unjustly propagated by the Omaha Police Officers Association to keep the black man down.

Oh, no! We must not insist that two plus two equals four! For shame!


LISTEN, Omaha cops' hands aren't clean in the world of local race relations. That's been well documented over the years. Nevertheless, a battalion of Bull Connors could not oppress African-Americans as effectively as the toxic culture that's turned inner cities into war zones, too many men into monsters, too many fathers into vanishing acts and too many mothers into "baby mamas."

And the critical mass of deformed human beings produced by that culture already has cast aspersions upon every black male in America -- already has stereotyped a whole race long before the Omaha police union supposedly got around to it. Ignoring the asteroid that just wiped out the 'hood won't undo the smoking crater in the middle of town.

The black underclass won't magically turn into the black middle class if we just avert our gaze. You can't treat an illness if you cannot acknowledge its existence. You cannot address a problem which must not be named.


Sometimes, the obvious is what it is. And sometimes, that what we can't acknowledge is a problem may or may not ultimately be white people's historical fault is, at this point, rather beside the point.


Besides, toxic cultures aren't race-specific. If we ignore this "canary in the coal mine," we all will achieve the perfect equality that exists in oblivion.
Soon.



UPDATE: Child Protective Services found the kid, found the human excrement "raising" him . . . and came down like a ton of bricks. They've taken the toddler and three other children into protective custody. 

Obviously, this is because Nebraskans are racist hicks unable to embrace the proper theology, geometry and ideology of their moral betters at Gawker Media.

Thursday, August 01, 2013

Heaven had 12 channels and no snow


When you're rummaging through your childhood home, and your family's life, you find things.

You have absolutely no idea why they were saved, but you're amazed and happy that they were.

Cable television came to Baton Rouge, but not all of Baton Rouge, in 1975. Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy lived in north Baton Rouge -- this was '75, so that would have been pre-apocalyptic north Baton Rouge -- and working-class north Baton Rouge had Cablevision, while my working-class east-central Baton Rouge environs . . . didn't.

Obviously, north Baton Rouge was something just shy of the Beatific Vision some 38 years ago, because you could get 12 channels on your TV there with no static at all. Bless them . . . no static at all.

Cablevision was amazing. So amazing that I begged this Dec. 20-26, 1975, edition of Cablecast off my aunt and uncle. And I saved it. And almost four decades later, it turned up in a forgotten box on a dirty shelf in a blazing-hot utility building in the back yard.

NOW, almost four decades later, I'm sitting here thinking, "We were ape over 12 lousy channels, and none of them were Turner Classic Movies or ESPN?" Of course, in 1975, there wouldn't be an ESPN for another four years, but that's not important now.

Then again, if you lived in Baton Rouge in 1970, you had your Channel 2 and you had your Channel 9. One was NBC, the other CBS and they divided up what anybody wanted from ABC.

We got Channel 33 -- and ABC full time -- in October 1971.

And we finally got public television in 1975, about the time we got cable TV. Yeah, getting 12 channels was a big frickin' deal.



SUCH A big deal, I'm sure the very prospect made News Scene on Channel 9.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

The things you save

Mama never threw out anything. At least not much more than garbage and old coffee grounds.
Now she's going to be 90, she fell and broke her hip and she can't live in the house in Red Oaks anymore. Mama's seen better days and, frankly, so has Red Oaks, which has the misfortune to lie north of Florida Boulevard and east of Eden in my hometown of Baton Rouge.

Week before last, my wife and I made a frenzied trip back South to see Mama in the hospital and take care of a few years' worth of loose ends. All in six days.

Part of the process that will hit almost every middle-aged child of someone in God's good time is disposing of a life -- a life that's over, or a life that's merely transitioning to a phase where your home is no longer your own, and neither are your choices. What you rarely realize until it's slapping you in the face . . . over and over and over again, that is when it's not punching you in the gut . . . is that you're disposing of your own life, too.
YOU, in the course of a week, frantically rummage through your childhood home, through all the stuff that Mama never threw out and, ultimately, through your memories both blessed and cursed. You rummage through your childhood, grabbing the precious things to take home as one grabs what's most precious as they flee a burning house, and you say goodbye.
Goodbye to all your old stuff -- yet again. Goodbye to the home of your childhood. Goodbye to your childhood. I'm home again, but Thomas Wolfe was right, or at least mostly right.
“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
IT'S JUST as well, I reckon. But just the same, I'll hang on to these relics, second class, of one of my earliest Christmases, 'round about 1962. I'll hang onto Fred and Dino and the Flintstone Flivver. (Ninety-eight cents, cheap!)
It was a yabba dabba doo time. A dabba doo time. It was a gay old time.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Red Roses for a Blue Christmas


Holy Stocking Full of D Cells and Oranges, Batman!

I think I have acquired the Mother of All Baby Boomer Christmas Albums.

If you remember the 1960s -- and I remember almost all of 'em -- put this record on and suddenly it's Christmas morning, you're 6 years old, in your pajamas and tearing into what Santa Claus left for you under the tree.

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

July 13, 1950: Ricky is 5


Today is July 13, 1950. It's a Thursday.

And you're just in time for Ricky's birthday party. C'mon in! All his little friends are already here.

Of course, you know that Ricky's actual birthday was last week, but the family was in Kansas City, so here we are. Make sure you say something for the record Mom and Dad are making.

Yeah, they've already been fooling around with the disc recorder -- something tells me not every kid's birthday-party record starts with "Les Toreadors" from
Carmen. Ricky should get a chuckle out of that in 20 or 30 years. Can you imagine? 1980.

Make sure you enunciate for the microphone, though. Janet already got fussed at for being a mushmouth, poor kid. But you should have heard Ricky singing "Jesus Loves Me." He kind of mangled the lyrics, but it was just the cutest thing ever.



OH, YES. Put a microphone in Mom's hand and she launches into her cabaret act -- "I Don't Care If the Sun Don't Shine" this time.

Let's see, Aunt Donna and Aunt Helen are already here. And . . . ummmmmmm . . . Alice, Mildred . . . all the kids . . . there goes little Bobbie and Judy. And Danny, and Mary Lou . . . Cathy, Stevie, Diana, Jenny, Jackie, Baby . . . and Happy. Can't forget Happy.

Uh oh. Looks like the record is getting toward the end of the side. Get in there quick and say hello to Ricky. Maybe he'll be listening to you when he's old and retired someday --
way past the year 2000!

THAT IS, if the transcription disc doesn't get thrown in some box in the attic and end up getting sold at a garage sale or an estate sale in 60-something years. HELLO, FUTURE OMAHAN . . . WHOEVER YOU ARE! Ha ha!

Can you just picture that little 5-year-old Ricky when he's 66 or something?

I wonder what Omaha will be like then? I sure would like to live long enough to see Ricky's flying jet car
(click) jet car (click) jet car (click) jet car (click) jet car (click) jet. . . .

Thursday, November 10, 2011

I'll tell the man to turn the jukebox way down low

When I was back in the homeland, I took the opportunity to retrieve some old LPs from a hall closet in my childhood home, where for years they'd been sitting, absorbing the smell of cedar.
These are among the buttons on the jukebox of my musical formation -- eclectic selections that once spun on a 1948 Silvertone, that or a 1962 Magnavox. They spin still in my memory . . . and now on a couple of turntables in my Omaha studio.
There's a date on the back of this Jim Reeves album -- 6-9-1962. It seems to be in my mother's uneven hand. She was 12 years younger than I am now, and she lived in a different world. Different worlds, actually.
So did we all then.
THERE'S STILL a price tag from D.H. Holmes on it . . . several of them.

In 1962, D.H. Holmes department store --
D.H. Holmeses to Mama, Irene Reilly and half the people in south Louisiana -- was all that and a Dixie 45. D.H. Holmeses was where we bought our TV sets and records and other cool stuff . . . and, of course, your macaroons and tea cakes.

D.H. Holmeses ain't dere no more. The one on Canal in New Orleans now is a hotel, but Ignatius still waits under the clock in front for his mama. He's a good boy -- not at all like them "gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs and lesbians, all too well protected by graft" that New Orleans is so infamous for.

The big Holmeses in Baton Rouge -- our Holmeses, which still was little in relation to the big, old Holmeses some 80 miles south -- now is a ghost in the middle of what used to be the Bon Marché shopping center, which now is the Bon Carré bidness park.

And if you listen real hard, you can hear the new Jim Reeves album playing in the record department. Close by, Mr. Ruffino is selling a 21-inch Magnavox black-and-white console TV to my old man.

But not the color set. Color television is just a fad.

Might even be communiss. You never know nowadays.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Happiest calories in Omaha


This is Zesto in the Florence neighborhood of north Omaha.

This is the spot on North 30th Street where calories go to make people smile.

Burgers, fries, shakes and malts -- they're all here, and have been for decades. As have decades of kids in Florence.

And their parents, too.

Welcome to a lazy Memorial Day in Florence, just shy of sunset. There's a world of malteds, burgers and banana splits in a simple frame building with a big sign on top.

There's a world of memories in there, too. Whole worlds of them. Inside that Zesto -- more properly known as "Zesto's" -- is the history of the lost youth of the Baby Boom in North O.

And Generation X in North O.

In there lies the joys and fears, crushes and heartbreak of the Millennial generation in North O. At Zesto's also resides the head of one gentleman (above) who -- apparently -- just can't get enough of the place.

Every summer, we hear ESPN announcers singing the praises of the south Omaha Zesto's delicacies during College World Series broadcasts. In Florence, one finds the same good food and the same tasty shakes and malts . . . albeit with one big difference.


The North 30th Street Zesto's doesn't jack up the prices at the first crack of the CWS bat.


Some traditions never get televised, and they just have to rely on the neighborhood clientele. That and generations of memories. And the hearts and minds they inhabit -- hearts and minds forever young, eternally refreshed at a hot-fudge fountain of youth.

Somewhere, it's always 1965. And if you're in 1965 right now, and if you're in Florence, my future wife seems to have lost her new transistor radio somewhere between 25th and Whitmore and the Safeway on 30th.

If you find it, drop me a line. I'll get it back to her.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Simply '70s: The place to be


I lived in Baton Rouge in 1970. And Baton Rouge being Baton Rouge, we would not get a full-time ABC affiliate until the next October.

Therefore, I was robbed of at least one full season -- and probably more -- of classic Friday-night television goodness.
But I'm not bitter.

Much.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Don't try this at home



Boy, do I remember Great Shakes.

When I was a kid, I
loved Great Shakes. I loved to make Great Shakes.

Except this one time when I didn't put the lid on tight enough. You remember that creepy Tay Zonday viral video on YouTube a few years back?

That wasn't the original "Chocolate Rain."

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Change I could believe in


This is what I do when I'm sick with the flu and finally have gotten well enough to pull myself out of the big blue chair.

It's also what I do when I run across Obamacon.Me on the Paste magazine website.

We all want "change we can believe in." I'm just realistic enough to realize we probably won't get it at the hands of any politician -- even the president.

We just might get it if we had -- for a start -- more stuff on television like Buckskin Bill.

After all, "You're never completely dressed until you put on a smile."

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Wednesday morning Monday Morning March


I know it's not Monday morning, and Lord knows I'm not a kid anymore. But sometimes you wish it were, and you were, because you'd like to do the Monday Morning March just one more time.
See, if you're of a certain age, and if you grew up anywhere reached by "big, booming, powerful Channel 9" in Baton Rouge, La., you most certainly grew up watching Buckskin Bill.

"Buckskin" was Bill Black,
and he did his kiddie show for something like 35 years until he got canceled in 1990. For most of those years, Black donned his buckskins twice a day -- in the morning for the little kids on Storyland and then after school for the older kids with The Buckskin Bill Show.
IT WAS A Baton Rouge rite of passage for a kid to go before the WAFB-TV cameras -- to actually share the stage with Buckskin! -- on his birthday, with a Scout troop, or in a line of kids doing the "Elephant Walk."

I'm sure no one today would be particularly impressed with a never-ending loop of Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk" for a soundtrack as legions of kids filed by a barrel, dropping in their saved-up pennies to buy a pair of elephants for the city's brand-new zoo. Ah, but they forget that magic is made of equal parts simplicity and cheesiness. Yes, it is.

For his first 15 years on the air, getting a zoo for the underachieving Southern city was Buckskin's cause célèbre. For years, he signed off the Buckskin Bill Show with "Remember . . . Baton Rouge needs a zoo!"

A few miles away, the competition on Channel 2, Count Macabre, would spoof this by saying "Remember, boys and girls, Baton Rouge is a zoo!" Both statements were demonstrably true.

Anyway, my turn on the Buckskin Bill Show came in March 1965. It was my fourth birthday. I brought a bottle of Bayer aspirin for Amazon relief.

Buckskin sat me on his lap and started to ask some basic toddler-level questions. The cameras were huge. The lights were bright. I was silent.

My mother was crouched on the studio floor whispering "He's four!" Buckskin, no doubt, was wondering "Who is this woman?"

Why should the fambly be the only ones scratching their heads?

I never did say a bloody word, and Buckskin sent me on my ignominious way -- the redneck equivalent of a dumbstruck Ralphie being dispatched down the Santa slide some decades later in A Christmas Story. On the other hand, he bought us all Coca-Colas after the show.

Even preschool humiliation went better with Coca-Cola. And Holsum Bread.

Why am I writing this? Beats me. I was just thinking about Buckskin Bill -- again -- and how it's sad local television doesn't bother to make magic and memories anymore. Who does?

So there you go, the wistful musings of a middle-aged Southern boy . . . and some vintage video of the Monday Morning March from sometime near my arrival on planet Earth. It seems to me that, during a time when we fear our many crises will overwhelm us, we all need us some Monday Morning March.

Even if it is Wednesday.

Oh . . . one more thing. "Remember, you're never completely dressed until you put on a smile."

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Glimpses of humanity

Once upon a time -- at least for a kid growing up in the Deep South with Jim Crow as the crazy-angry, crazy-hateful uncle in the attic -- television actually had the power, and the moral imagination, to point to a way out of madness.

I KNOW this seems crazy by today's standards, but TV once offered glimpses of a better world beyond parochialism, segregation and hate. Everyone in the Treasure House was so happy, and Captain Kangaroo was the benevolent ruler of a make-believe place where moose could dance with bear, where Tom was always Terrific, and where Green Jeans always were in fashion.

And Fred could just be Fred -- sans apology and secure in his electronic blobitude.

Meanwhile, after dinner, the 21-inch Magnavox showed us "colored" nurses -- nurses?!? -- like Julia, cool spies like Bill Cosby and variety stars like "Flip" Wilson. In later years, the Sony portable in my bedroom would take me to places like Walt Whitman High School on Room 222, where integration wasn't a big deal at all. And who wouldn't want to have a teacher just like Pete Dixon.

Oh, right. Half of the class . . . and their parents . . . back in the Real World.

EVEN NOW, some four decades past, I still wish I could turn back the hands of Grandfather Clock and flee into the arms of the better angels of the Treasure House.