TV, what’s that?!

We received a terrific Christmas gift from our younger son last week, inspired, as it turns out, by a blog post I wrote recently ( #8 on my 2022 blog post hit list): Figuring out how to lead our lives is rarely easy; I guess it isn’t meant to be. In this post I challenged the readers to ask their parents and grandparents about their lives while they have the chance, and this son took me up on the challenge. That was a gift in itself, but now he has put the ball back into our court; we have to answer the questions!

His gift was two small, thin books, with more blank pages than printing. In fact, what is printed is a series of all-over-the-map questions – prompts, really – with lots of room for our answers (well, not nearly enough room in some cases, but we can work around that).  Some of the questions are totally straightforward, others take lots and lots of thinking back, recollecting, and reflecting.  That part is really interesting in many ways.  Some reflections are profound, some are revealing, and most are lots of fun.

Our two books are just two of an extensive series called I Want to Hear Your Story (you can ask Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Boyfriends, etc., it’s an impressive list), found at http://www.hearyourstory.com.

We’ve barely scratched the surface in our two parallel books, but I thought you might enjoy our reaction to an early question that turned out to be lots of fun for us.

My husband started perusing his book before I did because there was this thing called “getting a turkey dinner ready” that held my attention on Christmas Day.  But he started laughed and called out the question he found amusing: On one of the starter pages with the heading “What happened the year you were born?” was the question “What were a few popular television shows?”  Sorry, folks, but there was no TV when he was born.  Actually, I just looked it up and there was no television available in homes when I was born either, but at least we had one by the time I was 5.  My husband, in Montreal at the time, didn’t have TV until his mid-teens.  From my Internet research of right now:

The number of television sets in use [in the U.S.] rose from 6,000 in 1946 [when I was born] to some 12 million by 1951.  No new invention entered American homes faster than black and white television sets; by 1955 half of all U.S. homes had one.

What’s really cool about this question is that, as completely inconsequential as it may seem, it speaks to why it is both interesting and important to ask these questions and hear people’s stories.  It helps us understand each generation better.  When he read that question to me I immediately flashed back to when I was 4, living in upstate New York, and a family down the street got a TV.  I was allowed to walk to Glennie’s house on my own to watch – everyone of my vintage will know what – Howdy Doody!  I can still remember the thrill.

For those of you who were born too late to enjoy Howdy Doody, here’s a sample. Click on Howdy to sing along (sorry about the brief ads at the start)! 

Last night – New Year’s Eve – 6 long-time friends gathered at our house to celebrate the end of a tough year and the blessing of strong friendships.  I explained about these books and we read out a few of the questions to give them a taste of the scope.  When I read out the question about what TV shows were popular when you were born, there was immediate laughter from everyone.  Between us we passed our early years in 3 different countries (U.S., UK, Canada), and  only one friend thought his family may had had a TV as early as 1947.  Clearly a family ahead of the pack!  And what this friend remembered was one show … Howdy Doody!  It’s Howdy Doody time …

One insightful response on hearing the question was, “they’d have been better off asking us what radio shows were popular.”  Funny, people our age recall these things and don’t think much about it, it is what it is.  Mind you, we’re the same people that marveled at our parents having lived through (aside from World Wars and a Depression) the advent of the radio and its ability to – for the first time – bring public voices into the home as the lucky families that could afford a (very large, static-filled) radio gathered around this new innovation.  We marveled at how they had seen automobiles actually be introduced and become commonplace, and then starting to fly on commercial airplanes and eventually travel as a regular occurrence.  But we don’t stop to think about all the changes we’ve seen.  I wonder if there’ll be any questions further on in our books about what computers we used when we were little! 😉

But I digress. To get back to the straightforward answers to the TV question, there were no popular TV shows when either of us were born because there was no TV!!  Most people listened to 15-30 minute series on the radio, and many of those radio “dramas” went on to become early TV series.  However, speaking for myself, we did get our own home TV when I was 5 and I remember lots of shows ( as well as radio shows).  Of course they were in black and white, and of course there was static and often you couldn’t bring a show in when you were anxious to see it because of weather or the antenna not being up to snuff.  But we loved our shows regardless.  That’s what TV was for us, so no problem.  No colour (colour TV sales didn’t overtake black and white TV sales in the U.S. until 1972), no cable, no streaming, no remotes, but no problem.

Some of the favourite TV shows I’ve enjoyed reminiscing about since considering this weighty topic (but, boy, are they ever lame when you look at YouTubes of them!):

• Howdy Doody
• Roy Rogers
• Hopalong Cassidy
• Lassie
• Leave it to Beaver
• Ozzie and Harriet (with their son Ricky Nelson before he became a famous singer cum teenage heartthrob)
• I Love Lucy
• Jackie Gleason
• The Ed Sullivan Show – Yes, the variety host who brought into our homes ventriloquists, dog acts, comedians, jugglers, and … Elvis, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles’ first intro to a U.S. audience.  Take a look at a very young Elvis’s introduction. 
• Mickey Mouse Club
• Gunsmoke
• and, of course, the show all us teenage girls flew home from school to watch, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, with our favourite pop groups singing and Dick’s audience of teenagers dancing. Ah, those were the days!

What about you, do you have favourite TV shows from your childhood?  Does thinking about them conjure up happy memories for you??