Classic TV

This morning at the general store, five of us sat around a pot belly woodstove, folks like me, in their late 60s and early 70s, talking about old shows that were playing on cable and digital subchannels. I was embarrassed when they asked me which shows I liked to watch. I said that I didn't use television, worked in TV and had enough of it. I didn't want to explain that I saw every camera angle, every lighting set-up, every dolly move, cut, continuity error and stunt double, and knew that the voices were looped in post, mixed with sound effects, music, and idiotic laugh tracks on unfunny punchlines.

Surprisingly, plain folks in Missouri had excellent taste in classic TV. They talked about Perry Mason, Rockford, Rawhide, and Have Gun Will Travel -- shows and characters that influenced me deeply. It was generally agreed that the Waltons were cloying and unreal, Bonanza best when they gave Hoss a comic encounter with leprechans. I explained that the entire series including the Cartwright house exteriors and gunfights were filmed on sound stages, but the fire chief was convinced that a real log house existed. He had seen a newspaper report that said it had been sold. I shrugged politely, knew that it was a replica Bonanza tourist trap in Lake Tahoe that went out of business.

They remembered Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room, Gunsmoke, The Wonderful World of Disney in color. I thought of Sherri North and Lamb Chop (Kukla, Fran and Ollie) and a Chicago series that was carried in Milwaukee when I was very small, Ding Dong School. Miss Frances rang a big brass bell in her hand and taught us about baking cookies, cleaning up the bowl. I was a sucker for The Muppets as a young adult, preferred it to Monty Python's Flying Circus. Brits made horrible television, except for astoundingly gorgeous Diana Rigg in The Avengers and oddly realistic mechanical special effects in Thunderbirds.

TV was a shared culture that transcended time and space, never forgotten, and they were glad that much of it is still being broadcast on channels called Cosy TV and others that I forgot on my way back to the barn with a little sack of balogna and bread, an onion and cigarettes. Not a very healthy diet, but it might be a long while before I get another royalty check. The last time I watched TV in a hotel room, I burst into tears because BYU-TV played Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and I saw it first frame to last. There are no such films today. Wholesomeness and innocence have been discarded.

My friends at the general store were worried about what would happen when the Democrats took over -- not just the House, but the Senate and President in 2020 or 2024, which seemed inevitable, angry people with an agenda to destroy the peaceful, prosperous simple life that everyone cherished. John Kennedy was mentioned as an example of a conservative leader who cut taxes and forced the Russians to remove their missiles from Cuba, the last time that a Democrat did something right and good and paid for it with his life. All of us remembered as schoolchildren the day John Kennedy was killed, merged in time with happy memories of Lassie, McCloud and Columbo.

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