Public Television Day is celebrated on April 7 because the first long-distance public TV broadcast was transmitted on that date in 1927.
The Howdy Doody Show & Clarabell the Clown, Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop, Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans, and the whole crew in the Mickey Mouse Club were great in black and white – but my brother Jeff and I wanted color television!
And we wanted Daddy to get an outdoor antenna, the little rabbit ears on top of the TV got too much static. I think my father succumbed to peer pressure, rather than his children's begging, and finally got an aluminum aerial.
Because color television sets were so expensive, Jeff and I convinced Dad to buy a film to stick on the TV screen; it made green grass, beige people, and blue sky – and everything blurry. And when the TV program showed a close-up of the star, the colors were hilarious!
My brother and I got to meet Cactus Vick, the TV host that showed all the Westerns we wanted to see. When Saturday morning programming didn't show the modern cartoons we loved (like Popeye The Sailor, Bugs Bunny, or Mighty Mouse), we settled for old re-runs of Laurel & Hardy, the Keystone Cops, and the Little Rascals.
Children’s fascination with the Superman TV show must have compelled thousands of kids to leap from rooftops and trees. Zorro was another favorite. A stick, a coat hanger, anything could be a sword. Everywhere we went, we would leave the Z for Zorro!
Uncle Clark owned Mathis Furniture down in Mansfield, Louisiana, and he had a state-of-the-art television. Once Daddy saw his brother's color TV, he had to have one too!
Our family watched Sing Along with Mitch and NBC Saturday Night at the Movies in living color – and loved it! If we didn’t go to church on Sunday afternoon, we watched the annual re-run of the Wizard of Oz or the weekly Wonderful World of Disney.
Like millions of other boys, I got a case of Davy Crockett fever. Mom bought me a real coon-skin hat for my 10th birthday so I could re-enact floating down a river, wrestling a bear, or the battle of the Alamo.
Comedy was king, and we would watch The Three Stooges, The Jerry Lewis Show, The Carol Burnett Show, or The Red Skelton Hour. The music on the Lawrence Welk Show was pretty corny but everyone liked the Ed Sullivan Show.
Mom would send us out of the room when a mature drama came on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre. And Peyton Place was totally out of the question for us kids.
I watched President Kennedy’s funeral on television with the rest of the world in 1963. And that was the beginning of the end of my childhood.
