Many of them became colloquialisms of our culture, such as,
“Well, they’re not exactly Ozzie and Harriet”, meaning someone is less than
perfect, nice, innocent, naïve, and so wholesome it was almost hard to
take. Others became folklore and have lived
on in some form or another, such as “Superman”.
Some provided land marks in the world of entertainment, such as the Ed
Sullivan show which probably launched too many careers to count, rivaling only
American Bandstand with Dick Clark.
I am certain that it would be next to impossible to find a
young person today who would think any of our programs were entertaining. If you strapped them to a chair and forced
them to watch a black and white episode of Lassie, I am pretty sure they would
essentially feel tortured. Why did we
think our programs were the best thing on earth, memorizing every day and time
slot to be sure not to miss anything?
Why did we have three TV stations which ended broadcasting at 11:30, and
so many shows we wanted to watch, that we had to be reminded to do our homework
and play outside?
In our shows, there was no violence, no sex, no action
beyond someone riding a galloping horse, no bad language, no sarcastic humor,
no stupidity, an hour at most of world news, no live coverage, and, no reality TV!!!
To a certain extent, the tranquility and goodness portrayed
by the families we loved to watch, was very much a reflection of our own lives:
traditional family structures, dads going to work, moms at home baking and
cleaning, and kids getting into occasional mischief. I think there was one program, Father Knows
Best, where there was no mother, because she died. Teenagers were in angst as to whether they
could go to the malt shop, trying to get a boy’s attention. People danced, people cooked, and siblings
got into minor conflicts. Girls watched
to get hints on what was fashionable to wear, and wished they could fix their
hair so they would be as pretty as Shelley Fabere or Annette Funicello. We raced in the door after school to watch American
Bandstand, keep up on our teen idols, and learn how to dance.
On the other hand, there were times when this steady diet of
perfect living could become confusing.
If your family was not perfect, (and whose was, even then), a young mind
might start to feel badly or even embarrassed of their family. If a mom yelled at her kids, instead of
serving cookies and lemonade, that was a disappointment. More seriously, if dad came home drunk,
instead of smiling and talking about his day at the office, there was no way to
know if anyone else had a dad that did that.
These TV families were a high standard to aspire to, but at least they
were something to aspire to.
The worst part of it all was that after a steady diet of
watching smiling moms and warm consoling dads, and our peers languishing in a
nirvana of going to school where it was easy to get good grades, only to return
home and have fun with their parents, friends, and pets, with never a blip on
the screen, along came the sixties. And
while TV life progressed somewhat, it did not come close to the changes in our
real lives.
We became teenagers, and everything didn’t come easy. We had a hard time staying on the honor roll,
sometimes friends got angry with us, and worst of all, our puppy love crushes
were not always reciprocated. Our
parents were not always smiling, especially if we came in past curfew, or found
out we had snuck a beer or cigarette the night before. Inside ourselves, we felt worried,
disappointed, and sometimes anxious and confused.
And no wonder!
Between 1962 and 1969, it felt that the world had spun off
its axis. Beloved public figures like
John F Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King were gunned down. We were hearing terrible reports of what was
going on in Viet Nam
It gradually invaded our consciousness, that the peaceful
existence of Opie, the Beave, and Ricky and David, was left somewhere behind in
those big square boxes we sat in front of every night in a trance.
And I started to realize that while Donna Reed had always
done her vacuuming in a perfectly crisp, cotton shirt-waist dress, perfectly
coifed hairdo, pearls around her neck and smiling, I don’t think I ever saw my
mother doing that. (Furthermore, in
looking back over my life, I have to tell you, I have never worn pearls while
vacuuming, not once.)
The sixties collided with our adolescence.
It was time to figure things out.
