Fred Alan, Carol Burnett, Wayne and Schuster…oh, my, there were so many! ‘You Bet Your Life’ who else could that be but Groucho. Bob Hope always thanked us for the memories. It almost sometimes feels like a couple years ago.
On our fourteen, seventeen and huge twenty-one inch TV’s Mel Blank who did all the amazing voices, everything from Bugs Bunny to perpetual thirty-nine year old Jack’s poor suffering violin teacher. Wow, with roof top antennas, sometimes we could pull in up to five channels that really gave us choices! It is rumored that children of today think of me as a prehistoric analog creature.
Do you remember watching Phil Silvers as Sargeant Bilko and Jack Webb, who played Dragnet’s Detective Joe Friday? How about that ‘Really big shoe’ every Sunday night on an Admiral, Westinghouse, Sylvania or Philco. Those were the days of the modern life style Swanson TV Dinners and three jawbreakers for one penny is all you had to pay.*
Can you imagine today if three jawbreakers cost a penny at the local convenience store? What would they do in Ottawa? Just a penny for the thought because I don’t make cents anymore at the mint!
Something else we should perhaps ponder about from a senior’s perspective. Why on one hand, a tube radio made in the 1930’s or a 1950’s transistor both today pull in radio stations perfectly right out of the air. Yet television sets made much later that depended on rabbit ears or aerials signals now pick up absolutely nothing unless they are connected to a cable service. . Some of our older cell phone working perfectly today apparently in a few months will also have their service cancelled necessitating the purchase of new, appropriate and sanctioned one. Of course, this manages to tell us that the future is unquestionably friendly.