Now that I have recovered from the stress and aggravation of re-paving our primary XP system, I can turn my focus onto more "normal" postings again.
Last week, Alvis was away at church-camp. I picked her up Saturday afternoon and we drove home, stopping for some Sonic Drive-in snacks (tots, chicken nuggets, drinks). We enjoyed the first blue-skies we had seen in weeks, picked images out of the clouds, drank our cherry and strawberry lime-aids, and caught each other up on our past week's adventures.
Alvis had been mostly cabin-bound at camp due to the constant rains. I had to wait on Friday for almost two-hours in a Denny's down in Texas City, Texas until local street flooding dropped enough for me to get on with my service-rounds. Fun all the way around.
As we were tooling along, we were listening to the local 70'-80's FM channel. I started naming the song titles and artists and amazed Alvis. I'm nowhere that genre's fan like Lavie is, but did listen to my fair share. Since that isn't a regular channel of mine on the radio with Alvis, she was shocked; Phil Collins, Duran Duran, Rush, Boston, The Cars...all the goodies. It was a great bonding moment between Dad and Daughter as Lavie was napping at home.
Alvis thinks I was deprived as a kid growing up. She is correct in that we didn't have near the number of kid-oriented TV channels now available through the miracle of cable TV. In those days we also planned out our TV viewing as a family more as well. Remote controls (on a large scale) were years away so TV time generally meant picking a show or channel and sticking with it. Of course, we kids were often used as the remote control units by parents...but channel surfing was an unknown concept to us in those years.
Kids TV for me usually meant Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Then there was Captain Kangaroo. If I got really lucky, I could find Speed Racer or Star Blazers or G-Force/Battle of the Planets. No doubt these would lead to my later love of anime and the realization that Speed Racer was really known as Mach Go Go Go and Star Blazers was really Space Battleship Yamato and Battle of the Planets was really Gatchaman. The latter two heavily edited and re-worked for more prudent American children's viewing...I feel cheated now.
A few nights ago I was surfing the YouTubes and decided to see if I could find any good videos on Captain Kangaroo to show Alvis what she was missing.
Not only did I find them, but also a host of other 70's and 80's classic TV commercials and promos that brought back found memories. Lavie watched some with me and we kept comparing notes to which toys we each had and our memories of them.
YouTube - Captain Kangaroo: Ping Pong Balls
YouTube - Captain Kangaroo: Doug Henning
YouTube - Captain Kangaroo: A House For Mrs. Mouse
YouTube - Captain Kangaroo-Phil Donahue pt.2
YouTube - More classic commercials.
YouTube - 70's Toy Commercials
YouTube - Totally 80's commercials
I don't talk about my past and childhood often...which leads Alvis to sometimes wonder just how boring a life I had growing up. But with the right trigger, a rush of memories and stories can come pouring out.
--Claus
1 comment:
I am likely not as old as you are (I am 32) but when I was growing up we didn't have cable TV (was only in areas where you could not get over-the-air reception) and a satalite dish was the size of VW Bug. I remember the old Zenith TV we had, could only support may be a dozen channles and they were all pre-sets (you had to tune them in like on a car radio).
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