The young men who struggled to gain a foothold on Omaha Beach might not have grown up with television… but I did.
I’d like to think that somewhere down the road, folks will look back at my generation and marvel at our accomplishments in spite of television… much the same way we can cite the excellence of a previous generation who pulled us thru WWII (characterized by the author, Tom Brokaw, as the Greatest Generation)… excellent in spite of being raised in cribs with lead paint and sugar and salt in prepared baby food.
That’s what I’d like to think.
But we won’t be judged with the same kindness I fear. That’s what happens when you put your country in a needless war and a depression. And I am prepared to say that our shortcomings are due in great part to television. We should have been studying.
Maybe there are some people who enjoy studying… although I seriously doubt it. They just pretend to enjoy it to shame the rest of us. And then there are the gifted individuals who don’t like studying; but are just good at it anyway. I detest those people.
I hated studying. And I was not as a student then, nor now, in any sense gifted.
In 1961 I entered the 7th Grade, Form I at Hamden Hall Country Day School, and the classroom of Cecil Beaupre for first year French. I have nothing but admiration for Cecil, an ebullient instructor with a set of eyebrows that worked independently of one another. But who wants to learn the finer uses of the verbs avoir and etre? Who really cares about that?
Besides, I didn’t have the time. On Tuesday’s at 8:00PM CBS aired the The Dick Van Dyke Show. Funny stuff. The repartee between Rose Marie (Sally Rogers) and Morey Amsterdam (Buddy) was priceless. Van Dyke, himself, was a master of physical comedy. In the opening signature scene he would come into his living room and trip on an ottoman. I tried to imitate that move. He made it look easy… natural. But it wasn’t easy. I may have succeeded spooking our Bedlington Terriers once or twice. That’s about it. But I kept trying. You can see why I couldn’t be bothered with learning the gender of nouns.
And after Van Dyke I would have to watch Doby Gillis at 8:30PM. Dwayne Hickman’s portrayal of a girl obsessed high school student didn’t strike a resonant cord with me (at that time). But his beatnik side kick, Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver) who cringed at the very mention of the word “work”, spoke volumes. I understood that!
Genders for nouns? We don’t have genders for nouns in English! French was just a smarty pants language.
In 1962 I had Bob Hirata for English II. I had one feeling in his classroom. A blend of nausea and terror. Bob was the finest Instructor that I ever had. Period. I just didn’t know it at age 12. Reading Poe’s Tell Tale Heart, writing haiku, schlepping around miniature image notebooks… who the hell can like all that? Not me.
Particularly on Monday nights when ABC had The Rifleman in the 8:30PM slot. Chuck Conners as the upstanding Lucas McCain was a great role model. Great father, raising his son alone… he earned the trust of his neighbors, the respect of the mildly ineffectual Marshal, Micah Torrance (Paul Fix), and the fear of the bad guys. It’s what happens when you walk around with a modified Winchester repeater.
And there is no way that I was going to be able to scratch out a haiku or a cinquaine when Stoney Burke came on at 9:00PM. Jack Lord in the lead role about stories set in the rodeo. Who can care about reading Thorton Wilder when I had so much to absorb about contemporary cowboy life?
Ernie Russ taught Biology in 1963. It was not his fault that my parents’ did not pass on the requisite gene responsible for science aptitude. Is it really necessary for me to be able to classify the Slow Loris into Kingdom: Animalia; Phylum: Chordata; Class: Mammalia; Order: Primates; Family: Lorisidae; Subfamily: Lorinae; Genus: Nycticebus?
No slow loris could keep me from watching Combat! on Tuesday nights at 7:30PM. This television program ranked #1 in my book. Originally the shows would alternate between the featured actors: Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders and Rick Jason as Lt. Hanley. Eventually the producers reduced Hanley’s role to a secondary status. Fine for me. The show was a Vic Morrow tour de force. (as a side note… thank God for cable TV. I get to watch Combat! again on one of the lesser known stations. The stories and plot lines still work!).
After Combat! it would be time for McHale’s Navy at 8:30PM. Hilarious show… Sgt. Bilko gone to sea. Ernest Borgnine as Lt. Commander McHale lived in the shadow of the brilliant Tim Conway’s Ensign Parker (who could read a menu aloud and make people laugh) and the nearly as brilliant, Joe Flynn as Captain Binghamton.
Is it really important to diagram the interior of what a frog looks like? I don’t think so.
1964 found me in Munro Brooke’s World History class. Much of the year I struggled with the course work… too much to learn, too many centuries, too many countries. Who could keep it all straight? Particularly if you had to check out The Man From U.N.C.L.E on Tuesday at 8:30PM. Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo (Napoleon? Well… that’s History, no?) and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin. The show exploited the phenomenal success of the James Bond movies, albeit without steamy love encounters, and Ian Flemming was one of the shows original consultants.
At 9:30PM NBC followed with That Was The Week That Was. This program was a British transplant and introduced us to David Frost for the first time (he was in the original English cast, too). Skits, musical numbers with a topical bent. Great satire… and since it covered the current events of the day, it was like a civics class… sort of. Isn’t that like studying? Sort of?
Meanwhile, World History gained some traction (finally) late in the Spring when we got to WWII and I found my “calling.” Munro’s lecture on the rise of Nazism would never be surpassed. I would end up majoring in History at Union (where the television diversion was replaced by bridge and booze).
In 1965, my Junior Year… there was the added anxiety of college applications creeping uncomfortably close… and the buzz was this was the “key year” for the various admission departments. Everyone began to fret about their GPAs. I don’t think that Marjorie Stewart in English realized this when she forced us to read (against our will) Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. I could mention a half dozen equally painful titles. It doesn’t matter, because I never read them… how could I, with a blockbuster Tuesday night that lead off with Combat!, to be followed by McHale’s Navy, to be followed by F Troop… McHale’s Navy gone to the frontier west.
Forrest Tucker as Sgt O’Rourke had better lines than Borgnine’s McHale and Larry Storch as Cpl Agarn was funny; but couldn’t match Conway’s Parker. Still the show was packed with laughs and was infinitely more rewarding than reading the Cliffs Notes for Silas Marner.
1966 was a year of deep conflict. Fowler Osborne in English let me write essays about anything that suited me and I actually enjoyed doing it. Who wouldn’t have a good time writing about an Old English Sheepdog named Herman? But how could I fit that in when I had to watch Batman on Thursday night? Comic Book camp come to the small screen. Adam West as the Caped Crusader and Burt Ward as the Boy Wonder did fine; but it was the cast of bad guys that made the show… Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, Cesar Romero as the Joker, Julie Newmar as Catwoman and Frank Gorshin as the Riddler among others.
F Troop followed and I wasn’t going to miss that. Even if it meant putting off studying for Ellen Silberblatt’s U.S. History. I had hoped that I could have written off the pre-Civil War periods which didn’t interest me; but during a classroom debate I made the mistake of earning praise for my well thought out defense of the Crown’s position leading up to the Rebellion.
Well… you can’t win them all. So I felt a little guilty watching Star Trek. But with the opening lines, “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”… I was no longer concerned about Andrew Jackson and the Nullification Crisis. My attention was focused on William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and the irrepressible Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock.
My present “network television” interest is near zero. Other than watching sports I can’t remember when I last tuned into CBS, NBC, ABC or FOX. The last network series I followed was Law and Order when Michael Moriarty was in the original cast, and that was nearly 20 years ago.
I do watch the History Channel, History Channel International, NatGeo, some PBS and old flicks on just about any channel. I am particularly fond of barbarians and animals. I will never pass on catching programs on the Emperor Penguin… Kingdom: Animalia; Phylum: Chordata; Class: Aves; Family: Spenisciformes; Genus: Aptenodytes; Species: A. forsteri.
Unique in the animal world, after the female lays a single egg, she transfers it to the male while she heads out to sea to a eat for 8+ weeks (their version of a Rodeo Dr. shopping spree). The male keeps the egg on his feet with a fat “pouch” layer acting as a blanket to protect the incubating egg from the -40 f. temperature and winds up to 120 mph. The colony of males form a tightly packed huddle, with each taking turns in the middle of the pack and out of the direct assault of the wind. They do this for 64 days, standing up, in the darkness of the Antarctic winter… and with no television. By the time the females return from their eating feast, the males will have gone 115 days without food. This is the animal world equivalent to a Mega Yom Kippur.
And no television.
Now do you see what can be accomplished?
I was going to write a haiku about Stoney Burke; but Combat! is coming on the ALN Network. This is the episode when Saunders and Caje are taken hostage by two SS guys trying to return to their lines. Good story. The haiku can wait.