The young men who struggled to gain a foothold on Omaha Beach might not have grown up with television… but I did. <\/p>\n
I’d like to think that somewhere down the road, folks will look back at my generation<\/em> and marvel at our accomplishments in spite <\/em>of television… much the same way we can cite the excellence of a previous generation who pulled us thru WWII\u00a0(characterized by the author, Tom Brokaw, as the Greatest Generation<\/em>)… <\/em>excellent\u00a0in spite <\/em>of being raised in cribs with\u00a0lead paint and sugar and salt in prepared\u00a0baby food.<\/p>\n That’s what I’d like to think.<\/p>\n But we won’t be judged with the same kindness I fear.\u00a0 That’s what happens when you put your country in a needless war and <\/em>a depression.\u00a0 And I am prepared to say that our shortcomings are due\u00a0in great part\u00a0to television.\u00a0 We should have been studying.<\/p>\n Maybe there are some people who enjoy studying… although I seriously doubt it.\u00a0They just pretend<\/em> to enjoy it to shame the rest of us.\u00a0 And then there are the gifted<\/em> individuals who don’t like studying; but are\u00a0just good at it anyway. I detest those people.<\/p>\n I hated studying.\u00a0 And I was not as a student then, nor now, in any sense gifted.<\/p>\n In 1961 I entered the 7th Grade, Form I at<\/em> Hamden Hall Country Day School<\/em>, and the classroom of Cecil Beaupre for first year French.\u00a0 I have nothing but admiration for Cecil, an ebullient instructor with a set of eyebrows that worked independently of one another.\u00a0 But who wants to learn the finer uses of the verbs avoir<\/em>\u00a0and etre<\/em>?\u00a0Who really cares about that?<\/p>\n Besides, I didn’t have the time.\u00a0 On Tuesday’s at 8:00PM CBS aired the The Dick Van Dyke Show<\/strong>.\u00a0 Funny stuff.\u00a0 The repartee between Rose Marie (Sally Rogers) and Morey Amsterdam (Buddy) was priceless. Van Dyke, himself, was a master of physical comedy.\u00a0 In the opening signature scene he would\u00a0come into his living room and trip on an\u00a0ottoman.\u00a0 I tried to imitate that move.\u00a0 He made it look easy… natural.\u00a0 But it wasn’t easy.\u00a0 I may have succeeded spooking our Bedlington Terriers once or twice.\u00a0 That’s about it.\u00a0But I kept trying.\u00a0You can see why I couldn’t be bothered with learning the gender of nouns.<\/p>\n And after Van Dyke I would have to watch Doby Gillis <\/strong>at 8:30PM.\u00a0 Dwayne Hickman’s portrayal of a girl obsessed high school student didn’t strike a resonant cord with me (at that time).\u00a0 But his beatnik side kick, Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver) who cringed at the very mention of the word “work”, spoke volumes.\u00a0 I understood that!\u00a0 <\/p>\n Genders for nouns?\u00a0 We don’t have genders for nouns in English!\u00a0 French was just a smarty pants<\/em> language.<\/p>\n In 1962 I had Bob Hirata for English II.\u00a0 I had one feeling in his classroom.\u00a0 A blend of nausea and terror.\u00a0 Bob was the finest Instructor that I ever had. Period.\u00a0 I just didn’t know it at age 12.\u00a0 Reading Poe’s Tell Tale Heart<\/em>, writing haiku<\/em>, schlepping around miniature image notebooks… who the hell can like all that?\u00a0 Not me.<\/p>\n Particularly on Monday nights when ABC had The Rifleman<\/strong> in the 8:30PM slot.\u00a0 Chuck Conners as the upstanding Lucas McCain was a great role model.\u00a0 Great father, raising his son alone… he earned the trust of his neighbors, the respect of the mildly ineffectual Marshal,\u00a0Micah Torrance (Paul Fix), and the fear of the bad guys.\u00a0 It’s what happens when you walk around with a\u00a0modified Winchester repeater.<\/p>\n And there is no way that I was going to be able to scratch out a haiku<\/em> or a cinquaine <\/em>when Stoney Burke <\/strong>came on at 9:00PM.\u00a0 Jack Lord in the lead role about stories set in the rodeo.\u00a0 Who can care about reading Thorton Wilder when I had so much to absorb about contemporary cowboy life?<\/p>\n Ernie Russ taught Biology in 1963.\u00a0 It was not his fault that my parents’ did not pass on the requisite gene responsible for science aptitude.\u00a0 <\/em>Is it really necessary for me to be able to classify the Slow Loris into Kingdom: Animalia; <\/em>Phylum: Chordata<\/em>; Class: Mammalia;<\/em> Order: Primates<\/em>; Family: Lorisidae<\/em>; Subfamily: Lorinae<\/em>; Genus: Nycticebus<\/em>?<\/p>\n No slow loris could keep me from watching Combat! <\/strong>on Tuesday nights at 7:30PM.\u00a0 This television program ranked #1 in my book.\u00a0 Originally the shows would alternate between the featured actors: Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders and Rick Jason as Lt. Hanley.\u00a0 Eventually the producers reduced Hanley’s role to a secondary status. Fine for me.\u00a0 The show was a Vic Morrow tour de force<\/em>. (as a side note… thank God for cable TV.\u00a0 I get to watch Combat!<\/em> again on one of the lesser known stations.\u00a0 The stories and plot lines still work!).<\/p>\n After Combat! <\/em>it would be time for McHale’s Navy<\/strong> at 8:30PM.\u00a0 Hilarious show… Sgt. Bilko<\/em> gone to sea.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Is it really\u00a0important to diagram the interior of what a frog looks like?\u00a0 I don’t think so.\u00a0 <\/p>\n 1964 found me in Munro Brooke’s World History class.\u00a0 Much of the year I struggled with the course work… too much to learn, too many centuries, too many countries.\u00a0 Who could keep it all straight?\u00a0 Particularly if you had to check out\u00a0The Man From U.N.C.L.E <\/strong>on Tuesday at 8:30PM.\u00a0 Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo (Napoleon?\u00a0 Well… that’s History, no?) and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin.\u00a0 The show exploited the phenomenal success\u00a0of the James Bond movies, albeit without steamy love encounters, and Ian Flemming was one of the shows original consultants.<\/p>\n At\u00a09:30PM NBC followed with That Was The Week That Was<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0This program was a British transplant and introduced us to David Frost for the first time (he was in the original English cast, too).\u00a0 Skits, musical numbers with a topical bent.\u00a0 Great satire… and since it covered the current events of the day, it was like a civics class… <\/em>sort of.\u00a0 Isn’t that like studying?\u00a0 Sort of?<\/p>\n Meanwhile, World History\u00a0gained some\u00a0traction (finally) late in the Spring when we got to WWII and I found my “calling.”\u00a0 Munro’s lecture on the rise of Nazism would never be surpassed. I would end up\u00a0majoring in\u00a0History at Union (where the television diversion was replaced by bridge and booze).<\/p>\n In 1965, my Junior Year… there was the added anxiety of college applications creeping uncomfortably\u00a0close… and the buzz <\/em>was this was the “key year” for the various admission departments.\u00a0 Everyone began to fret about their GPAs. I don’t think that Marjorie Stewart in English\u00a0realized this when she forced us to read (against our will) Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter<\/em> and The House of Seven Gables.<\/em>\u00a0 I could mention a half dozen equally painful titles.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter, because I never read them… how could I, with a blockbuster Tuesday night that lead off with Combat!, <\/em>to be followed by McHale’s Navy<\/em>, to be followed by F Troop<\/strong>… McHale’s Navy gone to the frontier west.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 Still the show was\u00a0packed with laughs\u00a0and was\u00a0infinitely more rewarding than reading the Cliffs Notes for Silas Marner.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n 1966 was a year of deep conflict.\u00a0 Fowler Osborne in English\u00a0let me write essays about anything that suited me and I actually enjoyed doing it.\u00a0 Who wouldn’t have a good time writing about an Old English Sheepdog named Herman?\u00a0 But how could I fit that in when I had to watch Batman <\/strong>on Thursday night?\u00a0\u00a0Comic Book\u00a0camp<\/em> come to the small screen.\u00a0 Adam West as the Caped Crusader <\/em>and Burt Ward as the Boy Wonder <\/em>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\u00a0Frank Gorshin as the Riddler among others.<\/p>\n F Troop<\/em> followed and I wasn’t going to miss that.\u00a0 Even if it meant putting off studying for Ellen Silberblatt’s U.S. History.\u00a0 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\u00a0of the Crown’s position leading up to the Rebellion.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0Well… you can’t win them all.\u00a0 So I felt a little guilty watching Star Trek<\/strong>.\u00a0 But\u00a0with the opening lines, “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship <\/em>Enterprise<\/em>. 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”…\u00a0<\/em>I was no longer concerned about Andrew Jackson and the Nullification Crisis.\u00a0 My attention was focused on William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk\u00a0and the irrepressible Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock.<\/p>\n My\u00a0 present “network television” interest is near zero.\u00a0 Other than watching sports I can’t remember when I last\u00a0tuned into CBS, NBC, ABC or FOX.\u00a0 The last network series I followed was Law and Order <\/em>when Michael Moriarty was in the original cast, and that was nearly 20 years ago.<\/p>\n I do watch the History Channel, History Channel International, NatGeo, some PBS\u00a0and old flicks on just about any channel.\u00a0 I am particularly fond of barbarians and animals.\u00a0 I will never pass on catching programs on the Emperor Penguin… Kingdom: Animalia<\/em>; Phylum: Chordata<\/em>; Class: Aves<\/em>; Family: Spenisciformes<\/em>; Genus: Aptenodytes<\/em>; Species: A. forsteri<\/em>.<\/p>\n 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).\u00a0 The male keeps the egg on\u00a0his feet with a fat “pouch” layer acting as a blanket to protect the incubating egg from the -40 f. temperature\u00a0and winds up to 120 mph.\u00a0 The colony of males form a tightly packed huddle, with each taking turns in the middle of the pack and\u00a0out of the direct assault of the wind.\u00a0 They do this for 64 days, standing up, in the darkness of the Antarctic winter… and with no television.\u00a0 <\/em>By the time the females return from their eating feast, the males will have gone 115 days without food.\u00a0 This is the animal world equivalent to a Mega Yom Kippur<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And no television.<\/em><\/p>\n Now do you see what can be accomplished?\u00a0 <\/p>\n I was going to write a haiku<\/em> about Stoney Burke; but Combat!\u00a0<\/em>is coming on the ALN Network.\u00a0 This is\u00a0the episode when Saunders and Caje are taken hostage by two SS guys trying to return to their lines.\u00a0 Good story.\u00a0 The haiku<\/em> can wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading