And on this channel, my childhood II
- Petticoat Junction 1963-1970
- Hogan’s Heroes 1965-1971
- Gilligan’s Island 1964-1967
- Beverley Hillbillies 1962-1971
The truth is that it takes longer than four years to pass through childhood. After Hollywood carried me from the horse opera scene, it helped me discover small town folk with just a hint of what awaited me when I would be old enough. The four shows I watched this afternoon on DejaVu channel are iconic, in that none were deeper than a banana split, but all had enough sugary taste to keep me coming back, week after week, year after year.
Try to imagine an idyllic village with a steam engine, three lovely sisters who swam in the water tower and … well, at least there were three lovely sisters. After all, if I was going to be a teenager, I had to know what the world prized most. The train was just a hint that I might need to journey to find what was ahead of me.
Then, throw in some foreign language training. With a wink at history, I’d better know that our new allies in Germany weren’t all nasty monsters. Put away the comic books and start training for life in tunnels. We never actually went “below ground”, but concealed entrances had to be in what the future held. Hogan and his squad; in real life, the officers and the enlisted men always bunked together, right. Equality in the new age.
Just in case my journey through adolescence involved a boat trip, best be prepared. So much luggage on one small craft; keeping my room neat would lead to more stowage space. Of course, having a couple of lovely girls along, even if they weren’t sisters, made perfect sense. Forget everything you knew about water safety, because the Island would provide. I somehow knew that, long before I left for university.
And I lived in an extended family, so the Hillbillies seemed “right”. We even strapped a guitar to the car room when the thirteen of us moved from the hills of Nova Scotia to the rich suburbs of Ontario. We WERE the Hillbillies. No wonder we came back, week after week, without really understanding what “black gold” meant. OPEC still hadn’t wrought its revenge; oil was just stuff available at the service station or dripping from under a local car.
So you see, TV provided all the training necessary for my pre-teens. No wonder the theme songs are still part of the earworms of life. So, blow the whistle, rattle the snares, pluck the banjo. Small town utopia.
