The Neighborhood

My mother-in-law said that two inventions killed the neighborhood: the automatic dryer, and air conditioning.  Perhaps you can see her point, or perhaps it needs a bit of explaining. 

Before the dryer, ladies used to hang up the clothes in the backyard.  They had long, and sometimes complicated, clotheslines.  Laundry day was a ritual that started early in the morning with sheets, towels, clothing – and even underwear(!)  put on display for the neighbors to see.   Housewives hanging up and taking down row after row of unmentionables were just a few feet away from other housewives doing the same thing.  The result – TALKING over the backyard fence!

In the evenings, everyone fled from their hot, stuffy houses as soon as dinner was over.  The adults sat on the front porch.  The kids hopped on their bicycles and rode up and down the sidewalk, where they passed other kids who were jumping rope and playing four-square.  The result – adults waving to each other as they watched their kids, and kids joining in each others’ play. 

Voilà – The Neighborhood!

Now this may be too simplistic an explanation of neighborhood shrinkage, but all I know is that I grew up in an actual Neighborhood.

Ohio evenings were much cooler than daytimes (not like Texas!), and I loved playing outside then.  I could hear the crickets chirping as darkness approached.  The doves would be going at it: “Coo – ee – coo – oo – oo.”  Sounds of skates scraping on concrete, satisfying “boink, boink” of a rubber ball, sing-song chants of friends jumping singles or “double dutch”:

“Down in the valley where the green grass grows. 

There stands Sally, as sweet as a rose. 

She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet. 

How many kisses did she get last week. 

One jump, two jump, three jump, …”

All of this freedom of play happened within the comforting (but preoccupied!) gaze of our parents, and was boundaried by: “Be home by the time the street light comes on!”

Of course, our parents—who had by this time emerged from the porches and were standing by twos and threes, talking—didn’t break off their conversations and go in the minute the street light came on.  From that moment on we were on “borrowed time.”  As long as they stood there, we were still free to do--whatever. 

As dusk descended into darkness, the street lights illuminating the neighborhood in a rather spotty fashion, my sister or I would run inside for a jar and begin chasing “lightning bugs.”  We stood very still in the darkness, watched for the brief flicker of greenish-yellow light, pointed it out, raced to where last seen, saw it blink again, reached out – and grasped the slow-moving insects carefully in one hand.  

 Slowly, gently we put the other hand on top, moved the open jar into place, shook the bug till it dropped to the glass bottom, and snapped the lid on the jar.  It was such fiendish delight to stare at the poor thing as it walked around over the glass, dazed and confused, and weakly signaling its light again and again to its companions.  No use warning them!  We were off to hunt again!

“Linda, Lorraine!  Time to come in!”

We had been noticing our Mom –with our peripheral vision -- standing under the street light, and finishing her conversation with a “Well, it’s getting dark.”

We knew there was five more minutes.

Then, suddenly she was on the porch, and the magic was over.

“Lorraine!”  “Linda!”  Come inside now!

My sister and I liked to take our nightly catch with us into the house.  We set it on the top of the dresser as we put on our PJs, then watched the jar blink and glow after Mom turned off the bedroom light.  When we were little, we thought the light display would go on forever.  As we got older with jaded “experience,” we knew that the jar would smell bad in the morning and the bugs would be dead.  We stopped keeping them.

Oh well, there’s always another hunt … tomorrow night!

The Television

No one has to tell you about television – you’ve had one.  But both the hardware and the programming have certainly changed over the years since its 1950s assimilation into American homes.  And it’s about to go through even more dramatic changes.

Once upon a time, there was no TV.  Try to imagine that for a minute.  The house was quiet.  People were milling around doing stuff.  Doing what stuff?  How did anyone actually occupy themselves at home with no TV, computer, cell phones, gameboys, etc?  Can you picture it? Well, it’s actually television that gives us the picture of that time gone by.  If you ever watched reruns of Andy Griffith, I Love Lucy or The Waltons, then you know that people, played cards, ate dinner together, went to dances, read books, took walks, and cooked and cleaned (which took longer back then).

The TV Generation

I don’t know about back then.  I was born in the TV

generation.  At 7 a.m. I could hear my Mom listening to The Today Show with Hugh Downs.  After school my sister and I ran home and turned on The Flintstones.  During dinner, which we usually ate on our “TV trays” in front of the screen, we kids suffered through The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite that Mom loved to watch.  Then later we enjoyed Prime Time programming with Red Skelton, The Ed Sullivan Show, Lawrence Welk and the like.  On the weekend we could look forward to Saturday Night at the Movies.  It was always a cinema blockbuster, because there were no made-for-TV movies.

If you wanted singing, dancing, comedies, drama, cartoons or news – you only had three channels and you were watching what everyone else was watching—at the same time they were watching it!  In fact, you have to remember that there were no movies in the home – period. No VCR, Betamax, DVD BlueRay, or Netflix.   

This may sound ridiculously limiting to today’s kids, but it was also amazingly bonding to the other people at home, school and work.  When you went to school, everyone was talking about last night’s antics of Lucille Ball.  There were no reruns except in the summers, and no cable channels to watch other shows on.

You might have seen old pictures of a family gathered in the living room watching one TV show together.  That’s the way we did it.

Knobs, Dials, and Picture Tubes

Our TV was a Zenith – “The quality goes in before the name goes on.”   It was black and white—color cost too much.  It was a console – a large cabinet that was a regular piece of furniture.  After pulling out the “On” button, I would hear a fuzzy “static” sound, and then have to wait while some funny sparkles and lines appeared on the screen as the picture tube warmed up.  If we were lucky, the picture came in clearly; but if the picture was “rolling” or had lines across it, then someone had to “adjust” knobs in the control panel.  That was always annoying because everyone in the room would be yelling:

“That’s fine. Leave it alone.”

“No, it’s still rolling.”

“Stop! You had it right and you went too far.”

“Hurry up!  We’re missing the whole show!”

In the background you could hear the show you wanted to watch, but you could see only fuzzy bits and flashes of it.

Sometimes the picture tube went out.  This was a catastrophe for our little family, because we were lucky to have a TV at all.  Who know when there would be money for a repairman to come out and fix it?!  I remember one long “drought” without a picture tube.  We “watched” TV every day, but had no picture.  We learned to have a good imagination! 

A new commentator named Paul Harvey came on during this period.   He always had a fascinating voice, with great intonation, and he would pause and say, “And now for the rest of the story…”  We listened to him, sight unseen, and judging from his voice I imagined that he was a large, heavyset man.  The day we got the picture tube fixed, I was very surprised!

The two other dials on the TV were the Channel knob and that other funny dial that said UHF and VHF.  This seemed to be an “idiot” dial.  When something went wrong, we turned it randomly, hoping for a fix.  I have never yet talked to anyone who knew what that dial was for.

In the beginning there were no remote controllers.  People didn’t “surf” channels.  In fact, they often planned ahead for a show, consulting the “bible” of the TV age—TV Guide—for the time and then arranging their schedule around it. Someone would shout, “It’s almost on,” as they flicked on the TV and waited for it to warm up.  You could hear the theme song of the previous show going off the air.  Theme songs were just long enough to grab a snack before the show started.  Everyone settled in, piling onto the couch and floor, and it got more exciting by the minute.

When Mom or Dad wanted to watch a different show, they would tell one of the children to: “Go change the channel.”   Kids were also enlisted to adjust the “rabbit ears” on top of the TV set – which was the antenna that brought in the reception.  No cable.  No WiFi.  Sometimes one of us would have to stand in a certain spot to get the best reception.  The family drama surrounding the set was almost as good as the show itself!

Commercials

If we were watching a show that was on “live,” every few minutes the announcer would say, “And now for a word from our sponsor.”  Either the star would plug a product, or the camera would switch to another stage where another announcer would plug a product.  Some shows were actually sponsored by only one product – such as Lawrence Welk –brought to you by Geritol!

I have never been a fan of “Commercials,” but in the 50s and 60s they were much better than today’s.  They were moral, slower-paced, and didn’t shoot you with subliminal messages.  No one stripped down to their underwear, or advertised feminine products. And the jingles still stick in my mind:

“You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!”

“Double your pleasure, double your fun, with double good, Doublemint, Doublemint gum.”

Mrs. Olson: “It’s mountain grown.  It’s the richest kind.”

Mr. Whipple:  “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin”

“Chock full o’Nuts is that heavenly coffee; better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy.”

“Sure you have a headache, you’re tense, irritable, but don’t take it out on her.”

Family Values

Prime time programming, from 7-9 p.m., was family values programming.  There was a censor, I forget his name, but the stations hired him and they listened to his advice about what was acceptable on television for the viewing public.  There were NO curse words of any kind.  There were NO pictures of violent crime.  Using the words of President George HW Bush, we were a “kinder, gentler nation.”

We looked forward to Saturday morning cartoons all week.    Saturday morning my sister and I would roll out of bed (on a day we didn’t have to get up early for school), grab our special blanket and teddy bear, and drag them down to the couch.  We would turn on the TV and snuggle there while we watched endless hours of Yogi Bear, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and on and on.  There were no “ratings” because all shows had to pass the censor, so all were safe and fun.  The commercials during these cartoons were not inappropriate or violent, although they did plug children’s commercialism shamelessly.

When hunger overcame our drowsiness, we would finally scoot to the kitchen to get a bowl of Cheerios or Puffed Rice, or … NOT! … Kids watching commercials knew to ask for Cocoa Puffs and Sugar Pops and Frosted Flakes – They’re Grrrreaattt!