Popular Culture
Come Listen To My Story
You can’t outrun who you are
A friend and I were recently waxing poetic about the after-school television offerings of our youth. This would be the mid-late 1970s. You know, back when your television was the size of a Pop-Tart and had a hand crank. Like Depression Era folks waiting for the REA to put a creosote electrical pole in their front yard, we had to wait a minute before cable television came to White Hall, Arkansas. Our choices were ABC, NBC, CBS, or PBS. You read a newspaper printed on actual paper; and the only thing that streamed was the water faucet. It was a dark time, full of bored savages, starved for entertainment.
In my case, if I weren’t outside throwing a rock at something, I was three feet away from the television flipping back and forth through reruns from the 1960s. I was three feet away because you had to manually turn a knob to change the channel. Oh, the barbarity! After the soaps, but before the news one could choose from a variety of tales from yesteryear. One could also watch Bozo the Clown if one were so inclined. For several years, I was. Channel 7, KATV, the local ABC affiliate broadcast a homegrown version of the Bozo franchise, replete with cartoons, games and a live audience of squawky children.
