My parents never watched much television. Their one TV set was down in the basement in its own room, and growing up we were limited to one-and a half to two hours television a week, on Sunday nights: The Wonderful World of Disney (later: Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color), and the show right after it, I remember "Car 54 Where Are You?" and "Grindl" starring Imogene Coca, that lasted only one season. The next year it was "The Bill Dana Show:" My name eees Jo-say Heeemen-ezzz. That series was replaced by "Branded" starring Chuck Conners. It wasn't a comedy, and although I can remember the opening, I don't think we watched it. By that time we were older, and Perry Mason was on another channel. Keep in mind we were in the Mountain time zone, so the shows were an hour or two earlier than on the east coast, and Disney started at 5:30 p.m.

My dad watched the football games, and for all the years before we got a remote, my sister and I had to sit next to the TV and change the channel for him so he could surf between all the games. Most of it was boring to us, but we liked the Hamms Beer commercials with the bears (From the Land of Sky Blue Waters). Sometimes, he'd settle on one channel, so we'd wander off, but when we heard our favorite ads come on, we'd race back to see them.



(Oh my gosh! you've got to watch this - the drum beat at the beginning just takes you back 50 years!)

When my folks weren't home, we'd sneak down and watch TV. That's how we got to see other television shows. They went out to dinner with friends almost every Saturday, and that was such a treat for us because we could have TV dinners and watch as much as we wanted. As soon as we heard the garage door going up, we quick shut off the set (and there was that little white circle on the screen that stayed there for several minutes after it was shut off), and raced upstairs to jump in our beds and play possum.

That shut off thing reminds me: I can remember when 'instant on' TVs came out. Before that, you had to wait for them to warm up before the picture came on.

My mother never had time for television, but when we got a little bit older she'd take a moment to sit down with us. We were embarrassed because she'd take the stories so seriously. By this time we'd seen enough of the detective shows to know that the hero would live to return next week, but my mom would be all worried about it, and talking to the TV set. She never learned that Perry Mason always wins.

Eventually, we got a color TV with remote and it was easier to go through the channel lineup using the "up" or "down" buttons, so you could set which channels it would stop on. This was meant to skip the channels where there wasn't anything, but my dad considered public television to be too boring, so he set it to always skip that channel. My mother would have watched the ballet and classical music shows, and we would have enjoyed them, too, but we couldn't figure out how to make it stop at that channel.