Reruns, Road Runners, and Replica Phasers

The earliest shows I remember watching were The Brady Bunch and The Monkees. I also remember The Banana Splits Adventure Hour with its costumed band of goofballs. Honestly, I loved just about everything that came across the screen in those days—I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, Star Trek, and My Three Sons. What I didn’t realize at the time was just how old those shows already were. To me, they weren’t reruns—they were just “on,” usually playing on the scratchy UHF channel we picked up.

By the time the late 1970s rolled around, I had new favorites. Cartoons like Battle of the Planets and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons fascinated me. Those shows are hard to track down now, but I’d still love to revisit an episode or two just for the nostalgia.

Nighttime TV was its own world. That’s when I tuned in to the hits everyone else was watching—Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Diff’rent Strokes, The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, and Starsky and Hutch. I remember having a set of plastic replica pistols from Starsky and Hutch. (I also had the full set of equipment from the USS Enterprise—communicator, tricorder, phaser—the works. More than once I “beamed down” from my bedroom to boldly go where no man had gone before.)

Saturday mornings were a little trickier. My stepdad was most definitely not a cartoon guy. His idea of a fun Saturday was working cattle on our 9-acre farm. My idea of fun was watching the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. Somewhere between mowing the lawn and mucking the horse stalls, I usually managed to sneak in some time with Bugs, Daffy, and Wile E. Coyote. Looking back, I’ve probably seen every single Bugs Bunny cartoon many times over. And again, I had no idea that most of them were already decades old by the time I first laughed at them.

TV was more than just entertainment for me—it was an escape, an adventure, and sometimes even a little bit of company. And it’s funny how those shows, whether it was Gilligan stuck on an island or Bugs Bunny outsmarting Elmer Fudd, still hold a special place in my memory.

About Douglas Blaine

Capnpen is a writer who was a newspaper and magazine journalist in a previous life. A college journalism major, he now works as an English teacher, but gets his writing fix by blogging about a variety of topics, including politics, religion, movies and television. When he's not working or blogging, Capnpen spends time with his family, plays a little golf (badly) and loves to learn about virtually anything.

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