Managing Editor
No, this isn’t about Cher’s 1989 music video filmed aboard the USS Missouri. Not that there’s anything wrong with Cher, I’ve always liked her music, but I’d like to use this space to detail things that have disappeared over time that need to be restored in my opinion.
When I was a child, hearing the opening stanza of “The Rifleman” would draw me to the TV set so I could catch Chuck Connors wielding his modified Winchester rifle demonstrating how potent it could be. Yes, “The Rifleman” certainly had a lot of violence but there’s no escaping that anyone who heard that music and soundtrack every week can ever forget it.
Then there’s the theme to “Bonanza” as the three Cartwright brothers and their father ride across the Ponderosa Ranch in Nevada as a map of their property burns. Or revving up the Ferrari with Tom Selleck to take it out for a spin in Hawaii in “Magnum P.I.?”
Sometime in the late 1990s, television producers decided to focus less on theme songs and use that extra minute or so on developing their story or episode’s plot.
I sure miss being able to know all the words and sing along to the theme songs to “The Beverly Hillbillies” or “Three’s Company” or “Rawhide” or “Gilligan’s Island” instead of the screeching discordant sound of shards of metal scraping that are heard in the opening title sequence of “Lost” every week.
My thought is that composing memorable music for a television series theme song appears to be a lost art, and if I could turn back time, I’d love to see it revived.
Another aspect of American life when I was a kid that always fascinated me was going through the Sears catalogue in the months leading up to Christmas. There was page after page of toys, bicycles and hours of fun contained in those old catalogues, and not something that can easily be replicated scrolling through Amazon on an iPhone.
The catalogue was an alternative for a retailer who chose not to market their products on television and was sheer merchandising genius. I could always find a generous selection of items I would want for Christmas and would write them down in order in case we stopped to see Santa on our next department store visit.
It was always a happy day in our household each October when the catalogue arrived in the mail, and I’d have to fight off my brother to see which one of us got to look through the pages while making our annual Christmas gift request list. I would even spend time looking at the clothes and shoes because inevitably if I asked for a toy from the catalogue, my mother would think it was far more practical for me to have a new set of thermal underwear rather than “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots.”
Turning back time, I’d advocate for a return of the Sears catalogue as a place for kids to dream and get ideas for the holidays.
And that leads me to the topic of technology. Posing a serious question way back when sometimes meant that you’d have to explore solutions by going to the library and finding a book explaining that topic. It didn’t result in instant answers found by a Google search, you had to research and made you really think about things, not using AI to solve problems.
Recipes were found in cookbooks, not on your smart phone, and it created an atmosphere so much more personal.
With the introduction of video gaming consoles, it seems that kids stopped playing outside after school, or riding their bicycles through their neighborhood, like I used to. We spent more time as kids telling stories, reading comic books and using our imaginations instead of sitting indoors playing “Fortnight.”
Simple little things produced smiles from us such as drinking from the garden hose, a 1-cent piece of Bazooka bubble gum, catching and releasing fireflies in a Mason jar or running through a sprinkler in the backyard on a hot summer afternoon. Working on the newspaper crossword puzzle occupied my Sunday afternoons after looking over the Sunday comics section.
Before the days of endless cable television channels, your options were limited to just three TV networks, and you made do with what was available.
The internet, cell phones, personalized surveillance cameras and the rise of social media have taken a lot of spontaneity and joy out of everyday life. It affects everything. Movie plots of upcoming films are revealed months before the move debuts, a baseball player hits a home run in a game in California and it’s instantly transmitted to millions globally by smartphone.
More than anything, I would love to return to a day and age when simple conversations with friends, family, and neighbors mattered, and we weren’t interrupted by 24-7 breaking news, social media posts about celebrities, conjecturing pundits or conspiracy theories.
If I could turn back time, it would be for a simpler life.
No comments:
Post a Comment