Jacky ran down the street shouting that everyone should come to his house to see his new television. I had only a vague idea what television was – sort of radio with pictures. I liked radio. Both our clock and radio were on a shelf in the living room. The first time I could tell was 8 o’clock because that was when The Shadow came on. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! Mwahahaha!” I loved that evil laugh. By the way, there’s a website where you can vote on how to spell the laugh. I picked the leading choice. Superman was all well and good but a bit too goody-goody for me and able to do anything. Where’s the skill in that? I liked my heroes mysterious with a dark side.
Add pictures to radio and you had something like the movies. I liked movies too. Saturday afternoons we went to the Lennox Theater on the avenue. A quarter got you in and bought some Raisinets or Sno-Caps. Why would anyone eat Raisinets when you could have Sno-Caps? You scrape off the tiny sugar balls with your teeth before sucking on the chocolate. Sno-Caps were ritzy too. It said so right on the box: non-pareils. That’s French! Means “so much better than Raisinets”.
First was some Movietone News. With any luck it might not be as boring as usual.
Next would be a cartoon or two. Please God, no Mickey Mouse!
Usually there was a serial: Flash Gordon or maybe a Western. It was fun but kind of a gyp. When Flash and Dale needed to get away from Ming the Merciless they’d show them boarding their rocket ship, then wobble a toy rocket ship from a string while it shot sparks out its tail end and made a farting sound.
Here’s Ming ->
Here’s Dale, the damsel in distress ->
If it was a Western, at the end of an episode the hero might run into a shed to untie the lady and then you’d see the shed blow up. Looked bad for our hero. Next week though, at the beginning of the next episode, the hero ran into the same shed in exactly the same scene, but this time, just before the shed blew up, he and the lady would run out. Pretty cheesy.
After that, though, you’d see Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein or the Mummy. You’d scrunch down at the scary parts and peek between the seats.
Costello did dumb things and Abbott would smack him. Or maybe the feature was Fatso and Skinny and Skinny did the dumb things and Fatso the smacking.
So television seemed promising.
At Jacky’s house, grown-ups lined the walls and kids littered the floor. We all stared at a boxlike object that looked like a radio with a dark little window. When they turned it on, half the screen lit up while the other half stayed pitch black. The dividing line was right down the middle. There was a malfunction of course, but I didn’t know that. The show was about a talking mule. Sometimes when he was talking you’d see his head and sometimes his big rear end.
Hmm. Not easy to see the mule in that pic. Here’s a close-up ->
At the end the announcer said to tune in next week for the other half. Well, how dumb is that? They’re gonna show the same show again, with the same scenes and the same dialogue, but with the other half of the picture? No way this would replace movies.
Of course, TV turned out okay after all. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Sky King, good, red-blooded stuff. Howdy Doody, “Kukla, Fran and Ollie”, watchable though a bit sappy.
My favorite by far was “Andy’s Gang” and that mostly because of Froggy the Gremlin. Always up to something, that one. He twanged his magic twanger and appeared and disappeared and played tricks on Andy who seemed a nice enough shlub.
Froggy joined my pantheon of heroes alongside Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, the Katzenjammer kids, Heckle and Jeckle and Yosemite Sam.
I walked on the wild side.
