Today is the second Thursday of the month, and you know what that means. It’s time for another writing prompt. Yay!
Welcome to episode 156 of Life Writers, where I share tips, books, and prompts to help you write your life stories.
This week, we turn on our old black-and-white TVs, adjust the rabbit ears, listen to catchy theme songs, and tune into our favorite shows from when we were children.
Some shows made us laugh, some made us cry, and some still stick in our hearts.
Start by making a list of your favorites.
Then, pick one or two series we waited for each week and write the memories associated with them. If you remember specific episodes, tell us about them in the comments section below. Let’s compare notes.
There are still two open spots for writers on the Writing the Waves cruise. Check out the cruise page for all the details.
But whether your eyes were focused on the tube, in a book or magazine, or elsewhere, always remember, the only way to do this wrong is to not do it at all!
I brainstormed for much more than the three minutes and couldn’t stop!! My list of fond TV memories is long. So many favorites across many genre: medical, crime, sci-fi, spy, adventure, westerns, war, variety shows, music specials, game shows, talk shows, soap operas, dramas, animal science like Wild Kingdom, sagas like Roots and Shogun, and cartoons on Saturday mornings when I was aloud to get my own cereal and sit as close to the tv as I wanted before the grownups woke up. Great prompt! I could write a paragraph on each. Thank you.
Tuesday nights, television. My mom was away at her occult Bible study, and Daddy and I sat on a red couch in the medical building basement. I’d bounce up and down on my daddy’s lap as we ate popcorn and watched Lassie. When Lassie got lost and did not come home, I felt the same way. I was also lost and didn’t know how to get home because I didn’t have one. I lived in a basement with one couch, a television, and two twin beds. I also watched Casper the Friendly Ghost. I not only watched it but also… Read more »
As it’s been pointed out, when I was a kid, our three tv stations were brought to us courtesy of either rabbit ears which sat on our television alongside our tv lamp depicting a forest fire, or an antenna located on the roof of our house. No cable or streaming services back then. Every channel signed off with a test pattern to look at until they signed on the next day. We kids watched a local kid’s program, called Bart’s Club House. Together, our family watched programs like I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. During this program, I waited each night… Read more »
My memories of television, as with so much else, begin in England in the late fifties. While we stayed in The Lodge, waiting to find more permanent quarters, we would sometimes wander into the “snug”, where there was a television set. I would sit on the floor, close to the set, with my fingers pinched together to make a lens for clearer viewing – the first hint that I needed glasses. There was a serial called “Quatermass and the Pit” running on the BBC at that time, a science fiction story that borrowed from “The War of the Worlds”; it… Read more »
The Man From UNCLE! I too crushed on David Mccallum! I also like watching Combat, with my dad.
Oh my gosh. What a wonderful prompt. Every Saturday I watched Soul Train. Kids gyrating down an imaged gangway with the latest steps. Other favs were Bonanza with Little Joe and Hoss. Others were Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Who Do You Trust(early Johnny Carson),Lassie, Leave It to Beaver, the Cosby Show, Have Gun Will Travel, Jack Benny, Art Linkletter interviewing young kids. They said the darnest(sp) things. $64,000.00 Question, Ed Sullivan, I Love Lucy, Road Runner. Still had time left over for school work!
Watched all of these when we came to America. That was the time when TV shows were fun and inflected with politics.
Soooooouuuuuuuul train!
Every Saturday morning my brothers and I would get our bowl of Frosted Flakes and sit on the floor to watch cartoons. My favorite was all the Bugs Bunny characters. Each unique and funny in their own way. Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Pepe LaPew, Elmer Fudd to name a few, were so fun to watch. That coyote never could catch that Road Runner. My kids also knew the characters and to this day we can all sing the words to the opera, “Kill da Wabbit”. I remember when Mel Blanc who was the voice of the characters passed… Read more »
You forgot to mention the Soeedy Gonzales. We watch all of these cartoons you mentioned plus Tom and Jerry.
Oh, Patricia where I lived we did not have television sets when I was young. I believe my parents bought their first set when I was about fourteen years old. In my husband’s family they did not own a TV at all. When we married and had move in with them after applying for the asylum, we brought our TV to their apartment. There our daughter watched her favorite cartoon called “Just Wait!” Ну погоди! It was about a wolf and a rabbit and it was hilarious. The little rabbit always outsmarted the big, mean wolf. You can find it… Read more »
Etya, how interesting. Just goes to show you never take things for granted. Amazing.
Norma, many Americans take things for granted.
Etya, I went straight to YouTube when I read this and found several episodes of “Just Wait!” It’s fascinating to see the ways in which Soviet and American cartoons are similar and different. The Russian rabbit, in particular, is a far cry from Bugs Bunny! But the humor crosses boundaries of language and ideology. It’s a salutary reminder that we are more alike than we often realize, and that our similarities are more important than our differences.
Thank you, my friend. I agree with you. People are the same. We have more similarities than differences. This cartoon became one of Jeff’s favorites when he was a child, and he watched it without understanding the language.