Strange Things | Blast From the Past

Blast From the Past

erratic_prophet | 03 June, 2005 15:06

I've got tv on the brain, people.

It was a recent comment from Nickie Goomba that started me off this time. He mentioned Lawrence Welk which made me think about my mom and her parents, my grandparents, and how she hated being forced to watch The Lawrence Welk Show. I was even forced to watch it a time or two just to see how awful it was. I told my mom to write to Amnesty International about it and I'm quite sure she muttered a few unflattering things about me. Few things bring about an irrational rage in my mother and I believe Lawrence Welk happens to be one of them.

Mom grew up on a farm in Upstate NY. There's a big difference from NY and Upstate, for those of you not from the area. NY is where you want to go, Upstate is where you're banished to for about two weeks to a month in the summer when your mom has had it with you and doesn't know what else to do with you. The farm was in the middle of nowhere, as farms tend to be, and was filled with animals, insects and smells. All things I was not terribly fond of being an unabashed city girl. But I did love my grandparents, so I was always excited to see them.

Since we were out in the boonies, channel selection wasn't terribly great. On a good day, you got in 3 channels; on a bad day, maybe one very static-y channel. I was used to cable. Yes, we had it back then. I remember seeing MTV come on for the very first time ever.

You didn't get much via the radio either. It felt rather like being isolated in a bomb shelter but with hay fever and large piles of cow shit that I had to keep avoiding stepping into.

News was rather boring. A lot of talk about animals and other rural things. Parades during holidays were a joke. I grew up on NYC news and real parades. Not a tractor or four with a little baton twirler standing out front. (Though, one Thanksgiving, I nearly died laughing over the parade when the baton twirler couldn't seem to keep a hold of her baton and kicked it under a tractor.)

I was a bit of an insomniac, so I stayed up with grandma and watched Johnny Carson while we completed word search puzzles. Luckily, she'd moved on since Lawrence Welk, but she did have a guilty pleasure show that I couldn't stand: The A-Team.

Yes, grandma loved The A-Team. She had a crush on George Peppard. Now if you'd ever seen my grandma, you'd be just as puzzled by this adoration of this truly bad show. She was a very proper German lady with perfectly fingerwaved hair who didn't understand the slovenly dress of youngsters today. Yet, each time that show came on, she ran to turn the dial and would sit rapt, shushing me the whole time, during the episode.

Now I had a tv show to complain to mom about. Needless to say, she was less than sympathetic. I believe she muttered something about Amnesty International.

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Morningdew — 03 Jun 2005, 16:02

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My parents refused to pay for cable since they were never home to watch much of it. We had PBS and it was always Lawrence Welk. As for the A-team, well I'd be hard pressed to tell you which I disliked more.

Edana — 04 Jun 2005, 04:28