It's Howdy Doody Time!

"What time is it, kids?"

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It's Howdy Doody Time,
It's Howdy Doody Time;
Don't just say "Howdy Do"
Say "Howdy Doody Do" ...

I remember Howdy Doody, and the Early Days of Television. Not that we HAD a television set. It wouldn't be practical, considering that there was no cable access ... just antennas ... and there were no television stations in the immediate vicinity of our home in Pendleton, Oregon.

I remember the first time I saw television.
We had gone to visit family friends in Portland, which DID have a television station. Thus, in the early 1950's I saw my first episode of "Dragnet", which years later went into syndication and was presented as "Badge 714", which was Joe Friday's Badge Number in the LAPD.

Dum de dum dum ....
This is the city.
Los Angeles, California.

I remember when our neighbors bought a television.
They invited me over to watch with them in the evenings, after dinner. Hugh and Juanita Murchison became my best friends, and I was nine years old in 1954. A television station had started up in Pasco, Washington, and the signal was strong enough that we could receive a signal. I don't remember the 'network affiliation', but I suspect it was CBS because for years afterword you could only receive that one station, and I saw the CBS peacock for the first time on that television .... in black-and-white.

My favorite shows were "Lone Wolf", "Dateline: Europe" (the James Daly episodes), and "The Crusader" with Brian Keith. My bedtime was 9pm, so I don't know what shows were presented later except that on weekends I could stay up until 10pm. So did the Murchisons.

I remember when my family finally bought a television.
It was a blond Packard Bell. I was ten years old in 1955, and I never spent an evening with the Murchisons again. Instead of talking to each other at dinner (6pm; people ate according to a schedule in those days) we always watched the news. Friday night, it was followed by "The Friday Night Fights"; boxing matches became interesting for the first time, and I learned more than I needed to know about Gillette razors and razor blades.

Later that year, we visited friends in South East Oregon, near the Idaho border. They got a different station, and I saw "Kaptain Kangaroo" for the first time. I didn't realize until years later that Captain Kangaroo (Bob Keeshan) had previously been Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody.

In 1956, I watched Soviet tanks roll into Budapest, Hungary, and I saw my first dead body ... hanging from a rope, by his heels. I'll never forget the image of a thoughtful man who tugged the trousers back over he private parts of the corpse (who was apparently a politician who was, somehow, no longer in power.)

I remember hurrying home after school to watch "The Edge of Night", and later "Dark Shadows".

Sunday Nights were dominated by Ed Sullivan, and "Toast of the Town". (For precise dating of when we bought a television, I saw "Toast of the Town" before the show changed its name.) This is when I learned that New York City was the center of the world. Later, the show became "The Ed Sullivan Show". I saw The Beatles for the first time, didn't like their music. (A few years later I was buying their music ... from the Columbia Record Club. I liked "Hard Day's Night, didn't like "I Want To Hold Your hand". I thought "From Me To You" was the best thing they ever did, but that was before they became famous. What did I know? I knew more than I ever had before, and I was beginning to form opinions, a practice which has, unfortunately, never stopped.)

I really liked Topo Gigio, and Senor Wensas.

I remember summers, when I would stay up late at night to draw cartoon characters and build model airplanes until the television went off the air at midnight.

I remember the "off the air" ceremonies. First they would play a clip of "High Flight" with pictures of a military jet and a flag, and then the National Anthem played over the image of a waving flag. Then there would be a long tone as they showed a test pattern. The announcer would say: "We now conclude our day's programming. We will resume broadcasting tomorrow at nine AM."

That's right. Television went off the air at midnight, and didn't start up again until the middle of the next morning. There were less than a million television sets in America in 1955

I get this number from the Howdy Doody website, a nostalgia webpage which includes a comparison of Howdy Doody, Television and Cultural events from 1917 to 2000. I recommend it because it provides some interesting perspectives on 20th Century history.



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