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| November 1964 Life Magazine. See story that follows. |
WELL FRIENDS, IT'S FINALLY TIME TO SAY (WRITE) GOODBYE TO YOU FINE FOLKS WHO HAVE KEPT ME COMPANY FOR GOING ON FOUR YEARS
Let's face it! No one wants to wake up as a ghost, slouching like usual in the office chair, with the publisher hammering on your back, unresponsive, (of course you can't really hammer a ghost, but you know what I mean) about the timeliness of submitting copy prior to deadline. In later years, of course, my publisher was my wife, and she has felt it incumbent, to keep me gainfully writing, because she thinks I will curl up into a ball, never unclench, and smell up the house, without a creative outlet. I used feel this way, but I've had lots of time to warm up to the concept. You see, I want to visit the countryside pubs of England and Scotland. So does Suzanne. She likes her beer by golly. Only kidding, only kidding dear. But she has family from Scotland and we both have kinfolk who started a long way back in England. I don't know when it will happen, but not too long from now. I'm going to do nothing but drink it all in, and possibly from a nice pub stool, looking out over a cobbled lane, with of course a creaking iron sign and rusted old gate.
In the memory of my two newspaper chums, who by the way, were as deeply committed to the task of informing the public, as any of Canada's top reporters and photo-journalists, working the dailies today, I wouldn't think of hinging my decision to retire from daily blogging because they departed too soon from this mortal coil. That would be grossly unfair. They would be mad as hell with me, because the deal always was, at least by last call at the old Albion in Bracebridge, if one or more was to fall, even off a bar stool, the survivor(s) would carry on with the old standard flying high," satisfying public interest, and informing those who have been kept in the dark, there's a good reason for carrying a strong light! Based of course, on government's opinion Canadians don't need to know everything.
I did think that I could carry-on writing the way we used to compose our old Herald-Gazette columns, that used to get Brant Scott and I in trouble almost weekly. The more trouble we got into, the closer we got to gaining the reputation, that would pull us toward the national newspapers. We didn't have career coaches. Maybe that's what slowed us up a bit. Yet you know something, the fact that we were all thwarted in one way or another, from having certain of our ambitions fulfilled, what the side-steeps and obstacles meant, is that each of us would find significant others, and start thriving little families, in charming abodes, from Muskoka to Ottawa. In some ways, it was important that those dreams fell to what was providential instead.
The first loss, was John Black, of Gravenhurst, who was one of the most talented, jack-of-all-trades, human beings, I have known throughout my life, and let me tell you, that is no small number, considering I used to hang around Bracebridge's Downtown Garage, watching the wizards with wrenches; and then while working at the hospital, in Bracebridge, around incredibly talented mechanics and woodworkers like Jack High, and George Jackson. John was in a league of his own, and he never got the respect as a photographer he deserved. I could not have stayed in my job as editor, without the help of both John and Brant; Brant of course, passing away last autumn season, while living with his family in Ottawa. In between these chaps, was our other stalwart reporter, who did all the jobs we hated. Judith Brocklehurst was a talented writer, and she gave the paper a flare none of us could have provided otherwise, and we knew who was keeping us boosted in news stand sales. Her column on Henry the Cat, as a sort of promotion for the first shelter of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was one of the newspaper's most popular columns, and that made us a little nuts; seeing as it was written from a cat's perspective. I think it was W.C. Fields who famously said, it's a losing proposition as far as recognition for your talent, playing opposite either an animal or a kid.
For most of the past year, the cumulative effect of losing my entire former reporting staff, and they weren't that old by the way, has impacted me on certain days, or during events, that make me think of that tireless threesome, who made me look good, when truth was, my capabilities weren't any less or greater than theirs'. I was supposed to be better. I was the editor for gosh sakes. I hope each of them had enjoyed their storied lives, and, by golly, they were storied people in all ways; because I was that close to them for most of a decade...., oh boy the stories I could tell. But I won't!
I think what hit me the hardest, was the fact I had to find out about Brant, having passed away almost two weeks earlier, while glancing through the posted death notices in the local weekly. I sat on on the verandah, newspaper folded in my lap, benefitting from the nice weather and trace amount of sun, breaking through the railing; but the only word to have described me, that Brant would have typed onto his paper, against the roller in his old Underwood manual, would have been to advise readers, I was as most definitely, "stunned" as a Norwegian Parrot, thank you very much Monty Python. Of all the people who knew us, as being almost inseparable back then, not one would local friend would let me know my old cronnie had slipped away, after a final rattling of the drum skins the night before. I'm sure his family and close friends didn't do this intentionally, but it was kind of ironic, that as we met, the result of newspaper ink, back in the spring of 1979, I would touch the ink of his obituary as a belated tribute, and apology for not showing up at the wake at least. He knew I had a phobia of attending funerals.
I have tried to keep the old days and old stories alive just a little while longer, because these were three folks that deserved to outlast their lifespan, in the public eye. They made me a better and more enduring writer, and I have kept their names in the public domain for this very reason. I have no credit to accept for myself. I was sculpted by others, with no regrets for how it all turned out.
Work at the antique shop, here in Gravenhurst, has been bursting at the seams this summer, and my blog writing has been getting in the way, of my helping out Suzanne. You see, I am real good at picking for antiques, because I am extremely proficient going after what I want, especially finding historic relics, and knowing where I most likely to find them on the local hustings. I'm just not so good at store-clerking. So instead, Suzanne gives me chores to do around the shop, and it's been working pretty good this summer. I didn't think I could work that closely, because we've been at logger-heads for most of our married lives, on who is most important in our business; the antique seller or the antique hunter. I think we've come to a stalemate, on this matter, each agreeing there's no sense having one without the other, if we still plan on operating it as a business.
I am also tiring out as a writer. Some readers will yell-out at their computer or laptop screens, "My God, I thought the man would never quit!" Even son Robert wouldn't take me seriously this afternoon, when I told him the same thing. I may surprise him afterall. Whether you know this or not, I have a seriously compromised neck and back, that has had a lot to do with too much of a good thing. I have had bad posture since the day I graduated the second level of typing class, and I've committed every violation to my body imaginable, hunched over this keyboard, dating back to the old Underwoods Brant and I used to clack, through the week, in that stuffy former Herald-Gazette newsroom.
I have nearly made it to the 300,000 mark of views, in the 3 and 3/4 years I've been writing almost daily, cheating part of the time with previously run columns. Suzanne retired from teaching at 59 years of age. I have outlasted her as a writer, by hitting the 60 mark, plus a month. I will still contribute shorter pieces to our antique shop facebook page, and I certainly won't be leaving my editorial post at Curious; The Tourist Guide, a fascinating regional Ontario paper, that has given me large scale coverage since the early days of the new century. I love those people, and their publication is drained from our shop two days after delivery.
Please accept the heartfelt thanks of a crusty old writer, that being in your company, to share my old adventures, and whacky opinions, have meant a lot to my well being, that's for sure. Writing has always been an excellent release valve for what ails me; what annoys me, and I'm feeling a tirade coming on about the Conservative's behemoth election campaign, and how many Canadians have to use food banks, and social assistance because it is the only way they can survive. I see this election as something Charles Dickens might have written about, highlighting as an election issue, the mountainous class divides, between the rich and powerful, and the destitute. It is at times, hard to feel good about living in this amazing country, when it is considered more imminently important to stroke egos, of the politically elite, and well appointed in this country, than to get to know those families, that are not getting enough to eat; the ugly truth, is that it is a daily occurance for families mired in a vicious cycle of poverty. You know these people exist. Politicians? They would rather sidestep the whole poverty issue, because it's not sexy for campaign strategists, running a federal election. As Charles Dickens ghost, Jacob Marley, roared at Ebeneezer Scrooge, in his Christmas Eve visit to the curmudgeon's house (which was once his own, inherited by Scrooge, "Mankind was our business. Their common welfare was our business." It is the business of our political gad-flys, to fix these problems, but how many votes do you get, ladling out soup if its' not Thanksgiving or Christmas? Best to exit here, before smoke comes out of this keyboard. I like to know I have some passion left, in case one of the dailies calls me up, to fill the shoes of former Toronto Sun columnist, Paul Rimstead, as latent as this is now. My point. No one ever filled Rimmer's shoes. No one.
I end this final blog, with a short story, based on a 1964 Life Magazine profile, of the newest television star-character, Herman Munster, the crazy, whacky mortician man of "The Munsters" television show that I adored. Sort of appropriate. On most days, I feel like I've been on a slab, explaining my bad back, necks, hips, and chilled demeanour. See you some time down the road.
NOVEMBER 6TH, 1964, AND I WAS CHANGED FOREVER - I WAS INTRODUCED TO THE MUNSTERS
I WAS HOOKED ON TELEVISION SIT COMS - BUT TO MY KNOWLEDGE IT DIDN'T MAKE ME CRAZY
I do think that my years watching television, from the late 1950's, has qualified me somewhat, to offer opinions about the shows that changed trends, and influenced the marketplace. I find very few parallels between the family shows of then and now, and honestly, there are shows today that make me blush, when Suzanne and I are sitting in the same room. I never had to worry about that with Leave It To Beaver and the Real McCoys. Sure I'm old fashioned in my likes and dislikes, about what is transmitted into my livingroom. What shows I like are usually cut within a couple of years if that long. I confess being a Seinfeld fan, because I loved the fact it was a show about "nothing - nothing at all," and it put a new spin on normal, daily living in the city. I could live in the city via the show, and never have to leave the hinterland. Michael Richards was by far the meat of that platter, and it was the reason I tuned in every week. I do like the Big Bang Theory, and I've been snared by The Simpsons since about their second year on the air. I fell hook, line and sinker, for the Family Guy, and King of the Hill, with my favorite roll model in a cartoon, Hank Hill. I've become a little convuluted over the years, and my favorite crime show is Blue Bloods, because there's so much outstanding talent on the show, and oh yes, family values. I like The Goldbergs, because I loved The Seventy's Show a decade or so earlier. It's more of a 1980's vantage point.
We got a small quantity of vintage magazines given to us at the shop today. The re-sale on old magazines is pretty low, truth be known, unless they're back issues of "The Rolling Stone," and that issue's interviews were landmark in music history.
The cover of the issue had the familiar gilt covered, highly naked, Shirley Eaton, in the James Bond movie of that year, "Goldfinger," captioned as being "the funniest and money makingest of the 007 movies."
I have meant to put this magazine out in the shop for the past three months. Every time I pull it out, and think about writing up a price tag, I start re-reading it, and by time I know it, I realize there are quite a few quotes I'd like to harvest for future blogs, to highlight something specific for another feature story. I've got a lot of nostalgia to recap before the grim reaper comes whipping around the corner. The first and most significant article, published the fascinating rating updates, recorded for some of the top television sit coms, from the period. I had without a doubt, officially turned onto the command of the boob tube, circa 1964, no doubt about it, although I know I was watching television a lot sooner than this. My most interesting forays, sitting in front, were the early space launches of the 1960's, with Walter Cronkite, and the coverage surrounding the asasination of President Kennedy, right up to the day of his funeral. I saw my mother cry a lot through that week, and I never really understood why.
I was a latch-key kid, after school, and during my youth, as I've mentioned many times in these retrospectives, I was sick a lot as a kid, and if it hadn't been for the television, I would have bored myself into good health. I realize reading this Nielson overview, that I was one of the subjects of the stats, the glassy-eyed, too-young-for-this-kind-of-madness, television fanatic, who needed my mother to switch off the power at bedtime, which until I was about ten years of age, was always before Bonanza on Sunday nights. By time I hit twelve, this had changed, and I was able to watch the Cartrights institute justice; but by then, if memory serves, Adam was gone, and Candy was the hired hand replacement. Suzanne and I bought the DVDs for the first several years of Bonanza last year, so I finally caught up to the events on the Ponderosa. Before my fifteenth birthday, I had become a bonafied television junkie. So it was interesting to find this small editorial overview of the period that changed my life. And yes, I am still very much a television nutball, but here's the truth. We only have one channel, being CTV. When the Harper government underfunded the CBC, for any number of strange reasons, we lost our signal, and no matter what devices we purchased, to capture the digital signal, it didn't work. I don't believe in pay television, period, and I refuse to buy cable or any other means of jamming my livingroom with more programming than I need, that just might push me into my own version of the Twilight Zone. We cut out cable service during the recession of the 1990's just as my favorite show, "Home Improvement" was taking off, and what really hurt, was the television broke down at the same time. We listened to the radio and records for the next two years, until we could afford a good replacement television. It isn't a hard luck story as much as a natural progression for our family in home entertainment. It hooked the boys on records instead. It was just neat to have this particular article, pinpoint the Nielson's time of my life, when I would get sucked into the vortex of television marketing, and never emerge again clean, from the need to have a television switched-on within earshot.
"When the first A. C Nielson Co. ratings for the fall TV season came out last week, a week of shock and panic rippled through an industry suddenly turned upside down. Old favorites like Jack Benney and Perry Mason went plummeting. Even the Beverly Hillbillies, undisputed champ for the past two years, dropped from No. I to No. 22. The new No. I unlikely to be uprooted this year, is NBC's Bonanza, which the Nielson figures estimate, has 48 million Americans watching Ben Cartright and his three sons ride the Ponderosa every Sunday night. So powerful is Bonanza's pull that the rival Joey Bishop Show on CBC fell to 96th." (Life Magazine, November 6th, 1964)
"Newcomers to the sanctified top 10 included Bewitched, a comedy about a comely housewife who uses witchcraft to clean up the kitchen; Gomer Pyle, about a nincompoop in the Marines, and The Addams Family, which is a horror show. A rival for the ghoul trade. The Munsters was rated No. I3, a figure the cast thought was an extremely lucky draw. Serious dramas dropped out of sight. Of the top 20 programs only three - The Fugitive, Combat, and Bonanza, deal with anything more urgent than getting a date for the prom, and all three are holdovers."
The article continues, "The long smile on network row was worn by usually third-place ABC, which has five of the top 10 shows, and edges out the other networks in average ratings. ABC has an over-all nightly rating of 20 CBC has 19 and NBC has 17.7. But since Nielson reaches figures by monitoring only 1,200 sets of 63 million sets in use every night, it is considered fair game to scalp the ratings if they appear to scalp you. Already CBS is saying that this Nielson report doesn't mean anything; wait until December. NBC says ABC's programs are 'designed for an age group from about 6 to 11.' 'ABC suggested that NBC was merely spouting, 'smoke in the wind, sometimes called sour grapes."
I was a hardcover "Munster-ite," and there was no comparison with any of the other ghoul and vampire related shows. I liked the Addams family and Bewitched but I would never rank them more entertaining than Herman and Lily Munster, and son Eddy who slept in a cabinet drawer, Grandpa, the vampire who dwelled in his spider web laden lab, entered through a creaking hatchway from the house to the basement, and of course Marilyn, who was quite normal, other than the fact she lived in a monster filled spooky mansion. Herman worked for a mortician, and his car was a customized hearse. Who could forget the intro music? I was hooked after my first show, and I could watch reruns, to within a hair's breadth of my own lifespan. It made me laugh, and hilariously so, and so few programs ever since have had that kind of impact on me. I like My Favorite Martian, because Ray Walston and Bill Bixby were such a perfect fit, for a story about alien life-forms dwelling with the rest of us. I was keen on being entertained, and even if they were re-runs, of for example Gilligan's Island, I couldn't have cared less. The shows were pure fiction, and lifestyle was dramatic enough, that we didn't need it when we were trying to unwind in the evening. It was the period I had most choice, of comedies that we genuinely funny and light hearted, beginning to end, and drama shows were for me to pick and choose. Bonanza was just an endearing show, because it emphasized family, and the "Shane" standard of good guys always finish first. Today, with what's being shoved at us, I'm not sure anymore, the difference between drama and comedy, which at times, seem so intimate to the story line, there is no real division of characteristic, a long, long way from sit coms that were actually what they were supposed to be, and we laughed out loud. I almost think it was the arrival of "All In The Family," that brought heavy drama into the fold of the situation comedy. It pushed the envelope of what the television censors would permit, and because it spearheaded a sort of liberation in new-age television, network management saw those bulging numbers as support for the new way of presenting family life, worts and all. I would never list All in the Family as one of my favorite shows, because I didn't like to be unsettled, and tested about social / cultural issues, in my own livingroom, unless I was listening from my bedroom, while my parents had yet another non-sensical argument about money, or spending to much money on booze. I'm sorry folks, but our house was a battleground a lot of the time, and booze was always involved. So I did need to escape and these situation comedies afforded me this bit of liberation from what I had always perceived as a sort of in-house oppression. A lot of kids had it worse than me. I was never beaten or denied food and lodging. I just hated the arguments and television was my way of tuning out. Social conscience is never a bad thing, but for me, I want to be able to pick and choose when I'm going to get my dose of drama, which these days, is pretty much the new, pressing, society-altering reality. I watch the news religiously, and that's perfect for me. I watch dramas that I know are going to be dramas; not suddenly take off as comedies. I hate inconsistencies like this.
A few times each month, I will find myself, tucked into a comfortable studio chair, looking at one of this vintage magazines that has come into the shop as part of a job-lot we've been sold, the magazines just being one small component. I really like viewing the advertisements, but I feel so incredibly dated as a result. Like finding the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee frozen pizza kits," my mother used to make us every Saturday night, to enjoy at the end of the second period of Hockey Night in Canada. Kraft had similar ones but you had to make up the dough, and provide the pan. My mother used to buy extra fixings if we had some extra cash that week.
Ever since I turned sixty years of age, boy oh boy, here come the honking big retrospectives, flash back through the cobwebs of my mind, of what really motivated me, for all these years to take up writing for fun and not so much profit, and it wasn't the literary work of either Washington Irving or Charles Dickens. I've definitely been wrong about this in the past. I'm more likely to have been influenced by Perry Mason, Seahunt, and The Waltons than all the books I've read. What a staggering public admission, but it's true. Not that I'm not influenced in degrees by the world's great literature, just that I like watching my stories instead. I've never read Dickens "A Christmas Carol," from first page to last, but I've seen the movie a hundred times. For heaven's sake it was the writer of The Munsters leading the way to my lifelong writing jag. Imagine that! What a thunderstorm of contradiction.
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