TV Night in the '50s in the Heart of the Mississippi Delta
A friend sent me a link to a kinescope of Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray doing a classic scene from "Your Show of Shows." It sent my mind reeling back 56 years ago to a place today's young folks cannot "fanthom" as some wit used to say.
In the summer of 1950, my father accepted the position of Superintendent of Schools for the west half of Tallahatchie County. A brand new high school was being built in Webb, MS, and we moved into state supplied housing on the school's campus, along with most of the new faculty and their families. There was a large apartment complex flanked by two single homes. My family lived in one of the single homes and the ag teacher and his family in the other. There were 3 apartments in the complex for families and 3 apartments in which single men and single women teachers lived, dormitory style. It was a wonderful place to be a kid. I went back there with my Mom in 2002 and couldn't believe how small the place was!
The memory I'm reminded of was of us watching television together. There was a TV in the common living room in the apartment complex, but it was also the only place where socializing among the single teachers could take place, so weekend evenings were for them and not for us kids. The high school had an audio visual room with around 150 movie type wood seats bolted to the floor in rows, a stage two steps up from the main floor, a curtain, and, mounted on a plywood cabinet with casters, a 15 inch Motorola TV. I'm guessing at the screen size, but it certainly wasn't any larger than that in 1951.
Friday and Saturday nights would find anywhere from 20 to 45 people seated in that room. We watched what the majority wanted to see - "The Life of Riley" was on Friday nights and "Your Show of Shows" on Saturday night. Milton Berle was in there somewhere with his Texaco show. I don't remember folks bringing food or drink, just themselves and lots of kids. Let's see, there was Tom and Lucy Coward, Mary Margaret Seale and her brother Ted, my sister, Betty, my brother, Larry, Bernie and Doug Blackwell, me, and some or all of our parents along with single teachers and not a few townspeople from Webb - all watching television in a group. All my memories of those times are happy ones.
It would be 1958 before my family got its very own TV, a used Admiral, when we moved to Biloxi. I didn't know it was possible to have my own choice of what to watch - "Ramar of the Jungle" and "Soldier of Fortune" and "Jungle Jim" and "Wyatt Earp" and "Bat Masterson" - you can fill in more as you wish.
Nowadays I watch TV by myself as do most of us, I believe. Remote controls tend to cause solitary watchers, particularly for men. But tonight, watching that wonderful kinescope, I was once more sitting on a hard seat along with 30 other folks, laughing together in communal harmony. I don't know that we're better off today with all the color and surround sound and 1080p and HD than we were all those years ago with that black and white Motorola sitting on top of that plywood box on rollers in the center of that stage in Webb, Mississippi.
By the way, the second half of the title of this entry is the opening to the Alma Mater of West Tallahatchie High School:
"In the heart of the Mississippi Delta,
Land of cotton, land of smiles,
Stands our dearly loved Alma Mater,
dum de dum dum de da while. (That old annual with the lyrics is packed away.)
In the summer of 1950, my father accepted the position of Superintendent of Schools for the west half of Tallahatchie County. A brand new high school was being built in Webb, MS, and we moved into state supplied housing on the school's campus, along with most of the new faculty and their families. There was a large apartment complex flanked by two single homes. My family lived in one of the single homes and the ag teacher and his family in the other. There were 3 apartments in the complex for families and 3 apartments in which single men and single women teachers lived, dormitory style. It was a wonderful place to be a kid. I went back there with my Mom in 2002 and couldn't believe how small the place was!
The memory I'm reminded of was of us watching television together. There was a TV in the common living room in the apartment complex, but it was also the only place where socializing among the single teachers could take place, so weekend evenings were for them and not for us kids. The high school had an audio visual room with around 150 movie type wood seats bolted to the floor in rows, a stage two steps up from the main floor, a curtain, and, mounted on a plywood cabinet with casters, a 15 inch Motorola TV. I'm guessing at the screen size, but it certainly wasn't any larger than that in 1951.
Friday and Saturday nights would find anywhere from 20 to 45 people seated in that room. We watched what the majority wanted to see - "The Life of Riley" was on Friday nights and "Your Show of Shows" on Saturday night. Milton Berle was in there somewhere with his Texaco show. I don't remember folks bringing food or drink, just themselves and lots of kids. Let's see, there was Tom and Lucy Coward, Mary Margaret Seale and her brother Ted, my sister, Betty, my brother, Larry, Bernie and Doug Blackwell, me, and some or all of our parents along with single teachers and not a few townspeople from Webb - all watching television in a group. All my memories of those times are happy ones.
It would be 1958 before my family got its very own TV, a used Admiral, when we moved to Biloxi. I didn't know it was possible to have my own choice of what to watch - "Ramar of the Jungle" and "Soldier of Fortune" and "Jungle Jim" and "Wyatt Earp" and "Bat Masterson" - you can fill in more as you wish.
Nowadays I watch TV by myself as do most of us, I believe. Remote controls tend to cause solitary watchers, particularly for men. But tonight, watching that wonderful kinescope, I was once more sitting on a hard seat along with 30 other folks, laughing together in communal harmony. I don't know that we're better off today with all the color and surround sound and 1080p and HD than we were all those years ago with that black and white Motorola sitting on top of that plywood box on rollers in the center of that stage in Webb, Mississippi.
By the way, the second half of the title of this entry is the opening to the Alma Mater of West Tallahatchie High School:
"In the heart of the Mississippi Delta,
Land of cotton, land of smiles,
Stands our dearly loved Alma Mater,
dum de dum dum de da while. (That old annual with the lyrics is packed away.)