Close to Home by John McPherson for July 07, 2016

…and we only had THREE channels! Plus there was no remote! That’s right…you had to get up and walk across the room to the television to change the channel!

Trivia time:Ruff and Ready, with Professor Gizmo, and the planet(?) of Muni Mula, which is “aluminum” spelled backward.

Oh: And the inventor Clyde Crashcup, with his assistant Leonardo, and hastily drawn blueprints of ideas that looked good on paper.

… I miss Saturday morning cartoons. One Saturday Morning was awesome!

How long ago was that? I was born in ‘72 and I remember watching weekday afternoon cartoons in the 1970’s, both originals and syndicated reruns

Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd ,and Foghorn Leghorn were my favorites. Of course we also had Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, Andy Devine, and Howdy Doody shows to watch. We got our first TV in 1954, primarily for my dad to watch football games.

My brother and I would wake up early and blow through boxes of Sugar Smacks and Sugar Pops while watching cartoons. I still don’t think my pancreas has recovered. (Hmm, to use has or have; the plural of pancreas is pancreases.Has just sounds so weird.)

Difference was, they were actually funny.

I remember the preview shows where they would give you a sneak peak at the upcoming new season of cartoons.Slesstaks Rule!

Tex Avery and the Warner Bros. cartoons were the best; what creativity; the one’s where they used a full orchestra. In later years they got low budget and started doing things like using just one accordion player and the drawings were not as detailed; it was the begging of the end.

Tex Avery wallpapers.http://www.texavery.com/wallpapers/

And even then you had to sit through the cartoons you didn’t like so that you didn’t miss the ones you liked!

Not a cartoon, but I always enjoyed Kukla, Fran and Ollie on the CBS Children’s Film Festival. Saturday afternoon wasn’t it?

I grew up in a fishing resort on the Colorado River, we had no TV back then No cable.

I’ll take Yosemite Sam, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales and Daffy Duck over TMNT* any day. The one cartoon I did not like back in the day was Tom and Jerry, no talking, for one, and I found it to be on the violent side. The thing is one of my favorites now is “Itchy and Scratchy” from “The Simpsons”.

*Teen Age Mutant Turds, or something like that.

But they were great and worth waiting for.

Flintstones and Jetsons were prime time television!

And when the cartoons were over on Sat am, Soul Train would come on and we’d go out to play. (Nothing against Soul Train — we just weren’t into it.)

I loved Sky King and Fury.BTW Jeff, children with language disabilities love Tom and Jerry just because of the lack of language.

Around 1951, we got our first TV with rabbit ears. We lived in a small town near Corpus Christi, Texas and could usually pick up a snowy picture from the new TV station in Corpus Christi. The station got some local woman to put on a cooking show (everything was locally produced) It was hilarious! The poor woman clearly had never done anything like that and she was terrified! I still laugh about it 65 years later. I wish I had a recording of it; it was a classic. It was like watching a Lucy and Ethel schtick but was real!

The horror! The terror!

In the early 70’s I watched Underdog when I went home for lunch during elementary school. Saturday morning my older brother and sister had control over the tv. We lived between Boston and Providence, so we had 2 channels for PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, plus 3 independent stations.

I remember local stations airing morning (and occasionally afternoon) cartoons on weekdays as well, as far back as the late 1960s

Also, some ABC stations out west would air cartoons on Saturday afternoons, because college football began at 10 AM

But the reruns were ONLY in the summertime !

Raising my hand – Saturday mornings was Cartoons.But, better than that, it was time for Sky King, Fury, Ramar of the Jungle, and later, Lidsville, Land of the Lost, H.R. Pufnstuf, and The Bugaloos.Want to see some of it today? MeTV, Cozi, and Antenna-TV.Charter 196, 195, and 189. Enjoy.

They also showed them weekday afternoons.