When I was a kid, my mother would have me fetch her things while her nose was buried in the latest issue of
Alfred Hitchcock or
Ellery Queen magazine and her hand was buried in a bag of Doritos. Her blue, worn recliner was perched squarely in front of the TV. I resented my childhood slave job, because she was closer to the damn refrigerator. She thought it was funny to ask me to stand up from the couch and then say, “While you’re up…”
She bought Tab, Fresca and Diet Pepsi by the truck load and returned all the bottles. Tall skinny glass bottles with white rub marks from the thousands of previous drinkers out of those same reused bottles.
Like every other kid in my neighborhood, I walked to elementary school. Although there were enough kids to supply the school, they were dwindling. The rest of the residents in my neighborhood were senior citizens. My old brick school is now a
community center, having closed down in 1975, due to the lack of kid population.
Our tree-canopied street in Sacramento was lined with small houses (ours was 800-900 square feet), built in the 1940s. No two were alike. The driveways were wide enough for the one car each family owned. I know no one would ever dare do this today, but my sister and I shared a bedroom! Oh, the oppression!
I, like so many children of the 70s, grew up on television (and its four channels). I remember coming home from school to the sound of
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman blasting from the boob tube. Then the worshipped after-school children's programming began with
Cap'n Mitch. Cap'n Mitch was a local TV personality, rumored to be a troll in public, who wore a captain’s hat and introduced cartoons and sometimes hosted this wierd phone game where kids would call in and play Atari-like video games like bowling or shooting, yelling "Pow!" and winning fabulous prizes. After Cap'n Mitch were shows like
Lost in Space,
The Partridge Family and
The Brady Bunch. My mom would start cooking dinner sometime during
Star Trek and by the time the credits rolled, she had food on the table. At exactly 6:00pm every night. I'm certain it's the reason I’m so anal about time today. I will speed up or slow down on the road just so I can arrive somewhere exactly on time. I will get anxious if someone is five minutes late. I will get angry if it's more than fifteen. I once broke up with a guy because he was ALWAYS late. And I'm not talking about five minutes. I'm talking about NINETY minutes. Every time! I wouldn't have made a good boyfriend. Waiting for my girlfriend to put on her shoes and whatever else it is that girls have to wait until the boyfriend arrives to start doing before they are ready to leave would have driven me batshit.
We turned off the TV during dinner, but after the crumbs flew and we wolfed down tiny dry pork chops with instant mashed potatos and canned peas, or tuna noodle casserole (to this day I can’t eat cream of mushroom soup), the TV was turned back on for
Emergency ("We're on our way, Rampart!") and
Adam-12 until the prime time stuff came on. Then it was
Good Times,
Little House on the Prairie,
Maude (“God will get you for that, Walter”), and
Happy Days. Oddly, we never watched the news.
We visited my paternal grandparents' house on Thursdays and watched
The Waltons ("Good night, John Boy"). We visited my maternal grandparents on Sundays and watched
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom,
Lawrence Welk, and
The Wonderful World of Disney, which was always disappointing because they almost never played Disney cartoons, but instead played some stupid nature show. Come to think of it, I was always bored during those shows, but it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
We visited my parents' friends on Saturday nights and while they played cards, we watched
Love Boat and
Fantasy Island ("The Plane! The Plane!"). My mother, playing cards with everyone in the dining room (which was NEXT to the kitchen) would call out to one of us to get her a Diet Pepsi. We were way the hell out in the living room! I guess she at least had the courtesy to wait until a commercial.
When I was lucky or old enough to watch late night TV, Tom LaBrie hosted
Night Comfort which alternated his laid back spots about La Brie's Waterbeds with old movies. Tom oozed groovy 70s with his sleepy New York-accented voice. Who better to talk about waterbeds?
I remember watching
All in the Family, not sure how appropriate that was for a 10 year-old, but I would stress out whenever Meathead and Archie got into an argument. I grew up in a very light-hearted, easy-going household, so I would feel incredibly tense and anxious when the two characters got into their arguments.
I never heard my parents argue. They split up after twenty years of non-confrontational marriage when I was sixteen. I spent a long time thinking if you did argue, it was over. I always avoided arguing in a relationship, but I think I also figured out that you could discuss serious issues without a feeling of confrontation, and without breaking up a relationship.
I decided early on that I was never going to get married. I mean, if you could divorce after twenty years, how much time did you need to know a guy before you were sure?
So, after knowing this one guy for twenty-
one, I relented at the age of thirty-four and said "I do."
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