Good night, John Boy!

Where have TV theme songs gone?

You take the good, you take the bad...

Here's a story, about a lovely lady...

So no one told you life was going to be this way...

Thank you for being a friend...

Sunday, Monday, happy days...

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Sclemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated...

 

Come 'n listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed...

 

They're creepy and they're kooky...

 

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got...

 

Just the good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm...

 

Hey baby, I hear the blues a-callin', tossed salad and scrambled eggs...

 

Now, this is the story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down...

 

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...

 

Look at what's happened to me, I can't believe it myself...

 

Green acres is the place for me...

 

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out...

 

Now, how many of you can still sing the rest of the lyrics to each song?  Go ahead, admit it.  You LOVE singing them, don't you?  Or what about the distinctive tunes of The Waltons, Dallas, Knots Landing, I Love Lucy, Bonanza, The Big Valley, Batman, Bewitched, CHiPs, Knight Rider, Charlie's Angels, Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, Good Times, or M*A*S*H?  Or the original Mickey Mouse Club?  The old black and whites are the best!  I love TV Theme songs and I find modern selections to be a bit lacking.  When I was 2 or 3 years old I would jump up and down every Friday night at 8pm when Dallas came on.  We would crank it up!  It was my favorite song!  Well, second only to Juice Newton's Queen of Hearts.  Every time I hear a theme song from when I was growing up, it evokes an individual memory or sometimes it's just a feeling; the feeling of being 5 years old and believing with true innocence that everything will be okay.  Mommy and Daddy love you, you've got a full tummy, a little brother you're forced to take baths with every night, some hand-me-down clothes from cousin Joyce, a doll named Honey that Grandma Betty gave you that now goes everywhere with you, and a big ol' sand box to let your Barbies play in.  Truth be told, when I was 5, everything was certainly not okay.  That was the year Dad was diagnosed with cancer, which turned out to just be the first shock in a 2 year wave of bad news.  But, somehow, a little boob tube reprieve helped me cope.

 

While I love all of these old shows, the one that affects me the most is The Waltons.  I watch reruns in the afternoons when I'm off during the week and I hum the song to Rocco and he smiles the biggest smile.  And it almost makes me cry; it evokes such powerful memories that I almost can't bear it.  I think about watching it at Grandma and Grandpa's house, sitting on their old sofa, drinking some sweet tea and oh, how I miss them!  And when the theme song (from the later years) is playing and the "old pictures" scroll through, it makes my heart hurt at the loss of simpler times.  The last picture is of Elizabeth, played by Kami Cotler.  She was very young at the time, in her little dress and bare feet, with her hair in braids, carrying a stick and her school books wrapped in a belt.  It reminds me of summer days at Grandma and Grandpa's, gathering eggs, picking tomatoes and cucumbers, playing with Rocky and our cousins in the corrals and then getting whipped with a flyswatter by Aunt Debbie because we were gone too long and she didn't know where we were, the smell of a horse that spends it's days in a pasture (they have a different smell than show horses who are kept in stalls, FYI), walking out to the pond to fish, playing in the stacks of hay, helping Grandpa work on his semi, the same semi where we would play and pretend we were out on the Mother Road in our very own Big Rig, working cattle, shucking corn and snapping beans for hours on end, all of the women-folk buzzing around the kitchen as we prepared to can everything from tomatoes to corn and it was as hot as the dickens from all of the steaming pots, the smell of fresh apple butter and the warmth of it when you snuck a bite from the pot, grandkids taking turns cranking the handle on the ice cream maker while we listened to the adults talk in the living room, watching Hee Haw, playing Wahoo (who remembers that game?!),playing with Grandma's old adding machine that always had a funky smell to it, her green lipstick that turned red when she put it on, Grandpa's large, strong hands (the testament of a man who worked with his hands his entire life), the corner closet with all of our toys in it (the same toys Mom and her siblings played with), standing in front of the air conditioner with our shirts raised up to cool us off, eating at the "kids table" in the living room every Sunday, spending hours looking through Grandma's photo albums, her Aquanet hairspray, Grandpa's lunchbox and thermos that he took to work with him every day, going out to the chilly well house to get jelly or other foods that Grandma had canned, and sitting in their front porch swing as the south wind cooled me off.  Or sometimes I would sit in a seat Grandpa made out of an old metal tractor seat and he and Grandma would sit in the swing and hold hands.

 

Sorry about the run-on sentence.  I'm having trouble with those this week.

 

Some days I worry about what I will teach Rocco.  Will he have memories like these?  Will he know the value of a simple life or will he only know the fast paced world we live in today?  Will he know the joy of spending an afternoon lazing away with a fishing pole in his hand or sitting on the porch swing and watching a beautiful sunset?  I look around and I see so many kids that are overscheduled and struggling.  We've become so programmed to go faster and farther and bigger that we forget the power of simplicity.  I plan on raising Rocco on The Waltons and old Disney movies; D can resist if he wants, but I'm going to do my darnedest!  If the Hallmark Channel, TV Land and others stop airing reruns, I'm in trouble.

Just for fun, I might make him watch Jaws.  Just kidding.

Good night, John Boy!

Good night, Mary Ellen!



 

In case you couldn't place all of the songs, here's the shows they came from and a link to the lyrics and intros:

 

The Facts of Life

The Brady Bunch

Friends

The Golden Girls

Happy Days

Lavern & Shirley

The Beverly Hillbillies

The Addams Family

Cheers

The Dukes of Hazzard

Frasier

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Gilligan's Island

The Greatest American Hero

Green Acres

Welcome Back, Kotter