“LIFE WAS BETTER IN BLACK AND WHITE”
Steve Vaus
A Baby Boomer Exhibit
July 16 and 20, 2006 & August 13 & 17, 2006
Anyone under 40 probably doesn’t know what Baby Boomers mean by black and white, rabbit ears, snow, and test patterns nor do they know who said, “Aw, gee, Wally.” There was the American Band Stand and Dick Clark and Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. The wave of the Baby Boomers started school in the easygoing 1950s, and then experienced a wide range of political and societal events in the 60s. President John F. Kennedy “spoke” to many Baby Boomers when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Boomers joined the Peace Corp and did good and great things around the world. And, there is not one of the older Baby Boomers who do not remember exactly where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Then The Beatles invaded America and a revolution in music began; we could make a difference and change the world; the escalation of the Viet Nam War; our brothers, husbands, and friends were drafted, and 58,249 names listed on a black wall (including five from Greencastle-Antrim); disillusionment with the government; “Don’t trust anyone over 30;” sit-ins; the Civil Rights movement, riots, and Resurrection City.
Do you remember Barney Fife, the Little Rascals; Gunsmoke; Saturday morning westerns with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and the Lone Ranger; Mr. Wizard; Lassie and Rin Tin Tin; M-I-C K-E-Y MOUSE; Miss Nancy and Miss Sally and their magic mirror on Romper Room; “Say, kids, what time is it?;” Captain Kangaroo; transistor radios; the Nelsons and the Cleavers; I Love Lucy and Superman; or listening to the first-manned space shot over your classroom PA system?
This exhibit is dedicated to you – the Baby Boomer.
P.S. For your ease of reading,
the text (where possible) is in large print.
J
Life was Better in Black and White
"Pop goes the weasel, and the
Jack-in-the-box jumps out of his house, and that means it's time for the Romper
Room school.” Romper Room aired from 1953 to 1994. It was an
unusual TV program in early television history because it was franchised as well
as syndicated. The franchising 
permitted
local TV stations to create and televise their own versions of Romper Room
with local hostesses. Romper Room was first filmed and telecast in
Baltimore, which is the version all of the Baby Boomers in this area remember.
The broadcast headquarters were eventually moved to Chicago and later returned
to Baltimore in 1981.
If you are a Baby Boomer who grew up in this area, serviced by the stations of the greater Baltimore area, you remember Miss Nancy (Claster) and Miss Sally (Claster Gelbard), her daughter, as the series hostesses. Nancy Claster and her husband Bert produced the original series under the name Claster Television and later Bert Claster Productions. The Clasters also trained the local franchise hostesses around the nation, many of whom were former kindergarten teachers.
Do you remember Mr. Do Bee, the giant-sized bumblebee? He was the equivalent of our children’s Big Bird on Sesame Street. Mr. Do Bee taught us lessons on good behavior. “Do Bee good boys and girls for your parents.” “Do Bee good boys and girls at school.”
Were you lucky enough to have Miss Nancy call your name when she saw you in her transparent, magic mirror? “Romper, stomper, bomper, boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me do. Magic Mirror, tell me today. Did all my friends have fun at play? I can see Sandy, and Janet, and Timmy, and Patty, and Linda, and Larry, and Bobby, and all of you boys and girls out there!”
When
you hear the William Tell Overture, does the following come to mind? “A
fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty, ‘Hi ho
Silver, away!’ The Lone Ranger rides again! Return with us now to those
thrilling days of yesteryear!” If so, then you are a Baby Boomer. Although the
“new” TV series called the Lone Ranger began in 1949 and only ran until the
mid-1950s, Clayton Moore will forever be the one and only Lone Ranger. Only
five of the eight seasons had new episodes: 1949-1950, 1950-51, 1952-53,
1954-55, and 1956-57. Moore also played the Lone Ranger in two movies – “The
Lone Ranger” and “The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold.” After the series
ended, he also portrayed the Lone Ranger in television commercials for Jeno's
Pizza Rolls,
Dodge, Aqua
Velva and Amoco. Later in his life, he wrote the book, “I Was That
Masked Man.”
Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, was played by Silverheels, a Canadian from a First Nations reservation in Ontario. Tonto rode a painted palomino pony named Scout. Kemosabe is a word form the language of the Patawatomi Indians. The word means “faithful friend” or “trusty scout.” Tonto is also a Patawatomi word which means “wild one.”
The producers of the series had great foresight for the commercial appeal of the series’ future, when they decided in 1954 to tape The Adventures of Superman in color, even though there were no color television sets at that time. The Cisco Kid was the first TV series to be filmed in color. After a year’s hiatus, the producers decided to film another season’s worth of shows in 1960.
There are many speculations about how George Reeves died. The coroner’s report officially says that he died on June 16, 1959 of suicide by a gunshot wound to the head. One story says that there was evidence of wrong doing. No one will really ever know, though.
Black and White by Steve Vaus
(Under age 50? You won't understand.)
You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.
Pull a chair up to the TV set,
"Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."
You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June.
It felt so good. It felt so right.
Life looked better in black and white.
I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys,
Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys,
Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train,
Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane.
Father Knows Best, Patty Duke,
Rin Tin Tin and Lassie too,
Donna Reed on Thursday night! --
Life looked better in black and white.
I wanna go back to black and white.
Everything always turned out right.
Simple people, simple lives...
Good guys always won the fights.
Now no! thing is the way it seems,
In living color on the TV screen.
Too many murders, too many fights,
I wanna go back to black and white.
In God they trusted, alone in bed, they slept,
A promise made was a promise kept.
They never cussed or broke their vows.
They'd never make the network now.
But if I could, I'd rather be
In a TV town in '53.
It felt so good. It felt so right.
Life looked better in black and white.
I'd trade all the
channels on the satellite,
If I could just turn back the clock tonight
To when everybody knew wrong from right.
Life was better in black and white!
My Mom used to cut chicken,
chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no
bleach, but we didn't seem to
get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw
sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper
bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a
pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager
was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top
Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with
air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but
they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now..
Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much
harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and
staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had
then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be
proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo,
X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.
Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee
sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction
sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome
(kids liked it! better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got
our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle
of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for
leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our
butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the
front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could
have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such
a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single
person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How
could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were
obvious! ly so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that
the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU
MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING
The
Indian Head Test Card was a
black and white
television
test pattern that was introduced in
1939 by
RCA of Harrison, New Jersey as a part of the RCA TK-1 Monoscope. 20th
century television became so important socially that this mere technical image,
covertly identified as a branded industrial product, has become a historic
cultural icon.
A TV viewing ritual
The Indian Head Test Pattern became familiar to large TV audiences that had bought television sets from 1947 on. The Indian Head would often follow the formal television station sign-off after the United States national anthem. This Indian Head pattern was also used in Canada, following the Canadian national anthem sign-off in the evening.
The test pattern could be seen after sign-off while the station was still transmitting, seen while transmitting prior to a typical 6 AM formal sign-on, or seen for many morning hours on newer low budget stations that typically began midday local programs around 10 or 11 AM.
During the late 1950s this test pattern began to be seen for gradually less weekly time, after fewer sign-offs, on fewer stations, and for shorter periods in the morning because newer TV equipment required less adjusting. In later years the test pattern was transmitted for as little as a minute after studio sign-off, while the transmitter engineer logged readings and then turned off the power.
