Fifty years -- then to now (via television)

Fifty years ago, give or take a day or two or three or so--February 9, 1964; it was a Sunday, as it was this year--my family and I, and almost 74 million others, were watching the televised Ed Sullivan show.  It was a typical Sunday evening family entertainment, but it introduced us to the brave new world of British rock-and-roll.  The Beatles--JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo, their names were always sort of run together--made their entrance in not-so-glorious-but-it-was-what-we-had black-and-white ponderously bulky TV with the itty-bitty screen (tubes inside, of course; remember those?).

Last night it was the wife and myself watching the same show, but this time on our magnificently large LCD-LED flat screen color television (integrated circuitry, tubes no longer needed), which purchase price was probably lots less for us than was the price of the b&w TV for my parents, when adjusted for inflation and as a portion of household income.

It's hard to get my head and heart around the meaning of the half century of time. 

The parents are gone and missed, 

the kid sister still around (long may she persist).  

Others have come--most with us still--including a daughter of renown,  

And a wife named Kathleen, resident of that town

When The Beatles landed at JFK

And braved the screaming girls their music to play.

(That's the best I can do on short notice.)

The parents--to my dim recollection--seemed to enjoy the Beatles' music that night. . .a little bit, anyway.  I remember Mom commenting on JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo's haircut(s), because she thought it almost made them look like girls.  Dad knew better than to disagree with her.

I was a clueless lad of twelve on that date (some might call that a long-enduring characteristic).  To be honest about it, I think that I didn't really pick up on Beatles music until high school, a few years later.  Not that I obsessed about it; I just enjoyed hearing it.  You couldn't miss the stuff in the late '60s.  Friends would sing the songs (not me), and sometimes we spoke them, too.

Hey Jude, did you hear Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was it Yesterday?  Should we just Let It Be and give it a Ticket to Ride so that we can see the Strawberry Fields Forever?

It seemed like heavy material in those days.

Two Beatles remain, two are gone.  Ringo sure is the chatty one, isn't he?   Paul is thoughtful, and when he smiles you know that he is on to something and he wants you to feel good about it.

The '60s never go away, do they?  It wasn't just The Beatles, of course.  The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Johnny Rivers, The Mamas and the Papas. . .too many to list here.  And there was civil rights, the Great Society, Vietnam, Medicare (it seemed important to my folks at the time; now it's starting to be important to me), Sandy Koufax and the LA Dodgers.  Did you know that Koufax, one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time, was--still is--Jewish?  Maybe you did, but I didn't, at least not then in the '60s.  It didn't matter; he was a magician on the mound, for an all too brief period of time.

I didn't know Koufax was Jewish until years later when my Jewish friend Joe mentioned it.  Joe, a few years older--now prematurely deceased--was reformed, not religiously, but a reformed thug.  That's another story.  Anyway, one day we were talking about baseball, and he said something like "Don't you know that Jews can be great baseball players, too?!?"  (I had never thought about it.)  "Sandy Koufax is a Jew!!"  (It was news to me.)  Joe had a really clean Honus Wagner card, too.  Who the hell is Honus Wagner? I said.  Joe told me.

Anyway, when Joe was a still-young reformed thug he repped and managed for some R&R groups that toured the country during the '60s.  He had stories about music and drugs and babes and booze and some more music.  Mostly, it was music (maybe music was about 60% of it).  And, a little bit about the Army.

We had the draft then, and the draft was mostly about sending boys to Vietnam.  What a mess, what a waste.  The Beatles had a few things to sing/say about that, but mostly it was others; at least, for me it was mostly others.  I was lucky.  The draft morphed with the introduction of the lottery system when I started college, but they did away with college deferments that year, too, so I watched the numbers creep closer to mine.  It was close.  I got to stay in college.

Vietnam was on TV.  Oh my gosh it was on TV all the time.  Until it wasn't.  And then there was MASH.  That was better.  We tried to forget Vietnam.  Some should forget, but mostly we should not.  Perhaps fortunately, then, is the fact that it was on TV, so we can be reminded when necessary.  Ed Sullivan and The Beatles were lots more fun to watch.

This week the main viewing is the 2014 Winter Olympics from Sochi, Russia.  Lots of talented young people from all over the world gathered together to do things that the rest of us probably wouldn't even want to attempt.  I just saw somebody on a snowboard launch herself into the air and then turn around and twist a few times before landing.  She landed -- without falling.  I think she won.  How did she do that? 

Almost thirty years ago it was time for the Summer Olympics, right here in Los Angeles and Southern California.  Lots of those events were televised, of course.

We've seen the Olympics on our TVs lots of times in the last fifty years.  Somebody else can figure out how many we have seen; I just know that it's a whole bunch.  I don't watch a lot of it, but I know it's good, and it's real.

Our toys--including TVs--are lots fancier now than they were fifty years ago.  Better quality, too; mostly so, anyway.   Sure, there are lots of reasons to get everybody together for a while on a Sunday night.  Using a TV to see something as special as Ed Sullivan and The Beatles (or their 21st Century entertainment descendants) is as good a reason as any.

Here's my confession:  I like television.  It's been quite the fifty-year journey, and I'm happy that it's been book-ended by The Beatles.