When you grow older, you find yourself thinking more about the past than the future. This makes sense, because you’ve got more of the former than the latter. This weekend I watched a little TV in between studying sessions, and noted the following things…
I love the new digital broadcast TV channels, like Me TV and Antenna TV, that show old programs from my childhood and youth. I watch them quite a lot, especially on weekends. On Sunday after church I had the Burns and Allen show on. They did a story centered on some absurd plan to bring a carpenter in to George and Gracie’s house to build a dresser, so they could pretend to their friends that George had built it himself. (I know that makes no sense. If you know Burns and Allen, you’ll understand sense has nothing to do with it.)
The carpenter shows up, ready to go to work.
He is wearing a suit and tie.
I’m not kidding. It seemed perfectly normal in the 1950s for a carpenter to show up at a work location in a suit and tie.
Of course it was Beverly Hills. That probably makes a difference.
On Saturday night, I was working on a paper for my class, and looked for something to watch on the tube. (I like to study in silence, but years of writing books have led me to prefer TV buzz for writing.) To my delight, Antenna TV was running a Rita Hayworth marathon. You know how I feel about Rita. So I settled in with Fire Down Below, a 1957 flick co-starring Robert Mitchum and a very young Jack Lemmon. The guys play seedy Americans running a smuggling boat in the Caribbean, who end up transporting a passportless Rita, who’s supposed to be a woman of mystery with questionable associations from World War II. Continue reading Three from the past