Let me start by saying I didn't watch much daytime TV in the 60s. After school

I would sometimes watch The Buddy Deane Show, Baltimore's dance show, and

the inspiration for Corny Collins of the Hairspray musical and movies.

Now the fifties were another story, what with The Howdy Doody Show and Disney's

The Mickey Mouse Club.

But my goal from the time I became a teenager (I was 13 in 1960), until I went

into the army in 1966 was simple, spend as much time outside of my house as

possible.

I guess that my friends shared the same philosophy, because we'd always get

together after school for some play time before supper. Very rarely did I have

to call one of my buddies to get together. That was a good thing because we had

a party line on our phone and the woman we shared our line with had numerous

medical ailments to discuss with her friends in the afternoons.

After my parents divorced in the late 50s, my brother and I were told to spend

Monday through Friday afternoon with my father. Friday evenings through Sunday

evenings were spent with my mother. Fortunately for us, my mother only moved six

blocks away, so we made a new set of friends along with the old ones.

Occasionally all our friends from both communities (we were separated by a

woods) would get together and either fight or play.

Anyhow, my mother enforced a strict curfew on our Friday and Saturday nights, so

my brother and I would stretch out on the floor in front of the 14" color

television and watch TV until we were told to go to bed.

We were not allowed any food or drink in the living room, while we watched,as

my mother had a white shag carpet there. A plastic runner ran from the front

door to the dining room. My brother and I were under strict orders not to walk

on the carpet and to stay on the runner. That didn't make a lot of sense to me

since we had to take our shoes off upon entering the house. Were our socks that

dirty? Also, when we watched television off the runner, we had to put on our

pajamas. Even our clothing was not good enough for that white carpet. Our

friends, once they heard the carpet horror stories, wanted no part of that

living room. When they did come over, they stayed mostly in the basement.

To the best of my recollection, some of the shows we watched on Friday and

Saturday nights were:  77 Sunset Strip, 'Bonanza, My Three Sons, The

Flintstones, 'The Twilight Zone, Route 66, Adventures in Paradise, Maverick,

Cheyenne, Sugarfoot (at some point they alternated these three), and I think

Hawaiian Eye and Surfside Six.

Those were the shows I watched with regularity. The others that I watched pretty

much all the time were (and I know some of these are '50s shows) The Adventures

of Superman, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, Wagon

Train, Boris Karloff's Thriller, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Many Loves of Dobie

Gillis, Lassie, I Spy, The Man From Uncle, The Wild, Wild West, and The

Untouchables.

Later on, after I returned from Vietnam, I enjoyed Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In,

The Mod Squad, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Other than those, I can't

recall watching too many other series. I do recall watching The Honeymooners on

a small black and white set in New Jersey in the winter of '68 and thinking it

was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. But my wife and I had just gotten married,

and I had better things to do.

So that was about it. I'm sure I'm forgetting some shows, (perhaps mercifully)

but it was a good decade for TV. which, much like myself, was still a youngster

too. I didn't savor it as I should have because I was young and impatient, and

was easily seduced by the fresh air beyond the front door. But I do remember

those weekend nights on the white carpet, mesmerized by the boob tube.