I’m just quoting the Wikipedia article, I don’t know, Monty.

I am one of the procrastinators who probably won’t upgrade (or convert) my TV until the time comes that I try to turn it on and it doesn’t work anymore. Not that I don’t intend to buy it, it’s just that replacing my TV is pretty darn low on the priority list. (I’m a heathen who isn’t contributing to America’s economy as fully as he could.)

Talked to a friend today who is “in the know”.

This affects only the people who watch the local channels over the air. If you have satellite or cable, your analog TV will work just fine with the digital converter box.

Which means I can pay scads of money for my children to play soccer this spring for disinterested coaches (well, one of the kids at least) and I don’t have to buy a new TV.

Monty,
If I’m not mistaken, any TV that requires and only has a coaxial connection would be analog. Meaning, if you have to screw the cable into the back of your TV straight from the wall or an antennae. If you have RCA jacks, HDMI, SDI or component, then it is digital. Now, coaxial becomes digital by simple converters from Radio Shack or cable boxes such as FIOS or Satellite. Queuno, correct me if I am wrong.

cactus…what an appropriate name for an Abilenian. Oh yeah, I remember, Bid and Buy. I drove everyone crazy over those Gandy milk carton tops. I was shy too, but I think I was too mesmerized over the prizes to think about being on TV. As I remember, the only thing I was called on to do was yell “Gandy’s!” along with the rest of the peanusts whenever Cousin Pogo cued the Peanut Gallery to plug the sponsor. Or am I mixing Cousin Pogo up with someone else? However, seeing what a TV live set actually looks like in real life was pretty traumatizing for someone who believed in NeverNeverLand…

Remember the song, “On top of old Smokey, all covered with snow, I saw Kalvin Kiwi kiss Cousin Pogo?” I’m pretty sure both those guys were males after a fashion, which I guess means Abilene may have been surreptitiously way out front on gay issues. I’m sure if the guy who wrote the letter to the editor about “Urinetown” had been there, there would have been a complaint registered, but there wasn’t. I guess maybe everyone assumed (erroneously) that Kiwi and Pogo were neuter individuals, and apparently the Old Testament says nothing derogatory about Eunuchs, so it was ok if one Eunuch kissed another. There may be other theories as well, but I’m short of time. I’m sure I’ll think of them later.

I wasn’t aware of a skating rink on Shelton. But in the ’50s, there was one at S. 14th and Matador called the Arcadia. It was widely acclaimed as the “indoor” skating rink.

Oh man, B&W and rabbit ears. My aunt had the first TV I ever saw. It had a screen about the size of my laptop’s. I think programming started at something like 2:00 p.m., but they had a “test pattern” that appeared on the screen about noon. My brother and I would sit there like a couple of hypnotized frogs watching that test pattern until Crusader Rabbit came on. In retrospect I think the test pattern had more action.

Color TV wasn’t available of course, so my aunt put cellophane on the screen, blue at the top for sky, green at the bottom for grass, and pink in the middle for Caucasian skin (although it looked pretty goofy on Amos and Andy).

Of course she had to take it off for stuff like Sea Hunt. Lloyd Bridges being attacked by a pink shark was just too much. She wasn’t fast enough to switch back to black and white for close-ups, though, so everyone had blue hair, pink noses and green teeth. That was okay if you were watching Buck Rogers, though.

And we thought we were in hog heaven. It took many years of suburban sophistication for us to find out how miserable we surely must have been – although the memory of that realization escapes me now.

I had departed Abilene by the ’70s, but I am well familiar with the Towne Crier from the ’60s. I’m curious, Mitch. There are only two reasons a non-native would be in Abilene long enough to get a job. My guess is you were either in the Air Force or in College. Well, there’s a third. Your wife-to-be could have been in the Air Force or in College. Did I get any of that right?

I don’t think I ever ate at Pizza America, but I think I remember passing by it during visits home. Wasn’t it painted red/white/blue, and wasn’t it pretty close to Abilene High?

A did patronize Slim Willet’s Ice Cream Parlor as a small tad, though. You weren’t there, Mitch. In fact you weren’t anywhere yet. Slim, who wrote “Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes,” was an Abilenian. If you’ve never heard the song, you should look it up, just because it is so unique, maybe because it was a country “crossover” tune at a time when country people rarely even crossed over the city limits.

Maybe also because of its meter, which required a great lung capacity, since there was no time to breathe during verses. Slim said he learned the meter during the depression from some Mexican boys who played guitar at the CCC camp every night. He didn’t really give the song much of a chance to become a hit, as evidenced by his pushing the ‘A’ side, “Hadical Corners,” which happens to be a real place, near Odessa. However, “Stars” was in the C&W top ten for nineteen weeks after its release in 1952. Not many people can hum the tune of Hadical Corners.

Other famous Abilenians included Fess Parker, Bobby Morrow, and Plennie Wingo. Parker played football at Hardin-Simmons in the ’40s before transferring to UT. While in Abilene, Parker got his throat cut by a drunk butcher, reportedly cutting 20 veins. If you look closely the next time you watch Davy Crockett, you will see the end of the scar on his chin. It could easily be mistaken for a dimple.

There was some dispute about who started the fight. According to the butcher, who drove Parker to the hospital by the way, Parker knocked him down three times before the butcher got up and cut Davy’s throat in self-defense. Parker told the grand jury that there was no way someone could get up and cut his throat after he had knocked them down three times. I think the guy was actually no-billed (Texas was way different in those days).

The story I always heard, and I give it some weight since it was scuttlebutt at the Sunbeam Super Market (that name is an oxymoron) that the fight was over a woman. The butcher worked at the Sunbeam I was told. At the time of the incident I was a toddler living in a trailer house right behind the Sunbeam. That fact, of course, gives the story no credence at all, as the whole thing happened after my bedtime.

Other than hiring homicidal butchers, the Sunbeam was known for its steaks. You could buy prime beef there. As far as grocery stores are concerned, prime beef is pretty much extinct these days. As poor as we were at the time, my dad still cooked steaks on special occasions. They were always prime Porterhouse from Sunbeam. And nobody could cook them like my dad. I thought all steaks were like that until I was out on my on, and was reduced to buying chuck steaks, which are about a half step up from shoe leather.

Hey, the good thing about the Paramount was, if you got bored watching Olivia Newton-John singing and John Travolta gyrating, you could always lean back and watch the twinkling stars and the moving clouds, eh?

Oh yeah. Plennie Wingo. He was in the Guiness Book of World Records as the only man to walk backwards from Santa Monica, Ca. to Istanbul, Turkey. Now, I think there’s some water between Santa Monica and Istanbul, and I’ve never heard how he managed that.

Monty,

I listened to four versions of “Don’t Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes.” Perry Como and Dean Martin had the healthy lungs for the long meter. I couldn’t tell for sure with Gracie Fields… I “wasn’t anywhere yet” when she made her crackly recording. But Ray Price, he definitely had to take a breather to make it through. It’s an entertaining song for sure. I would have called it pure country, but then I dodged the genre most of my life.

In keeping with its namesake, Pizza America’s corporate colors (that means the sign and the paper napkins) were red, white and blue.

The Paramount’s ceiling stars flickered on a simple two-phase rotation. I think one might have been a little longer than the other, but I had to abort the experiment when Nora Kay noticed I was finger-counting beats from “You’re the One That I Love” for each starry rotation.

It’s not surprising you’d ask why I was there. Abilene is that kind of town. Unlike here where you may not know what your own neighbors do, everyone either knows why you’re in Abilene or they want to know what on earth you’re doing there.

And Cactus, I met my wife in an old house on E.N. 13th, a couple blocks from ACU (where I was a student, Monty). I knew there was a house there because I paid $60/month rent. I always wished the winter winds knew that.

Well, Mitch, we just missed each other. I graduated from ACC in 1969. ACC graduated from a college to a university after I left. They were just waiting till I left so they could get accredited.

The teacher who did the most for me there was Preston Harper. He did it with one word. We had an assignment to analyze a poem – “The Lady and the Tiger” I think it was. Anyway, Mr. Harper called me up to his desk and told me my paper was “perspicacious.” After some hesitation I thanked him, then went home and looked up the word to find out whether I had just made a fool of myself by thanking him. That one word encouraged me and helped me enjoy writing. Up to that point, it had simply been something I had to do to fill up pages.

Were people still skipping chapel regularly when you were there? I remember you had an assigned seat, and they photographed the entire auditorium every day to find out if you were in your seat. I was too chicken to skip, but there were people who would get someone to sit in their seat for them so they could sleep in or whatever. The KGB didn’t have time to identify everyone, but the real dumb miscreants sometimes got someone of the opposite sex to sit for them, making ID pretty cut and dried. Well, in most cases it was cut and dried. Of course they made it a point to become familiar with the more subtle physical characteristics of the regular skippers. When they moved chapel to that round coliseum, I think it became more difficult to photograph. I don’t know for sure how they punished the skippers, although occasionally I did hear something like lions roaring inside the coliseum. Probably just a pep rally.

When I was there, girls were not allowed to wear pants, presumably out of some misguided concept of modesty. Even the cheerleaders wore skirts below their knees. I never could figure out the rationale for that, because I was a leg man, and much preferred the skirts to pants. The last time I visited I was shocked to see coeds walking across campus in shorts. I think the punishment for that in the ’60s was burning at the stake. It wasn’t until the ’70s that I found out there had been something called a “sexual revolution” in the ’60s. I don’t know in which direction it revolved, but ACC revolved in the opposite one.

Ah, but it was an experience, though. So is a good flogging.

You’re right, Jim. I was pondering whether it could be the least read thread in KCL history. Blog history for that matter. I think we even dropped Cactus back there. And he and Monty had to know each other 40 or 50 years ago.

Maybe that’s why he dropped.

Is he a butcher?

Monty, they still took role in chapel by photograph when I was there. Not anymore though. They swipe a card and only by enforced threat of something bad like expulsion does one swipe for friends or sneak away after swiping. It’s CHAPEL for crying out loud. The cheaters need it the most. My room mate, who introduced me to my wife and we’d later name a daughter after, was put on academic probation for skipping too much. I never actually wanted to skip chapel. I felt privileged to get to go there a couple years before transferring to Texas Tech with a couple ACU friends. We met over a cook-out I mistook for a dorm fire. Thick smoke was bellowing out of their dorm window one day so I ran up to make sure no one was asleep in there. I opened the door, the smoke cleared a little, and there on the floor was a firey hibachi covered in T-bone. There’s a good reason they don’t call them cook-ins. They invited me in for a piece, and we put together we were all headed for Tech. We still get together today to fish and hunt a little. One lives here in Keller and the other lives in Irving. Our wives were roomies, too. We’d all still be together today except one recently left after a two year fight with cancer. On her last day she woke up, he wished her happy birthday, she smiled and closed her eyes. She was never afraid. I think she picked something up from chapel at ACU. By the 70′s, they let her go in pants. Not shorts, though.

It’s conceivable that never in its flat, dry history have three people traded a half-dozen memories of Abilene. Thanks for providing that venue, Jim. You deserve a weekend stay. I suggest the “lake” at beautiful Fort Phantom Hill.

Okay okay, I quit. Promise.

I never said I could type worth a crap, either.

I knew we should have written in code.

Abilene = Keller; fun = taxes; Lake Fort Phantom = Lyle Lake; memories = sustainable architecture; crazed butcher = the TIF, etc.

I’m sorry, Jim- I’ll quit after this, I promise- but one more thing for Monty (forgive me). Monty, you noted earlier some famous people from Abilene, & I don’t know ow I forgot this one. Do you know who Randall “Tex” Cobb is? He was in “Raising Arizona”, “Uncommon Valor”, and tons of TV shows (McGyver, etc.), and was on the Tonight show several times. (He wasn’t Tex then). He also fought Larry Holmes for the Heavyweight championship, and went 15 tough rounds with him. He and I (and his brother Dan) practically grew up together, going to elementary and Jr. high together. . Randy was a little younger than me, but we carpooled every day together when we went to Lincoln Jr. High. His mom fixed breakfast for me occasionally (great french toast). He and I played “flick football” every afternoon on the sidewalks at Lincoln while waiting for one of our moms to pick us up. In truth, the Cobbs were great people. You couldn’t find nicer, more likeable or noble kids. They lived somewhere right off of Lincoln Dr. I think, 21st or 22nd street, or one of those streets. Haven’t seen hi m since ’74. BTW, m dad also owned sevice stations in Abilene, and I worked at them. How did I forget this. Again, Jim, just wanted to throw this one last item in. Guess, I’m done, Monty. (Didn’t know how to say this in code!)