Would you describe yourself as a nostalgic person? Do you find yourself longing for the happy times in your past? I guess I have always been a bit of a sentimental person. OK, in full disclosure, I am a sucker for nostalgia. As my former players will attest, I cried like a baby at every year-end hockey banquet for the teams I coached. I look back at different periods in my life with tremendous joy and I catch myself just smiling, and often shaking my head in laughter, at some of the memories that spark such feelings.
This past Sunday turned out to be a day of nostalgia for me and I sort of dragged my wife along with me. It even inspired me to reach out to childhood friends and relatives to do a very non-scientific survey of their favorite childhood television shows and movies. What I discovered was that I had watched a lot of television and movies and was pretty surprised at some of the ones that came to mind.
What sparked this sudden stroll down memory lane? Well, I was channel surfing and came across a special about an iconic actor from my youth. It was the “Dick Van Dyke 98 Years of Magic” celebration on CBS. So, my wife and I (and Barkley) got comfortable on the couch and took a journey back to our childhood days of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Mary Poppins,” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” It brought back so many memories. Watching the show put us in a nostalgic mood. Little did we know we’d be spending the evening reminiscing about our favorite childhood shows and movies.
Sunday was a nostalgic day all around, starting with an 8:30 a.m. church service that honored our Lead Pastor Jeff Cranston’s 25 years at LowCountry Community Church (LCC). Seeing vintage photos and videos of a young Pastor Jeff from LCC’s humble beginnings on Hilton Head Island with less than 100 members was priceless. With the help of original members Bill and Kathryn Clark and a few other families, Jeff has helped lead the church’s growth to a large campus in Bluffton with over 3,000 people who attend or watch services online today. After the final service of the day, hundreds of our members returned to our church for an outdoor picnic in Pastor Jeff’s honor. It was an emotional day for Jeff and his extended family, and we were fortunate to be along for the ride.
Sunday was also our final softball game of the season, featuring an all-star game of sorts between the Sun City North Side and South Side teams for bragging rights. I must admit then when my neighbor first told me about a game between the North and South, I conjured up the image of us transplanted “Yankees” playing against the local “Johnny Rebs.” That’s the Civil War history buff in me running amok! While my North Side team was favored on paper, the players from the “older“ section of our community won 12-8. It’s the friendships and camaraderie that have made softball my favorite activity in Sun City and continues to bring back many great memories of baseball and softball from younger days.
As we watched the tribute to a very spry 98-year-old Dick Van Dyke, I was taken back to my childhood. An incredible talent as a writer, actor, comedian, magician, producer and director, Dick was one of the first celebrities I was exposed to as a kid. Fellow actor John Lithgow said about Dick’s endless energy and passion for bringing a smile to others, “You’ve been fueled by your own joy!” It was one of more than a dozen colleagues and friends — including Julie Andrews, Carol Burnett, Mel Brooks and William Shatner — who celebrated Dick’s career with respect and heartfelt admiration. Watching Dick smile and seeing the joy and tears in his eyes as he was lauded felt so perfect.
I remember the words to the most popular songs to 1964’s “Mary Poppins,” like “Step in Time,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” and “A Spoonful of Sugar.” But my favorite song that I sang over and over as a kid was “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” It was a joyful song that made you feel happy and free. It brought back so many memories.
“With tuppence for paper and string, you can have your own set of wings, with your feet on the ground you’re a bird in flight, with your fist holding tight to the string of your kite. Oh, Let’s go fly a kite, up to the highest height. let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring. Up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear, oh let’s go fly a kite!”
I can still see my brother and me with the Granatire brothers swinging on their swing set singing that song. Of course, they will probably deny it and be mad that I even suggested these tough guys ever participated in such a childish activity.
For those of us who are Baby Boomers, we sometimes forget that TV was still in its infancy in the early ‘60s. During the show, actor/filmmaker Rob Reiner (who played Meathead in “All in the Family”) mentioned that it was his father, legendary television producer Carl Reiner, who cast Van Dyke as Rob Petrie on the CBS sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show” from 1961 to 1966. It was that show that made Dick Van Dyke a household name. I remember Dick starring in his own variety show and then being a guest star on many other shows including “The Carol Burnett Show,” “Columbo,” and “Matlock,” before taking on the lead role as Dr. Mark Sloan in the police drama “Diagnosis: Murder” during the ‘90s.
Well that got my juices flowing and I asked my wife what her favorite shows were when she was growing up. Suddenly we were shouting out names like “Gilligan’s Island,” “Hogan’s Heroes,” “Petticoat Junction,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres,” and even “The Lawrence Welk Show”!
I asked my mother, brother, sister-in-law and high school friends to chime in via text. While there were some repeats, I suddenly realized how many different shows made an impression on us. Locally in Pittsburgh it was “Romper Room,” “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Paul Shannon’s “Adventure Time,” and as I got older, “Studio Wrestling” and Chilly Billy Cardille hosting “Chiller Theatre.” I would somehow find the courage to sit through classics like “Frankenstein” with Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi in “Dracula,” and Vincent Price in “The Fly.” The original Godzilla movies were personal favorites until they became too cartoonish.
Between Sunday night and Monday morning they kept rolling in. “I Love Lucy,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” “Sanford and Son,” “Batman,” “Cheers,” “The Honeymooners,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Red Skelton Show,” “Dragnet,” “The Monkees,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” “Tony Orlando and Dawn,” “ABC’s Wide World of Sports,” “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour,” The original “Star Trek,” “Land of the Giants,” “Time Tunnel,” “Get Smart,” “My Three Sons,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “Bewitched,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Adam-12,” “One Day at a Time,” “McMillan and Wife,” “Banacek,” and “The Six Million Dollar Man.” The list could go on and on.
A lot of the shows weren’t award-winning material, but it made us all think of other moments from our childhood and teenage years that left some kind of an impression on us.
Cartoons included Johnny Quest, Bugs Bunny, Looney Tunes, The Road Runner and Coyote, Popeye, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, The Archies, Tom and Jerry, Underdog and Speed Racer. Game Shows such as “The Price is Right,” “The $25,000 Pyramid,” “To Tell the Truth,” “Let’s Make a Deal,” “Password,” “Concentration,” and “Match Game.”
Movies listed included “Born Free,” the original “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” The original “Planet of the Apes” with Charlton Heston, “In Harm’s Way,” “The Guns of Navarone,” “The Great Escape,” “Slapshot,” ‘The Godfather,” “Smokey and the Bandit,” and my wife’s favorite, “The Sound of Music.”
From high school, two of my most nostalgic memories were “Welcome Back, Kotter” (I loved Juan Epstein and even modeled my hairstyle after his!) and the movie “Saturday Night Fever,” both with a young John Travolta. In fact, I did my best old-guy version of a ‘70s disco dude at a decades-themed end-of-the-year celebration for our youth ministry staff and volunteers at LCC. The looks I got from the younger staff were priceless!
I did a search of celebrities with a tie to the Lowcountry and discovered that award-winning film director, producer and actor Ron Howard, who I knew best as Richie Cunningham on “Happy Days,” actually owned a home in Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head Island. His son, Reed, played for the University of South Carolina-Beaufort golf team less than 2 miles from our home.
We are at that stage of our lives when we finally get to catch up on all the activities that we put off too often in our younger lives. We are making up for it now, going to see plays, shows and tribute bands including The Jersey Boys, Carole King’s Beautiful, Chicago, CCR, Elvis, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and many more. Oh, the memories. Perhaps this will inspire you to have a conversation with your family and friends on the shows and movies that left you with those joyous, nostalgic feelings.
