I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

Ah, the services that we grew up with we took for granted would always exist. The guy at the gas station would always be willing to throw in some nice freebie just so we would continue to buy his fuel. Your favorite AM station would continue to blast great rock and roll music across the country after dark. And you could always duck into a phone booth to make a call insulated from the elements and noise of the street.

Individual telephone booths still exist, but the ones that do have been in place for many years. As they decay, they are being removed, to be replaced by small standalone kiosk phones, or perhaps not being replaced at all.

After all, we all carry cell phones nowadays, don't we?

I was a kid who was whisked down Interstate highways at 75 MPH. Billboards had to be huge in order to be noticed.

But my older brothers were able to experience a more relaxed and charming way of travel: Being driven down two-lane motorways that passed through rolling countryside that included one of America's most beloved forms of advertising: Burma-Shave signs.

Burma-Shave got its start back in 1925. The Burma-Vita company made a smelly liniment designed to aid the sore and sick. It sold modestly well, but the company directors concluded that making a product that you didn't have to be in a bad fix to use might be a good move, business-wise.

So they released Burma-Shave that year, with the radical concept that you didn't need a brush to create shaving cream in a cup any more, you could just open a jar of Burma-Shave.

In the summer of 1967, we traveled to Montreal to see Expo 67. On the way back, I got to see some pretty amazing stuff, including Niagara Falls, the Great Smokeys, and about a million painted barns and roadside signs imploring me to See Rock City.

Well, guess what. It worked. My father was relentlessly hammered by me to take us to Rock City. He continued to be pelted with requests until he finally relented, and our big Plymouth was aimed at Chattanooga, TN.

As we drew closer to the eastern Tennessee burg, the signs got more numerous. By the time we arrived at Lookout Mountain, I was ravenously ready to See Rock City!

As hungry as I was to check it out, I really don't recall too much of the actual experience. I remember standing at a high point where I could See Seven States, and a big balanced rock. That's about it, really. But I remember that it was a very, very fun day, and even my staid parents seemed to enjoy it.

If ever a TV show defined what was cool circa 1966, it was The Wild Wild West. from its unforgettable theme song to its intense animated opening (did he REALLY slug that woman??) to its futuristic gadgetry with a Victorian look (which I flashed back to the first time I saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), The Wild Wild West had it all.

It was also pretty darned violent for its time, hence my mother's distress over the fact that I loved watching it.

But she didn't deem it bad enough to forbid me, she would just make it clear that she didn't approve.

But her tacit disapproval wasn't enough to keep me from being tuned in on as many Friday nights as I could have control of the TV. The ones that I missed I eventually saw after school as it aired on the local station about 4:00 in the afternoon in the early 70's.

In 1937, Illini graduate student Michael Sveda was working on trying to synthesize an anti-fever medication. Like all health-conscious individuals of the era, he was having a smoke whilst working. Laying it on the table for a bit, he picked it up and was surprised that the tip tasted quite sweet. That taste prompted him to do more research and seek a patent.

Eventually, he sold the patent to DuPont, which sold it to Abbott Laboratories. Abbott saw commercial potential to using the product as a low-calorie sweetener. So they went through the laborious process of getting FDA approval, and obtained said certification in 1950.

Initially, Cyclamate was prescribed as a drug for the obese. In 1958, it received approval as a food additive. By 1960, a sweetener called Sweet*10 was a big hit in the US. It would make food, drinks, etc. sugary sweet with practically no calories!

What's not to love?

This column was inspired by the sad news of the death of Earle Hagen, former big-band musician who is better known for composing (and whistling) the theme to the Andy Griffith Show. He also wrote themes for a dazzling amount of other series, including I Spy, That Girl, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle, USMC, and a whole lot more.

However, this column is not an obituary for Mr. Hagen. Others have already done a better job of that than I could. Rather, it's a poignant remembrance of when TV show theme songs meant something.

Who can't recall the song from The Beverly Hillbillies? Batman? Green Acres?

Indeed, no self-respecting TV show of our youth would dare take the airways without a well-crafted theme song that we would be whistling, singing, or humming long after the episode had ended.

What happened to all that?

The year was 1972. George Carlin, brilliant comedian best known at the time for his portrayal of the "Hippy Dippy Weatherman" on Johnny Carson and Flip Wilson Show appearances, released an album called Class Clown. The album, which appeared without parental advisory labels way back then, contained a brilliant, highly offensive routine called "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television."

The Seven Words, which you can view here in all their profane glory, exemplified Carlin's rapier-sharp intelligence when it came to deducing how society works. Clark Gable used what was then known as "the D word" way back in 1939 in Gone With the Wind, and from then until 1972, many formerly taboo words had become acceptable for broadcast television.

But there was no doubt about it: in 1972, there was NO WAY you would hear any of Carlin's Deadly Seven on broadcast television.

How times have changed.