At Least We Don’t Have to Worry About These Things

As a kid, growing up in the sixties, I watched a lot of television. Probably not more than 12 hours a day, which didn’t seem like so much. Of course, we only had 3 channels, but I couldn’t watch more than one at a time, so that didn’t matter. I didn’t know anyone who had more than one TV.

Watching Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Lassie, and other shows of that generation, they inundated me with dangers I thought would plague me for the rest of my life. Fortunately, the actual risk was more than a little over-stated. That was a good thing, as I spent a good part of my youth, glued to the old black and white Sears TV with a BB hole in the screen (that’s a different story). And the other part wandering through the woods, fields, and marshes near my house. And that’s where all the icky stuff was.

Animals

I grew up with a dog and always loved animals. But most of the ones on TV shows were dangerous and scary. And they were everywhere. You couldn’t walk through the woods without getting attacked by a cougar. Sometimes it was a bear, but mostly, it was a mountain lion or cougar. You’re walking along the trail and just as you pass under a huge oak tree, you hear the growl. Next thing, you’re in the dirt wrestling with a cougar. And since I didn’t carry a 10-inch Bowie knife with me, that would have been the end for me.

But cougars were far from the only threats out there. Later in life, I did a lot of backpacking and camping, but as a kid, there was no way. I knew that anytime you lay down in your bedroll for the night, you would wake up with a scorpion or rattlesnake in the sack. I still remember Luke McCain spending the entire episode sweating in the desert, too afraid to move. And since I was usually alone, there would be no one around to suck the poison out of the wound.

But the worse thing was when the animals all got together. Stampedes were everywhere. Horses, cows, buffalo, even elephants. Tarzan was always getting hung up in an elephant stampede, usually with a woman who twisted her ankle. Anytime you had more than a half dozen animals in a scene, you just knew a stampede was forthcoming. I always had to keep one eye looking over my shoulder walking through the woods, expecting a band of squirrels to come thundering through the pines.

Holes in the Ground

Either an old abandoned well (why would you abandon a well?), or a hidden cavern, holes were everywhere. And if you crashed through a hole in the ground and fell into a cave, you could bet the whole thing would collapse before you could find your way out. The only good news is the pile that blocked the entrance would be handy, fist-sized rocks, easy to move. The bad news is, no help would come until you got the last rock out of your way.

But a well was another thing. There’s no way out but up, and if the well had a bucket on a rope, you could bet the rope would fall in the well with you. And I never took my dog with me into the woods, so he couldn’t run home and tell gramps I had fallen down a well. Even if Toby was with me, he would have run home and told my parents it was time to eat.

As a kid, you had to suspend a certain amount of disbelief to watch any TV show, but I have to say, Lassie stretched it to the breaking point. How often could some kid fall down a well? I expected one time, Lassie would run home and flop down in the shade. “Freakin’ kid keeps falling down wells. Screw him. Let’s eat!”

Quicksand

This was the big one. Quicksand was everywhere. I don’t think a single TV star was ever safe from it. I’m pretty sure Will Robinson found some quicksand on some distant planet. Wandering around through acres of forest, I just knew this would be the end of me. Plus, I never carried a rope and didn’t even own a horse, so I was screwed.

The problem was, I knew once you stepped into the quicksand that was it unless you got rescued. And since my parents had no idea where I was, that wasn’t likely. This was long before playdates. All they knew was what I told them. “I’m going outside.” As you can imagine, outside covered a lot of territory. And most of it covered with quicksand.

The only thing I had going for me, I considered myself one of the good guys. The good guys always got rescued. Even if I was up to my chin in quicksand, (it always got up to the chin) some random stranger would come along and hold out a handy stick for me to grab. The bad guys never go out. They screamed and thrashed until it got up to their chins.

The next thing you saw was just their hat. There was always a hat.

In this big, ugly adult world we live in, there are a lot of things to worry about. War, natural disasters, and deadly viruses. But at least I can go through life feeling safe from these three things.

Well, maybe not quicksand. I still watch out for that.

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