Vintage TV: The Price is Right ticket plug

As a kid, I filled large portions of my summers watching game shows, which ruled the morning daytime airwaves in the 1970s. I still love game shows. If I had cable, I’d probably fill large portions of my evenings in front of GSN watching classic reruns.

GSN condenses those reruns a bit so they can squeeze in more commercials. For example, they always cut the ticket plug, where the announcer tells where to write for tickets to a taping. Here’s a ticket plug from The New Price is Right in the early 1970s. Lay it on us, Johnny O!

Most game shows had several music beds for various elements. The Price is Right is especially prolific, with music beds specific to certain games, certain prize types, the showcases, and so on. The show has been around so long that many music beds have been retired! Dozens of the beds have leaked out onto the Internet, such as this, the complete bed for the ticket plug.

Doesn’t that sound a lot better than you ever heard it from your family’s Zenith or RCA Victor?

One-two punch

After five hours of hard rain during an unusually wet spring, a foot of water stood in my crawl space. I took the day off last Monday, borrowed a portable pump, and commenced Operation Dryout. It rained hard Tuesday. Having learned much from Monday’s underground combat, I needed only Wednesday morning to retake the hill. 

Back at work Wednesday afternoon, my partner said, “You look like you got a lot of sun,” as I scratched at my cheek.

An ivy patch surrounds my crawl-space opening. It badly needs weeding – and I didn’t notice the poison ivy among the weeds. I was in it up to my elbows. Sloshing around under the house apparently saved my arms, but not before I touched my face. By Wednesday night my face was so swollen and tight that I couldn’t pucker my lips to whistle. I wanted to scratch my bright-red cheeks off.

First thing Thursday I went to the doctor, who prescribed the usual one-two punch of steroid and antihistamine. I filled the scripts for methylprednisolone and hydroxyzine and took the first pills as soon as I got to work. They knocked out the itching and pain right now. But soon they started knocking me out, too. Unable to concentrate, I drove home. That turned out to be a poor choice; I’ve been better able to drive after three beers. I stumbled into the house, lay down, and was out for five hours.

It turns out that hydroxyzine is known better as a sedative and tranquilizer than as an antihistamine. But it killed the itch better than Benadryl or Claritin, so I stuck with it through one more nap-filled day off work. Between the flooded crawl and the poison ivy, I worked maybe four hours last week.

Time for another one-two punch. I’m going to spray Roundup onto my ivy patch until every last green thing in there is dead. Then I’m going to get estimates to have a perimeter drain dug and sump pump installed in my crawl space. I know from experience that work doesn’t come cheap – but it will be worth it.

Things guaranteed to make me smile

What never fails to make you smile? Here are my top five.

5. An abandoned road.

4. A twisty road I have all to myself.

3. A Studebaker.

2. A steel truss bridge.

1. A dog’s head poked out of a moving car’s window, its ears flying in the breeze.

If you’ve been reading my blog for long, I’m sure none of these surprise you!

Storm damage

Jesus said to the Two Listeners:

Turn out all thoughts of doubt and of trouble. Never tolerate them for one second. Bar the windows and doors of your souls against them as you would bar your home against a thief who would steal in to take your treasures.

What greater treasures can you have than Peace and Rest and Joy? And these are all stolen from you by doubt and fear and despair.

Face each day with Love and Laughter. Face the storm.

Joy, Peace, Love, My great gifts. Follow Me to find all three. I want you to feel the thrill of protection and safety Now. Any soul can feel this in a harbor, but real joy and victory come to those alone who sense these when they ride a storm.

Say, “all is well.” Say it not as a vain repetition. Use it as you use a healing balm for cut or wound, until the poison is drawn out; then, until the sore is healed, then until the thrill of fresh life floods your being.

All is well.

A thunderstorm rolled through last Friday night. I love thunderstorms and often find them calming. This one calmed me until about midnight when the lightning started to strike and the power started to flicker. Then, within a two minute span, the power went out for good, one lighting strike sounded awfully close - pow! – and then one second later, something hit the house - thud! It came from my youngest son’s bedroom. He slept through it, so I went outside to see what happened. I found a large branch hanging off the roof over my son’s room. Here’s what it looked like in the morning light:

Not only did it twist the gutter, it punctured the roof in two places. I also found two other large limbs down in the yard, another hanging by a thread to its tree thirty feet up, and another lying across a downed section of the chain-link fence.

My sons and I got to spend our Saturday cleaning up the mess as much as we could. We filled four lawn bags with the small branches that littered the yard. Trying to remember what my insurance deductible is, I climbed up on the roof, pulled the limb off, and tacked a tarp over the holes. We also made a run to Kroger for supplies to get us through until power could be restored, which ended up being Sunday evening. Goodness, did we wish we could take showers, even cold ones, but the well pump doesn’t work without electricity. But we made the best of it. I kept a decent attitude, and so my sons did, too.

I’m not dancing for joy over my punctured roof, mind you; this is going to cost me money and time away from work. But I’m surprised that I’ve taken this so much in stride. Where does it come from? I’ve done a lot of work on myself in the last five years, but this calm goes beyond that work. No, I have to credit God who reminds me that I’ve been in plenty of unwanted and difficult circumstances these past five years, and he’s brought me through fine every time.

Another storm is rolling through as I write this. Let it rain. All is well.

Update 8 June: It rained hard for five hours yesterday. I checked my crawl space this afternoon and it has a foot of water in it. Guess my sump pump doesn’t work. All is well, all is well, all is well…

Vintage TV: Donahue

In the 1970s, the Phil Donahue Show was appointment television for my mom. She started watching it on cable from WGN in Chicago and then on a local station when it became syndicated. She called it one of the few intelligent programs on TV, at least until Donahue succumbed to booking unicycling transvestites on speed and other “warped society” guests, as Mom called them.

Today I can see the show’s appeal (before it tried to compete with the freakshows on Oprah). He booked some great guests and asked provocative questions. I remember two shows in particular, one with famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair and another with my mom’s favorite singer, Johnny Mathis. But I don’t remember any other guests because, at that young age, I would rather have had ants stuffed up my nostrils than watch Donahue.

From 1977, here’s how Donahue opened on WGN.

And, from my collection, here’s the theme in its entirety!