When I was a kid, we got two channels on our television, CBS and NBC. . Maybe it was a the grass is always greener thing, but it always seemed to me that the best programs, the ones my friends watched, were on ABC. (I never got to see The Outer Limits or Batman for example.) On the weekends, if the weather was good, I was usually outside during the day, so the TV offerings didnt matter, but in Winter or when it was raining, we were forced to stay inside and watch whatever was on. Saturday afternoons were the worst, with one terrible program after another. Sometimes the boredom was so exquisite that I could only lie on the floor, staring at the screen, filled with ennui so intense I could barely breathe. One of the offerings was a locally-produced program called Cas Walkers Funtime. Cas Walker owned a string of supermarkets in East Tennessee and sponsored the program, which featured several moderately-talented musicians and singers and was really a 30 minute commercial for his grocery business. Cas, who also served as the host, had an extremely irritating screen presense, and if I had had the energy, I would have gotten up and changed the channel to something more stimulating. I suffered through an older, male performer named Honey Wilds who played the ukulele and always seemed to sing Wont You Come Home, Bill Bailey. I was lying there, considering ways to torture my younger brother as an alternate form of entertainment, when Cas introduced a new singer. Big Whoop, I thought, but then she started to sing. Id never heard a voice like that before, and she was cute and not that much older than me. Suddenly, I was in love. After that I never missed the program. This one-sided love affair went on until one week when she didnt show up. I kept watching for a while, hoping shed return, but she never did and I was bereft. Imagine my delight several weeks later when she showed up as a regular on the Porter Wagoner Show, a syndicated show out of Nashville. The rest is history and Im sure youve figured out by now that the young ladys name was, Dolly Parton. It just goes to show that, even in the desert, a rose can bloom.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:53:30 +0000
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