Saturday, January 8, 2011

Thursday, January 8th, 1976


10:00 PM

As the weather got worse last night, there was some doubt as to whether we would have school today. We listened to the radio starting at 6 AM and finally heard them say Covington Public Schools were closed. The problem is, they're supposed to say Covington Independent Schools when talking about mine. Sheesh! I was a nervous wreck trying to decide whether or not to go in! Mom decided she was going to stay home from work so I did also. All day I kept listening for some proof one way or another but found none. I hope we really were off for a change!

While I was home, I watched that new show MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN for the first time. Wasn't bad I guess but way too serious to be called a comedy. It was just...absurd for the sake of being absurd.

I took two pictures of the snow from the third floor window. My last pen pal letter was returned for insufficient postage! Ugh! I put Doug Wildey's AMBLER strip in as a back-story in my PEANUTS book I made.

Things are just like they've been for the past couple of years but tomorrow at least five things will be different. In Louisville, I could even see an X-rated movie at 17! I've managed to avoid thoughts of that sort so far this year but I can't avoid them forever cold turkey! After I give in though, I'll try harder to avoid them just a day longer next time! I did get ONE today for the first time this year but I easily willed it to go away. I am in charge!

11:00 PM

The snow persists tonight making tomorrow morning a likely predicament also! At 10 o'clock, temperatures hit zero degrees. Brrr! Probably be even lower before midnight. Falling behind in my Sherlock reading. I'll probably still be reading this thing come July. Just watched Bill Bixby as a Punisher-type vigilante on STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO.

NOTES: When I was a kid, Covington schools never closed. Period. It didn't matter that I lived two blocks away, though, there were times I still couldn't get there if the city was covered in ice! By this point, however, they closed sometimes...which made it even harder to know what to expect. Nowadays, they robo-call to tell you when they're closing...at 5 AM.

I would never be a fan of MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN although I dearly loved the later FERNWOOD and AMERICA 2NIGHT spinoffs (which sometimes featured Kip King whom I would later get to know). The AMBLER story I mention was coincidentally about a giant snowstorm and was printed a while back on my blog.

Like many teenage boys, I was in a constant struggle to main control over my hormones. Sometimes, as here apparently, I would be positively chaste in my thoughts and actions but other times I would totally give in. The fact that I had grey hair by age 13 meant that I was never once carded when I bought dirty magazines! Be aware that this subject DOES come up again throughout the year.

As far as the 5 things that would be different the next day, I have no idea what the hell I was talking about. Wish I could remember that STREETS episode, too, but drawing a total blank.

5 comments:

  1. Fernwood 2night ... man. Now there's a memory. I'm about 3 years younger than you, but I'd bought a TV at a garage sale and I remember watching that in my room when I was supposed to be asleep.

    And Monty Python ... who didn't get that?

    Thanks for this effort at sharing your 1976 journal. I really, really relate (but then, I might have been just a wee bit nerdy myself, truth be told)

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  2. I am falling in love with this blog. Makes me wish i kept a diary that I could go back and look at after many years of hindsight and growing up! :-)

    Keep posting!

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  3. I loved both Fernword/America Tonight and Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. A buddy and I had our school's security guard convinced we were on the tennis team (which practiced at a public court off campus), so we could split early and catch the afternoon broadcast of MH MH along with our other fave, the Gong Show. To this day I recall those shows more clearly than most of my high school classes.

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  4. Just watched the SOSF episode "Police Buff". A strong episode which will bring me down the day I "draw a total blank" about it.

    Going through SOSF in 1975 has been a favorite stop in my 70's binge especially when coupled with HARRY O (which I will miss once it ends this season). This Episode "Mister Five and Dime" guest stars Glynnis O'Connor whom I'm sure I'd have a heavy crush on if I was your age att.

    And I am taking a second go-around at MHMH with all this. The first time was when the full DVDs came out five years ago. Shame F2N/A2N never followed suit soon after (though I have the full collection of those...)

    Here's something I recall as a 5-year-old back then: I would watch Match Game '76 in the afternoon (can't recall if before or after kindergarten class) and would see Louise Lasser in braids in newspaper ads and magazine covers and would think she and Patti Deutsch were the same redhead celebrity. (I didn't catch on fast that young. I thought The Jetsons was a cartoon version of The Jeffersons for some reason...)

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  5. I just recently got the complete STREETS...series. Will need to look for that episode. And just last night in 2021 I found myself looking up Glynnis O'Conner to see what she looks like today!

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