As a boy, things could never happen fast enough. Growing up, I wanted a new football season to begin as soon as the current one ended. I wanted a driver’s license more than a year before I was old enough to get one.
When high school graduation neared, I wanted to put high school behind me and move on to the next adventure.
Now, I’m not old by most people’s standards (my children would disagree). But I find myself wistfully looking back 35 years and wondering why I didn’t enjoy the present as much as I should have.
I was at my father-in-law’s home recently and came across a collection of videotapes featuring several outtakes from Hee Haw.
That variety show gave the South a generally bad name, but watching the clips now, I find myself laughing out loud. The gospel quartet, featuring Buck Owens, Roy Clark, Grandpa Jones and Kenny Price, made some beautiful music together.
And the country music guests that appeared each week were truly the giants of the day.
But I found myself pulled most of all to the simple little skit featuring Archie Campbell and a rotating cast of characters who sang the same old tune over and over. The comic gag came at the end when they stuck their tongues out at the camera or at each other and went “thhhpptt.”
I taught my children the chorus to that song when they were very young and, to this day, it is a fun moment when soneone in the house breaks out that tune and everyone joins in.
We watched Hee Haw in our house when I was a boy, but it was like torture for me then. My parents enjoyed it and took control of the television set when it came on each Saturday night.
I found myself anxiously waiting for each commercial break because I thought the commercials were better than that show.
But after watching the videos at my father-in-laws house, I realize now that I was in too big a hurry. Charlie Farquharson’s newscasts from the set of KORN TV were brilliantly funny. The gossipy girls were more than just pretty. And the old bloodhound who laid at the feet of the four drunks when they sang Gloom, Despair and Agony, was funny without even trying to be.
If I hadn’t been in such a hurry then, maybe I’d have enjoyed myself a little more.
