You have to be really old to remember it but one of the best TV shows, ever, made its debut, on this date, in 1948. "Toast of the Town" hosted by Ed Sullivan was a "must watch" on Sunday night.
We didn't have a TV. It was pretty hard to scrape the money together to buy a TV, on a teachers salary, back in those days. But, we were lucky. The Donlans, who lived across the street, had lots of money and they had a TV and they let us come over every Sunday night to watch the "really big show".
Myrtle Donlon was one of a kind. A great lady with a strong will who did it her way and she didn't much care if you liked it or not. Myrtle loved pink. They built a new house, on that vacant lot across the street, and Myrtle painted it pink. Do you have any idea how much talk a pink house in the early 1940's could cause? Folks came from miles around to see that pink house. And, there we were, sitting in the living room watching "Toast of the Town", in living black and white, of course, with a bit a "snow" you had to put up with because the only TV station around was KVTV in Sioux City and you had to have a big old antenna, up on the roof, to pick up the distant signal.
Later on, Gladys and Lee got a TV set. They must have had a lot of money too. In any event, now we had two houses, across the street where we could go to watch TV. Just about everybody, who was anybody, lived across the street.
Like they say, those were the days.
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