coloring_n

ok fine

COLORING N’ STUFF

With the introduction of color television sets in the early 1960’s, all of us are used to seeing color in our lives (unless you’re color blind and see the world in black and white). In fact, we’re surrounded with color, such as colored cars, colorful characters, colorful language, colored kitchen appliances, colored people, etc. One thing I can never understand is that now days colored people insist on being called “Black People” or more trendy now, "African Americans". I find this ironic that their main organization is called, “The National Association of COLORED people. Hmmm, go figure? I know some very fine
"colored people" and I'm sure they wouldn't mind being called that.

Our Grandmother Sommers had one of the first, if not the first color sets to come out in the early 1960’s. When Tim and I heard about it, we couldn’t wait to go to her house in Norwalk to see it. It was about a week before we FINALLY got there and during that time we were filled with anticipation and excitement. When we finally got there, her new color TV was on and “Bonanza” was on. We were disappointed because the picture had a green tint to it. Of course the early technology of color televisions doesn’t compare to the state of the art these days. At home we NEVER had a color TV. That was considered to be an extravagant luxury. When I was a kid, I used to see the NBC Peacock before a color program and the announcer said, “The following program is brought to you in living color”. I could never figure out why the program wasn’t in color! They said it was. I didn’t realize until later years that you had to have a color set to see color programs! Boy, were we ever “dense” in those days! I’m so used to color programs now, that it seems odd to see old black and white programs on TV Land now. Now days they don’t say the program is in color since they ALL are now. When I watch black and white programs of old TV, when TV had great stuff, unlike today, maybe they should say, "This program is brought to you in black and white". That way color blind people would feel better.

When we were kids, we loved to color in coloring books. Our parents always told us “to stay in the lines” as we colored. However, this was in vain since we always colored “outside the lines” anyway. If you’ll notice (below the page) the plant I colored when I was around 5 or so and the same plant I colored just before writing this story, you will see that I’m getting better about “staying in the lines”. We used to get the big Crayola crayon box for Christmas that I think had 84 different colors in it. Ah, the mother lode! By having 84 colors, we colored all kinds of stuff in the coloring books weird colors. I also then and now love the smell of crayons, which we ways pronounced “crans”. Come to think of it, I still pronounce it that way. I guess my thinking is just “colored”. The one thing I could never figure out is why they had white colored crayons. The pages of the coloring book were white, so we just left the portion we wanted white blank. Maybe some coloring books have black pages, then the white crayons could be used. It sure beats me. The main problem we had with crayons is that when you wore the point down, you really couldn’t put another point on it like you could a pencil in a pencil sharpener. We always tried a pencil sharpener, but it always got plugged with “crayon” which we found out later was wax. When the points of the crayons were worn down, and we got tired of coloring, in the winter we would push one of them into the side of the fuel oil stove and they would melt all down the side of the stove. After a while, it would start to smoke and we “grooved on the smell”. The odd thing was that none of the melted crayons ever made colored smoke.

Being a Three Stooges fan, I, of course, have all 97 of them with Curly, on tape and/or DVD’s. These, according to me, are the best ones that have Curly in them. Although on the Three Stooges Yahoo Groups I’m a member of, there’s always a controversy as to who was funniest, Curly or Shemp. It was Curly! I even obtained a few episodes on DVD that are colorized! Pretty cool to see them in color for the first time! Nyk Nyk Nyk.

See ya later, I’m going to Wal-Mart to try and find a coloring book with black pages so I can finally start using the 84 white crayons I’ve amassed over the years.