September 1966

I wonder if the Statlers arrived in Birmingham all fresh and rested from their previous night's gig at Johnny "Mack" Brown High School.

As much as I tend to romanticize the classic variety-store lunch counters, the expression on this chef's face makes me a bit leery. "On second thought, ma'am, I think I'll have the country steak."

Wouldn't we all love to have a $53.00 mortgage?  Of course, this was back when your average home cost less than a mid-sized car today.  And $5.15 an hour meant you were comfy middle-class.
DAYTIME TV IN BIRMINGHAM, SEPTEMBER 1966

To your left is a great illustration of the network hokey-pokey Birmingham was so famous for back then.   Some familiar shows here - Country Boy Eddy and The Morning Show ... Romper Room with Miss Jane and Cousin Cliff's Popeye Show on 13, Ward McIntyre's Bozo and Pat Gray's Young People's World on channel 6, and of course Dick Breit and Rosemary held court at 12:15 on WAPI-TV's Mid-Day. 

Musical networks aside, this was Birmingham TV as God intended it.

9:00 on WBRC is The Newlywed Game, featuring -- get this -- "Married couples."   NAAAAWW..... Next thing you'll tell me, Cousin Cliff was a magician.

Sister program The Dating Game is at 10:30 on 6.  There the listing shows "Matching couples."  Ummm, didn't they do that an hour earlier on Concentration?

A funny typo: 3:00 on 42 was Match Game (the original '62-'69 NBC run) ... the celebrities that week were Phyllis Newman and Rod Sterling. 

That's the signpost up ahead .. your next stop? 
The PROOFREADER.

GO HERE FOR MORE ON 
MONK'S GOOD GUY
(My wife came in here as I was putting this together, and commented, "That looks like the Shoney's Big Boy, just ... uglier ...")

"And, while we're at it, we'll purchase the land right next to it where that gaudy, ugly, eyesore of a terminal station sits.  Wouldn't a vacant lot look better there?"

(I hope my friends recognize heavy sarcasm when they read it)

Back then, SPUR was owned by Murphy Oil, based in Arkansas.  Today, they're called "Murphy USA", more or less the 'house brand' for Wal-Mart's gas stations.

I see where WAPI-TV 13 is airing a Saturday Morning cartoon called Super Six.   Isn't that a bit ... ironic?

They'd barely gotten started on the REGULAR interstates, and already they're haggling and arguing about I-459!
As you probably know, "Alt 5" was the routing they chose.  "Alt 3" would've been interesting, though.



Whatever your taste in music, Sears had it:

Remember the days of mono and stereo LPs sold side by side?  The records were compatible only one way
-- a mono record could be played on a stereo player without any problem, but a stereo LP could never be
played on a monaural player.  Why?  A mono record player's needle was larger and thicker than one found
on a stereo player.  And the grooves on a stereo record were smaller, finer and more delicate than mono
grooves; a mono needle would've ruined a stereo LP.  This incompatibility wasn't corrected until later in the '60s,
when monaural phonos began sporting smaller needles.

Maybe this bedlam and confusion was why more folks began looking toward 8-tracks.

09/03/2006 -- 933 PM EDT

Okay, let's don our platform shoes, leisure suits and boogie our way forward...
GO TO SEPTEMBER 1976 | RETURN TO "THIS MONTH" PAGE