Next Stop

By Bob Zettler

January 9, 2026

Last year while I was recuperating from my crash when I coded in the ER, I had a lot of time on my hands as I have tried to recuperate. And when I was awake in bed, I would many times get on the internet. One day this shirt design popped up multiple times in the Google targeted ads. And once I followed the link to get a better look at the pictures on this shirt, “60’s”, I knew I had to have it.

Why?

It shows images of so many of the popular TV shows people my age (now) grew up with. I can still remember the first TV we had. It was a tabletop model in an actual wood cabinet and as all television sets back then, it was CRT (Cathode Ray Tube). Ours was a black and white picture CRT and most all of our entertainment came through it.

And like a number of kids back then, we were glued to what it offered. I believe it had VHF and UHF capability but in Champaign we were limited to what our antennae could bring to us - and back then it was Channels 3 (CBS), 12 (PBS) and 15 (UHF, an NBC station). Some days we could pickup Channel 17 in Decatur, an ABC affiliate, and on those rare atmospheric nights, I even got channels from St. Louis (11), and elsewhere like Indianapolis, Peoria and even Chicago. And all those channels from a simple (cheap) BOWTIE antennae on a 20’ pole that I would have to go outside to turn by hand in order to get a better picture.

Ahhh, but it was the programming that became our addiction. So much so, that our dinner table moved into the living room to be with the TV and we ate off of the original TV trays! And until WAND Channel 17, the ABC affiliate in Decatur boosted its signal, I was just plain jealous of those who could experience programs such as, The Untouchables, The Real McCoys, and of course, The Flintstones that you could only watch on ABC

So we were relegated to primarily CBS and NBC programming and openly craved the day when ABC could enter our homes.

So as you look at this shirt, “The 60’s”, you will find the Munsters, Bonanza, Bewitched, Lucy, Andy Griffith, the Rifleman, Dobie Gillis, Hazel, and a lot more. Even Walter, Barnabas, Fess Parker, Beaver, and…dozens more. And for me personally it serves as a reminder of what was. And how addicted I was to that escape. I mean when I was maybe 12 or so, I rigged up a reel-to-reel tape recorder to directly record the theme songs and music from as many programs as I could. There wasn’t a speaker, headset, earphone or any kind of socket I could plug into on the TV in order to capture the best copy. As such, I patched a cable directly from the televisions speaker to the microphone input.

And I had dozens of tapes filled not only with the music but other things such as the one night I was listening to radio traffic on my Knight/Heath Kit shortwave when I kept hearing this broadcast from the Coast Guard to boat traffic of traffic in the water there. Now I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about on that cold, December 15, 1967 night until a news flash came across on the TV that basically said, “The Point Pleasant Bridge, also known as the Silver Bridge, collapsed into the Ohio River on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people during rush hour due to a small crack in a critical eyebar, leading to a total failure of the non-redundant suspension chain.”

But the one that had me recording hours and hours started on April 13, 1970, and that was the Apollo 13 explosion and amazing return home in a crippled spacecraft. Yes, I was older by then but space had been my major passion since before our family stopped at Cocoa Brach and hoped to witness a launch from Cape Canerval in 1961.

Within a couple (or more) years before that, we had finally got our first color TV. An RCA, with a huge 25” CRT screen! And it weighed a ton… And by now, we could get Channel 17 with our antennae (NO cable, streaming or home entertainment centers back then). Think about that revolution for a minute? First came SONY Betamax in 1975, then VHS players the following year. By the 1980s, Laser Disk players started showing up in homes. Move forward almost ten years and it was DVDs, followed by Blu-Ray and then 4K disks.

But for the average household, it was the Black and White television sets like our 19-inch (?) Crosely in the late 1950’s that got us hooked. Up until then we used our Kodak 8mm camera to obtain moving pictures of our lives and depended on the local movie theaters for the real experience. Interesting aside. In Champaign we had the Rialto, Co-Ed, and the RKO Orpheum and RKO Virginia theaters. And not many might remember but both of the RKO theaters had been converted from a former Vaudeville type theater built after the turn of the 19th Century. The were designed to accommodate both live vaudeville performances and "moving pictures". And, thankfully, the city worked to preserve that heritage and both are still standing but recommissioned. I digress as usual.

Yes, televisions and the programming they brought into our homes had a major impact on young and old. However, old ways sometimes take time to evolve as we still used that Kodak wind-up 8 mm movie Camera well into the 1970’s and it captured a lot of our families history AND even mankind history brought right into our living rooms!

I still remember Apollo 11 landing on the moon. We were all still up and once they were safe and deployed the black and white video camera on the Lunar Module, I used that 8mm to try and capture those images for posterity sake. This Kodak was an interesting design. It shot 50 foot of film on a 25 foot reel. Say what! Yep, it’s just that you had to open the camera when tha first 25 foot had been exposed, turn it over, and shoot the other side. Then the Lab who developed it put it on a 50’ roll. Now you had to do the “turning over” under a blanket as the ambient light would expose the film, so I took great care getting that last 25’!

I was so excited when Dad had it developed and brought it home. That night I set up the projector and screen so we could ALL watch this historic event again and again. No time for popcorn. The lights are dimmed and projector starts doing its job. But first, we get to watch a movie Dad had taken of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus when they had been at the Assembly Hall that year. It’s a three ring circus and…what the %@#$! Here we are watching the circus acts when all of a sudden here comes this huge ghostly apparition bounding across the screen AND IN A SPACESUIT! It took us a moment or two to get over the shock and begin to understand that “we” had DOUBLE-EXPOSED the film. We had turned the film over twice, not once and somehow it got two separate exposures on one film! While I was not happy at first, I’ve come to recognize this as an exceptional movie that makes people laugh when they see it. I’m smiling now as I write this in fact. And it allows us to be able to still savor these events, places, people almost 60 years later.

While I’m on the subject of this camera AND our “talent(s)” in creating memories, I swear my Father used it to capture most of the July Fourth parades and fireworks for years. It’s impossible to tell where one year ends and another begins for the fireworks at Memorial Stadium had the similar fireworks displays most every year. And just before the Grand Finale, there was always Niagara Falls, and Dad had it all. As for the parades, there would be the marching bands, clowns aplenty, Shriners, floats, and by the 1960’s, protesters and even candy thrown from the parade participants. My Father tried to capture it ALL! However, his idea was to pan the camera fast everywhere and you had to be exceptional to figure out what was what.

And as my own memories start to fade somewhat, or get mixed together where reality, memories, and maybe a tad of imagination are mashed together - and I feel like I’m in an episode of “My Three Sons” or even the “Outer Limits” - my taking the time to try and recapture some of the essence and impact of Television is not only therapy but will hopefully let others learn a little about me AND know that they aren’t alone…

Yes, nowadays I wish I could travel back to some of those times and places, as they are my “Stop at Willoughby.”