...it's finally here?

I'd peeked out on the porch between medication bouts and not seen a box; that's because, as I discovered when Willow persuaded me she needed to go out, the mailman left it on the driveway next to the garbage can!

Get Smart had arrived. (Well, there's two of my three "series-on-DVD" "Grade A" wants. I already have America. Now where are season sets of Lassie, Classic Media?)

The set is done in a clever box in which you have to open a couple of "doors" before getting to the "phone booth" and the individual season packs. They are decorated in "mod" 1960s colors and decor and each set has a bunch of extras on it, like clips of Don Adams on The Bill Dana Show or bloopers or special featurettes done for the set.

I had time for only two episodes before having to deal with my part of dinner, so of course I chose my favorites: "Island of the Darned" (the Most Dangerous Game spoof) and "99 Loses CONTROL." I always loved "Island" because it had more dramatic moments than most GS episodes and back as a kid I had fantasies of Max as action hero, not bumbling boob. After seeing "Island" I always wished Don Adams had done some dramatic turns. Would have been cool to see him in a dramatic role in one of the Quinn Martin dramas of the early 70s, like Cannon or Barnaby Jones. Or maybe on 1975's Ellery Queen, which featured so many classic television actors.

The "99 Loses CONTROL" episode would today be called "a 'shipper story" by the fans. It certainly made the fans of Max getting together with 99 grin, especially the opening scene, where Max's hurt feelings are played straight and very palpable. Great stuff.

Back in 1965 when the series premiered, I knew Adams mostly as the voice of Tennessee Tuxedo, although my parents watched The Bill Dana Show on which he played Byron Glick, the house detective (and did several Max-like routines). I was nine years old at the time and my getting to watch Get Smart was not without its obstacles.

My parents bowled on Saturday nights and I was always taken along. I could bowl if I liked, but I was never very good at it, even though it was duckpins and I could easily lift the small bowling balls. I could either throw hard with bad aim or aim well and not throw the ball with force enough to knock down more than a couple of pins. Usually what I did was either sit at the tables behind the alleys writing or illustrating a story I had written (if the place wasn't crowded I would go in the ladies' room and act out one of the stories I'd written) or see what was on the television that was behind the counter. We usually went to Garden City Lanes, which is long gone and now replaced with a strip shopping center. This was the largest bowling alley in Rhode Island, 36 lanes, and owned by "the Zarella boys," Tommy and Ray, who had also owned the Speedway Lanes within walking distance of our house. (This was the new Garden City building, not the old one, which I vaguely remember because the waitress at the snack bar, Cecilia, could always be counted on to give me a glass of milk, which was supposed to be reserved for the coffee.)

Dad was great friends with Tom and Ray and eventually they knew me, too, so they usually would comply when I walked shyly up to the counter and asked if they could change the channel to Get Smart; the other employees, which included Bobby, Vinnie, and Teddy (the latter who later became a state trooper), also granted me this privilege. So I watched most of the first three seasons of Get Smart leaning over the counter of the front desk of Garden City Lanes watching a black and white portable television.

Well, except when there was a Providence College Friars basketball game. I learned to hate basketball at an early age. :-) (I had constant problems with basketball. Because of the Boston Celtics, I missed a lot of Dr. Simon Locke episodes, too. Phooey.)

Of course there was the time we went to Legion Bowladrome instead and I settled down to watch part two of "Ship of Spies," only to have an older man come over to change the channel to The Lawrence Welk Show! Arrrgh!

It was a little better when Get Smart moved to 8 p.m. with The Ghost and Mrs. Muir following, and easier still when the show moved to CBS and Fridays.

Despite the basketball games and the fact that my dad had his car stolen from in front of Garden City Lanes, I still remember those Saturday nights at the bowling alley—and that clunky old television on which I watched my first episodes of Get Smart—with great affection. It was fun, guys...

Labels: memories, television

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