As a child, I loved Saturday morning cartoons. For four or five hours, the television programming was aimed at kids, and it was gratifying. After arithmetic English social studies and PE, letting your mind rest and indulge in fantasy was a treat.

After cartoons came the Saturday Matinee at the Orpheum Theatre. In those halcyon days, all movies began with a cartoon first. Often the cartoons were different than what we could see on our three network TV stations. Norman Normal was a unique cartoon that could not be found on the small screen. The Pink Panther was another. You could get lost in the hand-drawn animated characters. I learned a lot from Bugs Bunny. I heard my first classical music there. I was a kid before the Psychedelic Revolution. The brilliant colors and strobing lights were a bit beyond my frame of reference.

The Flintstones were on in Prime Time. They are fashioned by reference to families of the early 60s. In those times many women were homemakers and lived to keep the home clean and wait on their husbands after a long day at the office. My stepfather often asked Neva J to get up and get him a glass of water at the dinner table when he was closer to the faucet than she was. Society was sexist and misogynistic.

I discovered early in life that women could do anything that men could do and often better.

Cartoons and movies expanded our young minds. Would we really have flying cars in the year 2000? Were there really grown men as silly and manic antics as The Three Stooges? Would it be possible to climb into the silver screen and live with Lady And The Tramp?

Have you seen enough of Elmer Fudd to notice that his physical features changed a lot through the years?

Make Believe helps us believe.

Tom and Jerry lived in such a nice house that I wanted to live with them.

Each Friday when I accompanied Neva J to the Food Center she usually bought me a 12-cent comic. Often I endeavoured to talk her into a 25-cent massive comic whereupon she informed me that money did not grow on trees and thus 12 cents was plenty. Unlike Frank Costanza who had a silver dollar collection, I had a comic book collection. It measured three feet tall. There were old and valuable Superman Comics. Comic Book Nostalgia had not yet taken hold of Comic-Con attendee’s hearts. Alas, when I moved at the old age of 17 Neva J asked me a time or two to retrieve them but I tarryed. She burned them in the burn barrel that every home in rural America had…