Labor Day Means A Lot of Things: Jerry Lewis, TV Guide and The New Fall TV Season

When I was growing up on the East side of Flint, Michigan – Labor Day weekend meant three things and none of them were associated with the real reason for Labor Day.  Labor Day weekend signaled the end of summer and that meant having to go back to school and all of the “fun” associated with that. 

Labor Day weekend also meant having to endure another Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon – but back then there were actually real stars performing on the telethon.  It’s hard to get all excited about the Jerry Lewis telethon today when the talent is on par with a junior high school talent show – plus – anyone and everyone who watches the show today wonders how many more of these things Jerry can do before he takes the big dirt nap.  Hell, he’s barely on the show very much as it is – a few hour in the beginning…an hour or so in the middle….and an hour or so at the end.  (He’s got to be there at the end so we can see if he really blubbers it up during his rendition of “You Never Walk Alone”)  And let’s be honest with ourselves – is it really any fun watching the telethon these days without hearing Ed McMahon announcing some new numbers on the tote board?

And when I was growing up, the Labor Day weekend also signaled the beginning of a new television season and the most anticipated magazine of the year (before Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue and puberty arrived in my life) was TV Guide’s New Television Season Preview Guide.  The preview guide issues of TV Guide were the biggest issues of the year with synopsis of all of the new shows and pictures of all of the stars appearing in them and if you loved TV Guide – this was the issue that you were waiting for all year long.

The Summer Preview Issue also gave you your first look at what the local television stations in your area had planned for their viewers – such as what new syndicated shows they purchased and how they scheduled them.  I mean, when you’re a kid – nothing pisses you off more than to discover that your favorite show was no longer on the schedule of your local TV station --- “How dare they cancel ‘Star Trek’ reruns so that they can show Dinah Shore’s talk show in the afternoon!  Those bastards!!!”

If you only read TV Guide once a year – the old Summer Season Preview Issue was the issue to read and to imagine all of the information was compiled all together in one magazine that you could buy at your corner grocery store for fifteen cents!  What a bargain!  The Guide itself, in its digest-size was a thing of beauty – with its glossy pages filled with stories about TV and TV personalities and then there was the listings section with the black or white TV channel numbers, TV show title, type of program and program length….now that was TV Guide.  When they switched to using a grid to show the evening’s television schedule is when TV Guide lost me and then they switched the format to make TV Guide look more like a magazine and they have jacked the price up to $3.99 an issue…what are they thinking!? 

And much like TV Guide is a thing of the past – there was more news coming out concerning television, or should I say, the video industry that’s kind of sad.  It won’t be too much longer before Blockbuster video stores become a thing of the past with the announcement that they are going to be closing about eight hundred more stores as they reorganize their one billion dollar debt. 

In all of the years that Blockbuster video has been open – I probably rented one movie from them and I think that I bought one of their used previewed movies.  It’s not that I didn’t like Blockbuster, but I was a bit loyal to my friend, the late Jack Hood, who owned Rainbow Video in Flint.   I think it would be safe to say that Jack Hood owned one of the first video stores in the Flint area and one of the reasons that it was one of the best places to go to rent a movie was because Jack and co-owner Gene Krusewski loved the movies.  When you went to Blockbuster or any one of the other chain video stores – the people behind the counter were interchangeable from the local McDonalds with kids working there just to make a buck and they could care less about the movies.  Jack and Gene appreciated their customers and loved talking about the movies and were able to turn that love into a business.  But the type of store that they operated has become a thing of the past – much in the same way Blockbuster will be in the months ahead – victim to cable TV pay-per-view, the dollar video kiosks, Netflix and video downloads from your home computer. 

Dumb TV Alert: 

I can watch some pretty dumb shit on TV and feel no remorse about it – but there is one level of dumb TV that I will not lower myself to and that’s having to watch “Dancing With The Stars”.  The producers of this show could resurrect Jesus Christ and have him compete on “Dancing With The Stars” and I will not watch it.  For one thing – it’s ballroom dancing…and the other thing…who in the hell are they fooling – some of the stars on this show would have a hard time convincing people in their own homes of their star status. and what does it say about your star status if they do choose you to be on this show.   

The producers of DWTS announced who the stars that will be competing in this season’s show and what a list: 

• Singer Michael Bolton (I don’t think he could sell one of his CDs today on QVC – which should give you some indication of how his career has been going)
• Former LA Laker forward Rick Fox
• Comedian Margaret Cho (who is in the cast of Lifetime’s “Drop Dead Diva”)
• Florence Henderson of “The Brady Bunch” fame and has been hosting a senior citizens talk show on one of the cable networks.
• Jennifer Grey (who played “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing” and who’s career has been pretty much off the radar ever since she had a nose job)
• “The Situation” from MTV’s “Jersey Shore”

But the “star” that really caught all of the attention was none other that Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol (named after the city where ESPN is located in Connecticut).  What is this kid’s claim to fame?  She’s Sarah Palin’s kid…you remember…the one who got knocked up and was going to marry the father, but decided against it…and then they got back together again…announced that they were going to get married….and decided against it again.  And you have Bristol trying to be the poster child to tell all young girls about not having sex before marriage and how rough it is to be an unwed mother…blah blah blah.  Yup, this was the kid whose mother chastised Barack Obama for being a part of the “celebrity culture”…yet it sure does look like she and her Mama are profiting pretty well from it.  I hear a season of being a star on DWTS is worth something like $250,000 and Mama Palin doesn’t open her mouth unless she’s paid for it.

I have rambled enough…I think I’ll just wrap this thing up.  Enjoy the Labor Day weekend and until we meet again…remember…it’s only TV.

You Can Take Me Out Of Flint, But You Can't Take The Flint Out Of Me

Paul's Pipe Shop in Downtown Flint

You can take me out of Flint, but you can’t take the Flint out of me.

When I moved to the Port Huron area from Flint some twenty years ago – there were a lot of things that I missed about my old hometown – first and foremost – The Flint Journal. When you live in Flint, you can bitch and complain about the newspaper, it’s only when you move to another town and it’s not delivered to your doorstep daily that you realize just how much you miss it. Back then, the Flint Journal had substance and girth compared to the ultra light Gannett owned Port Huron Times Herald – a newspaper with sections as large as ten whole pages. There were occasions when I would drive this store in the city of Capac (about twenty-three miles away) that carried the Sunday Flint Journal and buy a copy to take home to read. I kind of felt like one of those people who make a big deal about buying the Sunday New York Times and then dedicate their whole day to doing the crossword puzzle and devouring every page and article in the paper – except I was doing it with a Flint Journal….imagine that.

When I moved to Port Huron – I didn’t know a lot of people and some nights my entertainment consisted of coming home from work and eating what I call “a Flint dinner” while watching television. I didn’t have HBO or Showtime – just basic cable – but occasionally my friend (the late Jack Hood from Rainbow Video) would send me a box of screener movies that he had received that I could watch while eating dinner. This dinner was not a healthy dinner by any stretch of the imagination – but it was filling – and it was pure Flint. I would go to the local store in Port Huron and grab a the biggest package of Koegel’s polish sausage that I could find – fry them in a pan on the stove and would then plate it with the perfect Flint companion food -- Paramount potato chips (which were still available at the time). Now that’s a dinner!

Here’s another thing that I took for granted in Flint that I couldn't get in Port Huron some twenty years ago – bagels! I’m not talking about those Lender-like bagels that you can find in the bakery section at Meijer – I’m talking about real bagels like you use to find at Pumpernik’s when they were in business. What I would have given for one of those huge crusty bagels from Pumpernik’s with my morning coffee. Twenty years later, there’s still no place in the Port Huron area where you can purchase real bagels – so anyone who’s reading this where you can purchase real bagels – enjoy them and whatever you do -- don’t take them for granted.

You can’t write about memories of Flint without mentioning the one other item other than cars that Flint is known for – the coney island hot dog. About three months after I moved to Port Huron, I decided that I would go to lunch at the downtown coney island and I got into a discussion about coneys with the cook behind the grill there. The discussion about Flint coneys compared to Detroit/Port Huron coneys is similar to the pizza debate that people of New York and Chicago have over their pies. This cook would have nothing to do with a Flint-style coney, and if I remember right, he made some disparaging remarks about Angelo’s in particular. All I can remember is thinking was how much of a bastard this guy was – how dare he insult the Flint style coney – especially after you have eaten one of his runny ass chili slop dogs. Don’t let anyone disparage the Flint coney dog – they’re definitely in a league of their own!

A lot has changed in twenty years. The Flint Journal has been downsized to a three-day a week newspaper – but even at that – it’s still a better read than the Port Huron Times Herald. I no longer have “Flint dinners” – although I am able to have coney nights with my family – thanks to those big delicious bricks of coney sauce that we purchase from Abbott’s Meats just about every time we visit the Flint area. Then, there are the bagels – and there’s not a whole hell of a lot we can do about that.

The Flint Journal, Pumpernik bagels, Koegel polish sausage, Paramount potato chips and Flint-style coney islands. Some of them have changed. Some are gone. Some remain. Along with those items – there are other things about Flint that I have pleasant memories of that have shaped me into the person that I am today…such as: having my picture taken in the four for a quarter photo booth at Kresge’s, ice skating with friends at Whaley Park, seeing the movies “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Woodstock” at the Palace, buying my first FM radio at Montgomery Wards, and even bumping into my old high school classmate Melvin McCree buying lottery tickets at Paul’s Pipe Shop.

I have pleasant memories of being a child and checking out “A Cat In The Hat” from the library at Potter school, eating fish n’ chip dinners from St. Leo the Great on Friday nights, enrolling in the summer radio workshop at WFBE, learning road safety at Safetyville and cooling off on a hot summer day in pool at Kearsley Park.

I enjoy where I’m living today and the life that I have in the Port Huron area, but I can’t deny the impact that living in Flint has had on me. Ask anyone who has left Flint for other cities and other towns and I’ll bet you a dime to a Dawn’s Donut they’ve got stories, too…because it’s like I said earlier….You can take someone out of Flint, but you can’t take the Flint out of someone who’s lived there.