Old TV is Better TV - Updated

Just like "OLD" music (50's, 60's, 70's), old TV is better. In May the network TV shows have their season finales and then in the summer months there just is not much to watch. Here at Lost Creek it has poured down rain every day for about the past week putting a damper on most outside plans, so we've watched more TV than I guess we normally would. About the first part of June I got to scouting around on Direct TV looking for other stuff to watch. I came upon Encore Westerns and found several of the old TV shows from the 60's. We had already been recording the Rifleman off of WHT (a religious channel of all things). On Encore Westerns I have begun to capture some of the old favorites I grew up with such as Have Gun Will Travel, Cheyenne, Wagon Train, Maverick, Lawman, and the Virginian. The neat thing is that I probably watched each and every episode of these while they were on prime time, but over the years I have conveniently forgotten most of them.

Sweet Wifey has fallen in love with The Rifleman. We collect two 30 minute episodes every weekday and we can't wait to watch them. The show starring the late Chuck Conners and Johnny Crawford is a rather simple and straightforward saga of a widower rancher and his son trying to make their way through life on their 1880's ranch in New Mexico territory. Seems like there is trouble at every turn for the father and son combo but in the end, good always prevails over evil and important life's lessons are frequently learned by father and son alike.

When I was a child my father and I never missed The Rifleman and I remember I had a toy rifle with the circular lever reminiscent of the firearm carried by Lucas McCain.

Have Gun, Will Travel is another of my favorites starring the late Richard Boone as Paladin. Paladin was a gun for hire, a "soldier of fortune", a mercenary of sorts. Actually Paladin in spite of a gruff exterior was a "good guy" and ended up not using his gun except in extreme circumstances. He frequently found himself in rather unorthodox and sometimes humorous situations.

I remember that my mother hated watching Paladin stating that Richard Boone was one of the ugliest human beings ever created by the Almighty. My father and I ignored her and watched him every week.

I won't give you a synopsis of all these old shows. If you're interested, check out ENCORE WESTERNS and I guarantee you'll get your fill of these old shows as well as some pretty good old movies. No matter what we watch here it seems these stories are well written, well acted, always teach a life lesson, and never blur the lines between good and evil.

It is sad that only a finite number of all these shows exist and we will eventually be into the reruns or the reruns. Perhaps I should get a multimillion dollar gubment grant to develop a drug that would create amnesia of these programs. Then we could watch them all over again as if it were the first time. Now how cool would that be?

They just don't makem like they usta.

ADDENDUM - Another cool thing is all the actors you see on these programs......famous actors BEFORE they were truly famous. In The Rifleman alone we have seen Vic Morrow, Robert Culp, Lee Van Cleef, Adam West, Dennis Hopper and many many more.