Top Ten TV Theme Songs from the 1960s

From the December 16, 2022, ListVerse by Sally Morem.

This sure brought back the memories.  Go to the site for more information and a link to the video.  Sure brought back some memories for me.

10.  Mr. Ed   (1961-1955)

9.  I Dream of Jennie  (1965-1970)

8.  Get Smart  (1965-1970)

7.  Bewitched  (1964-1972)

6.  Gilligan's Island   (1964-1967)

5.  The Jetsons  (1962-1963)

4.  The Beverly Hillbillies   (1962-1971)

3.  The Addams Family   (1964-966)

2.  Hawaii  Five-O  (1968-1970)

1.  Mission Impossible  (1966-1973)

How many of you were like that bus scene on "Planes, Trains & Automobiles?"

--Cooter

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871-- Part 4: What Did George Train Say?

In 1870, there were 600 fires in the city, most started by  lamps overturning in barns.  During the first week of October the next year, more than 30 fires sprang up, the last one on the night of the 7th, wiping out four blocks and causing $750,000 in damages (nearly $1.7 million today).

It was on the same night that eccentric businessman George Francis Train spoke to a crowd at Farwell Hall at Clark and Madison streets.  

He offered a grim prophesy, saying, "This is the last public address that will be delivered within these walls!  A terrible calamity is impending over the city of Chicago!  More I cannot say, more I dare not utter."

He did not live in Chicago, being Boston born.  But he was aware that it had not rained in Chicago in a long time and that many of the city's wells were empty.  He could have observed buildings baked dry by the sun.  He would have known that the men of the fire department were exhausted.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune, operating from its new four story "fire-proof" building, had published all through the hot and dry smmer and fall, almost daily stories about fires throughout the country.  In early October, the paper declared, "We will continue to print these stories on conflagrations until the common council acts."

It was too late for that.  Chicago was a city ready to burn.  And burn it would.

CootFire

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871-- Part 3: A Real Building Mess

In the 50 rowdy years before the fire, the city grew from a remote Army post into the rail and shipping hub of America, a center of commerce and fast fortunes and deep poverty.

The area where the Catherine and Patrick O'Leary family lived was a densely populated section of the city.  It was, as one reporter described it, "a terra incognito to respectable Chicagoans," packed with "one-story frame dwellings, cow-stables, corncribs, sheds innumerable; every wretched building within four feet of its neighbor, and everything of wood."

Though there was an ordinance that forbade the use of uncovered lamps near hay or straw, Chicagoans paid it no heed, even though 90% of the city buildings were wooden.  Its sidewalks were wooden.  Its narrow streets were paved with wooden blocks.

"The officials of the city feared to enforce the law and therefore incur unpopularity with reckless moneyed interests which continued to build the city in dangerous fashion," wrote Edgar Lee Masters on his "The Tale of Chicago."  

"The menace of such buildings to the city was subordinated to the ambition to get richer."

--Cooter

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871-- Part 2: The Rapid Growth of Chicago

By the 1830s newcomers started arriving by stagecoach and wagon, burlap bags in hand, moneymaking dreams in their heads.  A boom was on.  By the 1870s, there were some 334,000 people in the city, three times as many now lived here as there were in 1860.

The growth was impressive and some people made fortunes.

But prosperity brought some dangers and disreputable types.  The Tribune, founded in 1847,  cried in the 1860s, "We are beset on every side by gangs of desperate villains."

Murders and robberies were commonplace (as they are today).  Corruption at all levels was rampant.

Most citizens lived in what was mostly a wood-structured frontier town, 6 miles long and three miles wide.  It was a town that contained extreme wealth and squalor, from the fashionable homes of Terrace Row on South Michigan Avenue to the sordid diversions and hovels of Conley's Patch a few blocks to the west.

--Cooter

There Were 600 Fires in Chicago the Year Before the Great Fire of 1871

From the August 29, 2021, Chicago Tribune "600 fires sprang up in Chicago the year before the Great Fire of 1871.  On the night before came this 'terrible' prediction" by Rick Kogan.

There is no way of knowing what was on people's minds in the hot and arid weeks before a certain cow is said to have kicked over a lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. 

But, 150 years before that Jean Babtiste Point du Sable had not yet been born and only a few white men had ever even walked on the land that would eventually become Chicago.  The only fires here were those made by the Potawatomi, Sauk, Illinois, Algonquins, Iroquois and the Native American tribes that had been in the area for centuries.

As a matter of fact, for much of the 18th century, what would become Chicago was a place of warring tribes.  DuSable and his Potawatomi wife Kitihawa built their cabin on the banks of the Chicago River in the 1770s and a few other white settlers followed.

Most settled on the riverbanks near Fort Dearborn, built in the fall of 1803 and soon afterwards called "the best garrison in the country."

--CootSable

A Chicago Christmas-- Part 7: The Marshall Field's Elf

In 1946, Marshall Field's introduced Uncle Mistletoe, a "black-browed, winged sprite, wearing a cape and top hat," to compete with Montgomery Ward's popular creation, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Uncle Mistletoe lived with his wife, Aunt Holly, in Cozy Cloud Cottage on the eighth floor of the iconic department store.

Uncle Mistletoe's popularity soared with the 1948 debut of his holiday television program, "The Adventures of Uncle Mistletoe."

Uncle Mistletoe occasionally appears in ornament form on "The Great Tree" in Marshall Field's' (well, now Macy's) Walnut Room.

--CootUnc

A Chicago Christmas-- Part 6: About Those Marshall Field's Windows

Founded in 1852 as a dry goods business, Marshall Field's introduced its cherished holiday windows in 1897 with an enthralling toy display, a concept dreamed up by the store's official visual display manager, Arthur Frasier.  (And, of course, that toy window in "A Christmas Story.")

During World War II, the Field's design team began theming the windws starting with Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas," so that they would tell a story as visitors strolled down State Street, from window to window.

Today, Macy's (who bought Field's) continues the tradition of holiday windows at the State Street store.

And, of course, there are all the decorations in the store, the Walnut Room and the giant Christmas tree.

--CootWindow

A Chicago Christmas-- Part 5: Hot, Cold and Snow

This entry is very appropriate for today.  This morning, December 23, 2022, it was -8 degrees outside here in Spring Grove, Illinois.  By 1 pm, it had "Warmed Up" to -2 degrees.  It is -5 degrees right now.

Christmas 1982 saw Chicago reach 64 degrees, setting a record for highest temperature on the holiday.

Just one year later in 1983, the coldest-ever temperature for the holiday was recorded at O'Hare at bone-chilling negative 17 degrees.

As for a very white Christmas Day, it happened in 1950 when Chicago received a whopping 5.1 inches of snow, setting a city snowfall record for that day.  Yesterday and this morning we got maybe two-tenths of an inch of the white stuff.

--CootHotColdSnow

A Chicago Christmas-- Part 4: 'Suzy Snowflake'

If you grew up in Chicago back in the 50s and 60s, you definitely can remember hearing and seeing this song on the TV.  It wouldn't be Christmas without her.

Suzy Sbowflake is a happy snowflake who sings and dances the joys of wintertime and taps on window panes across Chicago every holiday season.

Suzy first appeared in a song made famous by Rosemary Clooney in 1951.  WGN-TV has screened the stop-motion animated short "Suzy Snowflake" every holiday season since 1953.

Go to YouTube and check it out.

--CootFlake

A Chicago Christmas-- Part 3: The Christmas Ship

The three-masted schooner Rouse Simmons was a Chicago tradition every December, bringing a cargo of Christmas trees from up north to families across the city.

However, sadly, it sank off Two Rivers, Wisconsin, in a violent Lake Michigan storm  in November 1912.

The ill-fated eneterprise was run by Herman Schuenemann, known affectionately as "Captain Santa," who sold  his trees on the docks near Clark Street bridge.

When the ship left the dock at Thompson, Michigan, eyewitnesses noted that the schooner, packed with over 5,500 Christmas trees, looked like a floating forest.

The schooner's anchor was salvaged and now welcomes visitors at the entrance to the Milwaukee Yacht Club.

--Cooter

A Chicago Christmas-- Part 2: About Rudolph the You-Know What

These are Christmas stories connected to Chicago.

Robert L. May wanted to be a novelist but worked as a catalog writer at Montgomery Ward in Chicago.  Staring out his office window at downtown Chicago on a foggy day, May experienced his own lightbulb moment.

"Suddenly I had it!  A nose!  A bright red nose that would shine through the fog like a spotlight."

May considered naming the tiny reindeer with the red nose "Rollo" or "Reginald" but eventually settled on "Rudolph."

The Chicago-based department store printed more than two million copies of May's book "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in 1939.

The ninth and youngest of Santa's reindeer flew straight into the hearts of children across America using his luminous red nose to light the way.

--CootDeer

A Chicago Christmas: Merry Union Stockyards 'Hog Butcher for the World'

From the December 4, 2022, Chicago Tribune "Holiday Trivia:  Fun facts to make the season even brighter."

CATTLE CALL

Chicago's Union Stockyards opened on Christmas Day, 1865, ushering in by15 locomotive-pulled cattle cars.  

Situated on a once-swampy site that stretched from Halsted Street to Ashland Avenue and Pershing Road to 47th Street.

It took 1,000-plus men and 30 miles of ditches and drains to build the site that would bolster Chicago's already booming meatpacking industry and establish the city as "Hog Butcher for the World."

The 375-acre site would eventually accomodate over 75,000 hogs, 21,000 cattle and over 22,000 sheep in its 2,300 separate livestock pens.

--Cooter

'A Christmas Story's' Indiana Connection-- Part 7: WJOB

WJOB RADIO STATION

6405 Olcott Avenue, Hammond

In 2023, WJOB will celebrate a century of being on the air's birthday.  Jean Shepherd began his broadcast career there before heading to to Cleveland, Cincinnati, and ultimately, New York City at WOR to earn acclaim.

The 1,000 watt transmitter and 400-foot tower behind the studio built in 1956 make the WJOB station easy to spot.

The original station studios were in Downtown Hammond at 402 Fayette Street at the intersection of Hohman Avenue.  Later, the studio moved to 449 State Street, where the young radio hopeful, Shepherd, gained experience doing sports broadcasts before the station and tower finally settled at the Olcott Avenue location.

--CootBBGun

'A Christmas Story's' Indiana Connection-- Part 6: Downtown Hammond

DOWNTOWN HAMMOND

5206 Hohman Avenue

While Jean Shepherd changed the name of his hometown of Hammond to fictional "Hohman, Indiana," in his published works, it is easy to see how he dreamed up that name, given the name of Downtown Hammond's primary stretch of road is Hohman.

Now long gone, the Cam Lan restaurant once stood at 5256 Hohman Avenue, and is depicted in the film's final Christmas dinner scene.

Just a block away, also on Hohman, is where Goldblatt's Department Store stood until 1993, the site of the wishful young Shepherd's now infamous moment giving his gift wish list to the grumpy Santa while sitting on his lap.

Though the store no longer exists, you can still see Goldblatt's iconic clock focal point in the lobby of the Hammond Public Library, just a few blocks away at 564 State Street in Hammond.

You'll Still Put Your Eye Out Kid!  --Cooter

'A Christmas Story's' Indiana Connection-- Part 5: Warren G. Harding Elementary and Miss Shields

WARREN G. HARDING ELEMENTARY

3211 165th Street, Hammond.

The original wood-framed school building constructed in 1927 where Jean Shepherd attended from 1928-1933 was demolished in 1948 to make way for a new school, and even that building was torn down to make way for a more modern elementary school which opened in 2006.

This new school still bears the name the name of the 29th president, and, of course, there's a flagpole out in the schoolyard.

During a March 10, 1982, guest appearance on the late-night talk show of fellow famous Hoosier David Letterman, Shepherd said his elementary school "was named after the worst president in history."

HOME OF SHEPHERD'S ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER MISS SHIELDS

51 Lawndale Street, Hammond.

Shepherd made many references to his teacher growing up, Miss Ruth Shields, in his books and broadcasts, and she plays a key character in "A Christmas Story."

--CootPutYourEyeOut.

'A Christmas Story's' Northwest Indiana Connection-- Part 4: About Flick and Schwart's Houses

SHEPHERD'S PAL SCHWARTZ'S CHILDHOOD HOUSE

6810 Arizona Avenue, Hammond.  

While Ralphie's long-suffering friend in the story is named Scott Schwartz, the real life counterpart from Jean Shepherd's youth was Paul Schwartz, who lives just a few blocks away.

In the movie, Schwartz is taunted by bullies and, though innocent, is punished by his mother after he  is blamed for teaching Ralphie the "big one" of swear words.

SHEPHERD'S OTHER PAL FLICK'S CHILDHOOD HOME

3024 Cleveland Street, Hammond.  

Classmate Jack Flickinger lived just down the street from Shepherd and is forever associated with accepting the triple-dog dare to stick his tongue on a frozen flagpole in the schoolyard.  Jack's father owned a local tavern in Hammond called  Flick's Tap.

--CootTripleDogDare

81st Anniversary of Pearl Harbor: Herbert Jacobson-- Part 6

Brad McDonald and several relatives met with experts a couple times through the years and donated DNA samples to help with the investigation to identify his uncle, Herbert Jacobson.

In 2018, he was told, "We're going to do our best, but chances are we aren't going to be able to identify then [the remains] in your time and maybe into your children's time."

"Less than a year later, I got a phone call saying, 'We got 'em,' " Brad McDonald remembered.  "I was just blown away.  I really was.  We are just extremely grateful to the Navy and all the agencies working on this.  ...They did this painstaking process, and it was amazing."

Continued in my Tattooed On Your Soul:  World War II blog.

'A Christmas Story's' Indiana Connection-- Part 3: His House

"While over the years, Shepherd earned a reputation for criticizing Hammond and his hometown roots, he still always remembered his connection to northwest Indiana," said Nick Mantis, who is negotiating with networks about the first airing rights to his documentary "Shep."

"Shepherd was once quoted as saying that when you really loved something enough, then you can joke about it as a form of appreciation.

In the next several posts the old haunts of Jean Shepherd which served as inspirations for the movie will be listed.

**********************************

SHEPHERD'S CHILDHOOD HOUSE

2907 Cleveland Street, Hammond.  A large privacy hedge nearly obscures that famous open porch and the living room window where Shepherd, as a boy, daydreamed of the adventures that awaited with his adult career in writing and broadcast.

While the families' last name in the movie is changed to Parker, it's still a nod to Shepherd, whose middle name is Parker.

--CootStory

This Date in the American Revolution: Battles of White Marsh, Great Bridge, Great Canebreak and Quebec and the Boston Tea Party

From the 2022 American Battlefield Trust December calendar.

DECEMBER 5-7, 1776

**  Battle of White Marsh, Pennsylvania

DECEMBER 9, 1775

**  The Battle of Great Bridge, Virginia.

DECEMBER 16, 1773

**  The Boston Tea Party

DECEMBER 22, 1775

**  Battle of Great Canebreak, South Carolina

DECEMBER 30-JANUARY  1, 1775

**  The Battle of Quebec

--Cooter

'A Christmas Story's' Indiana Connection-- Part 2: 'Go to the End of the Line, Boys'

A number of key locations and the family homes of characters depicted in "A Chrustmas Story," as adapted from Jean Shepherd's 1966 published short story, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash," are often-overlooked residential landmarks in Hammond's established neighborhoods.

"Shepherd loved the irony that the film was shot in Cleveland and he had grown up on Cleveland Street in Hammond," said Hammond filmmker Nick Mantis, who produced and directed the documentary "Shep," about Jean Shepherd found at www-.shepherddocumentary.com.

"Shepherd spent time on the film set, since he has a small cameo in the film as the grouchy man waiting in line with his children to see Santa at the department store.  It's Shep who points to Ralphie and Randy and tells them to go to the back of the line."

While Bob Clark, as the film's director, did not get his wish to film "A Christmas Story" in Hammond, he did win his battle with studio brass to hire Shepherd to lend his distinctive voice for the film's narration.

--Cooter

'A Christmas Story's' Indiana Connection-- Part 1

Well, 'tis the season of my favorite Christmas movie of all time, "A Christmas Story" and, gosh, TBS is even showing it a couple times tonight ahead of its 24-hour tradional marathon starting Christmas Eve.  I'll try to watch some of it in between all the college football conference chanpionship games.

From the December 24, 2020, Chicago Tribune "Indiana sites a reminder of 'A Christmas Story' " by Philip Potempa.

Cleveland, Ohio, enjoys a holiday claim-to-fame connection with "A Christmas Story," since the 1983 movie was filmed there on location.

However, northwest Indiana still has better bragging rights, since the teller of BB guns, bullies and parental soap-in-mouth punishment, Jean Shepherd, scribe and radio broadcaster, fashioned the story and memorable characters from his own youth on Cleveland Street in Hammond, Indiana.

Ther movie's late director Bob Clark acknowledged in interviews that it was his preference to shoot the film in Shepgerd's all-too-familiar northwest Indiana.  However, studio location scouts preferred the landscape of Cleveland, even though Shepherd's actual childhood home still stands at 2907 Cleveland Street in Hammond.

Remember What Might Happen To Your Eyesight With the Soap Treatment.   --CootStory