Old Times in Black and White

In an early 1950s episode of Ozzie and Harriett various people are coming down with a head cold, first Ozzie's son, Ricky, and then his neighbor, Thorny. David, Ricky's brother, is also given an injection of antibiotics (yes, injection) just in case. Of course, this is good for a laugh in hindsight because, no, antibiotics did not cure common colds in that time any more than they can in the present day. But it's interesting to see this take on a medication that was then quite new--a miracle drug. As Harriett tells Ozzie, who also seems to be coming down with the cold, "You'd better get to the doc right away and have an injection." Ozzie declines, swearing his undying allegiance to an amazing elixir used throughout his childhood by his own mother and drinks two bottles to prove his point. This turns out to be a mixture of ginger, sassafras and 20 percent alcohol, so that Ozzie is indeed perfectly happy with the treatment. It is little bits like this that make the show really more entertaining than it was in its own time (and, as I watch the episodes, especially the earlier ones, it was quite an entertaining show on its own merits). Aside from references to miracle cures and astounding new technologies (like the amazing new Hotpoint oven and range, for instance), there are countless chuckle worthy snippets of behaviors and beliefs that are now perfectly archaic--conventions of proper dress and etiquette, of the place of the woman, and of the man too for that matter, of overtly religious material, of expectations in courtship, and so on. Maybe that's why I like watching these old shows so much, for the layered dimensions of nostalgia, of a time and a way now as dim and grainy in memory as the screen on the black and white TV set. They are, in their own way, a record of the past that is more immediate, more accessible than that which one finds in the history book.