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Sugar-coated cereals, a parade of toy commercials, and a blitz of wacky and wonderful cartoons -- I lived for Saturday mornings.
Adults ruled the rest of the week. They stayed up as late as they wanted, bought candy without asking permission and controlled all the TV shows.
Except Saturday mornings.
In the 1960s and 1970s, when it mattered to me, Saturday mornings belonged to us kids and our good friends Underdog, Space Ghost, the Herculoids, Top Cat, Secret Squirrel and Bugs Bunny. On with the show, this is it!
Our good buddies Heckle and Jeckle, Jonny Quest, the Harlem Globetrotters and Mighty Mouse were here to save the day.
It was a great time to be a kid.
This was a time before seat belts. We pinged and ponged like backseat bumper cars for miles at a time. We slept on the window shelf behind the back seats. If Dad would have stomped on his brakes, he would have been wearing me around his neck like a snake on George of the Jungle. Look out for that flying kid!
Bicycles didn't have helmets and skates didn't come with knee pads. Parents figured a good bump on the noggin might knock some sense into you.
And on Saturday mornings, responsible parents let us kids fill our bowls three, four or five times throughout the morning with Cocoa Puffs, Cap'n Crunch, Apple Jacks and Alpha-Bits. Why? Because back then, sugared cereal was healthy. I couldn't get enough of Sugar Bear's Super Sugar Crisp, and Tony the Tiger's Sugar Frosted Flakes were Gr-r-reat!
We already had our bowls in hand when stations signed on at 6 a.m. to begin their broadcast days. We tuned dials, swished rabbit ears and adjusted the vertical hold. All morning, we thrilled to the likes of Spider-Man, Wally Gator, Yogi Bear and Quick-Draw McGraw. We rocked out to animated bands like the Archies, the Cosby Kids, the Chan Clan, the Beatles, the Jackson 5, and Josie and the Pussycats.
The rest of the week, we played Saturday morning heroes, jumping off the porch like Superman, swinging from a clothesline like The Batman, sprinting laps around the house like the Wacky Races and tiptoeing through the barn to solve mysteries like the Hardy Boys. We strutted like the Pink Panther, sang "Clementine" like Huckleberry Hound and snickered like Muttley.
It was awesome.
And it's gone. We are fast approaching the one-year anniversary of the demise of Saturday morning cartoons. NBC quit in 1992. By 2004, CBS and ABC dropped out as well. Last October, the CW let the animation inkwell run dry too. A few live-action educational programs aimed at youngsters linger among the Saturday morning news shows.
What happened? Cable and satellite TV bombarded us with zillions of channels, including 24-hour cartoon networks. DVDs and Netflix let us choose time and titles. Everything I ever dreamed of as a kid -- cartoons all the time -- is a reality.
And it killed the magic of waiting a full agonizing week for the further adventures of Aquaman or Magilla Gorilla. Plus, my wife tells me sugared cereals aren't healthy anymore.
Scooby-Doo, where are you?
— Relive your childhood with Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole author page on Facebook.