When someone finally gets around to inventing a time machine, I know when and where I’m going.

Others will want to take care of the big stuff — killing young Adolf Hitler, saving Abraham Lincoln, JFK, MLK and RFK and preventing 9/11 — so my time-travel goals are less ambitious, but they will be a bit self-serving.

I’ll go back to 1970s northeastern Ohio and pretty much start doing over what I did then … with some lottery numbers in my pocket, of course.

Another chance at Little League, backyard football, the Blizzard of ’78 and going fishing with my dad will be more than enough for me. It was all part of being a carefree kid.

Compared to a typical day now, the 1970s were pretty damn good. What the heck was I thinking when I couldn’t wait to grow up? If someone had told me then that my life at 57 would revolve around work, doctor visits, political arguments, bills, deadlines, commitments and what to leave in and what to leave out — with apologies to Bob Seger — I wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get older.

Adulting, as people call it now, is vastly overrated.

One of the best things about being a kid in northeastern Ohio back then was watching “The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show” and later “The Big Chuck and Lil’ John Show” every Friday night at 11:30 on Channel 8. It was appointment television for so many of us.

I remember my father letting me stay up one Friday night to watch “Hoolihan and Big Chuck” in the mid-1970s and I was hooked.

The horror movies they hosted were secondary. In fact, the only one I can remember off the top of my head is Roger Corman’s “The Little Shop of Horrors,” about a plant that feeds on human blood.

What made those Friday nights were the comedy skits featuring Bob “Hoolihan” Wells, Chuck Schodowski, John Rinaldi and other recurring guests like Dick Goddard and other Channel 8 on-camera talent and production staffers.

Big Chuck, a northeastern Ohio cultural icon since the 1960s who spent more than half his life making us laugh, died Jan. 19 at 90.

Comic parodies like “Ben Crazy,” “The Kielbasa Kid,” “Parma Place” and “Mary Hartski, Mary Hartski” were laugh-out-loud funny beginning with “Hoolihan and Big Chuck” from 1966-79 and continuing with “Big Chuck and Lil’ John” from 1979-2007.

But to me, Big Chuck will always be “The Certain Ethnic” guy — Stash Kowalski — the stereotypical Polish Clevelander. I close my eyes and can picture Schodowski’s cheesy fake mustache, rumpled hat and garish striped sweater and tie, and hear the accordion in the background.

“The Certain Ethnic” skits were always punctuated by the show’s signature loud laugh, which I’m currently trying to make my ringtone so I can annoy anyone within earshot.

In 1985, about a couple of months before I graduated, Big Chuck and Lil’ John and their crew came to Jefferson Area High School to play the faculty in a benefit basketball game. A bunch of us showed up in our Falcon Club shirts and got to meet them afterward. They invited us to a taping of the show and a few weeks later, we skipped school on a Friday to get Falcon Club shirts for Big Chuck and Lil’ John and headed to the Channel 8 studio in Cleveland — “The Best Location in the Nation” — for the afternoon taping.

A couple of us rode upstairs in an elevator from the station’s lobby with Lil’ John and chatted, then we settled into the audience to watch. At the end, we all crowded onto the set to present Big Chuck and Lil’ John with the shirts.

(I’ve been trying off and on for years to find a tape of that show from May 1985, so if anyone out there can help, I know a bunch of Gen Xers who would be grateful.)

As you might suspect, skipping school — even for such an important occasion — was frowned upon in the 1980s. On Monday morning, the JAHS PA system crackled to life and a long list of students — yours truly among them — were summoned to the principal’s office.

Busted!

We weren’t surprised, because we had killed some time at Hills while the shirts were being made and ran into a teacher who happened to be off that day. We chatted with her for a bit and told her all about what we were doing. We had nothing to hide. Most of us were seniors with one foot out the door and an eye on what came next.

But there were a couple of friends who were not called to the office the following Monday. My working theory was always that the kids who weren’t had not been in any of her classes. Of course, anyone who had watched the show Friday night would have seen our smiling faces as we gathered around Big Chuck and Lil’ John.

Once seated and standing around Mr. Bragga’s desk — there were more than a few of us — he delivered the standard lecture about the importance of setting a better example for the underclassmen for the few weeks that remained of our senior year and then sent us back to our first-period classes.

It was all worth it. No harm, no foul.

Thanks for the memories that day and for all those years, Big Chuck. You will be missed.

Ed Puskas is editor of the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator. Reach him at 330-841-1786 or epuskas@tribtoday.com, especially if you can help him find that long-lost tape from 1985.