Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2003 - 5:17 p.m.
Greetings,
I just found out Art Carney – of the Honeymooners fame – died over the weekend. I wasn’t even born when The Honeymooners was on live, but I did get to see many episodes in syndication.
Some of my earliest childhood memories include my father coming to watch late night Honeymooners episodes up in my room. I had an old black & white t.v. and I’d wake up when I’d hear the theme music come on.
I’m not sure why he didn’t watch it downstairs but maybe this was in the days when there wasn’t a television in every room of our house (or more than one) and my mother didn’t want to hear the noise or was watching something else.
This seemed to me at the time to be in the middle of the night, but I was little so it might have been anywhere from 9 p.m. until midnight. I couldn’t tell you.
I’ve told my dad my Honeymooners memories and he, himself, can’t remember this at all. But I learned to associate this television show with late night and it was reinforced with the opening title credits – the moon (with Jackie Gleason’s face drawn in it), and the cityscape at night. The theme music itself has an after dark quality to it.
For a while TV Land (or maybe Nick@Nite) ran the Honeymooners every night. Tommy and I had a blast watching them together. I remember getting the Red Room at our Magazine Street apartment all ready for nighttime – which meant pulling out the futon and making up the bed, turning out the lights and settling in. I would sometimes fall to sleep and wake up to the Honeymooners theme music and sometimes, just for a moment, I’d think I was a little girl again and I’d hope it wasn’t a school night.
My father has a box set of the “Lost Episodes” of The Honeymooners and I hope to watch some of them when I’m in North Carolina for this Thanksgiving.
So, here’s to you, Art, and thank you for all those late nights when you made me laugh.
Until next time,
Olrun
