A Chicago tv-watching Remembrance – Thoughts of Ray Rayner
As the dad of two young boys not a day goes by when I don’t think back to when I was a lad growing up on Chicago’s southside. An old joke starts off with “What’s the best thing about the southside?”
Give up? “The bus north.”
As a youngster this wasn’t my sense of reality. But at the end of the day, after receiving my degree from the University of Illinois in Champaign, notice that I didn’t trek back to the southside. Instead my trajectory took me to Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood one short block from the hallowed ivy walls of Wrigley Field on the city’s northside.
But forgive my wandering.
Much to my wife’s eternal surprise my upbringing preceded cable. So we had a rotation of five so-called vhf channels and between two to four uhf channels (which we didn’t often use because they tended to feature more snow than show).
To some tv is a horrible cancer that shouldn’t tempt the minds of our children. Perhaps. But had I not had the steady influence of tv I wouldn’t be able to whistle the theme to Gilligan’s Island or know that Dr. Welby’s nurse was named Consuela or be able to so aptly imitate the chittering of the monkey in Speed Racer.
Nor would I have had the wonderful influence of the most important of shows, The Ray Rayner Show.
Now just about anybody with a pulse who grew up in Chicago roughly my age knows Ray Rayner. Mind you this is before non-stop political bickering that today’s channels offer or the steady stream of cartoons on Sprout or Noggin.
So what or who was Ray Rayner. Aside from being a cultural icon limited to a specific geographic Ray Rayner was a guy probably as old as I am now who hosted a morning tv show that featured an eclectic montage of stuff such as old school cartoons, weather reports, sports scores (written on a small chalkboard and with him sporting a hat that had a logo one way of the Cubs and the Sox the other way), regular characters such as Chevelston the Duck, Garfield Goose, Cuddly Duddly, and Ark in the Park with Dr. Lester Fisher who brought in critters from the Lincoln Park Zoo.
He also did crafts projects, working through on live tv the construction of artworks that captured the attention of kids and helped them go from start to finish. And, perhaps most important in the days of big snows, Ray Rayner read school closings. You have to remember – this was before the three letters of w w w meant anything. There was no internet, there were local broadcasters who read information in real time to kids craving that today their school would be among those closed.
Another thing that Ray did was during the winter holiday season he had a non-demonational Advent Calendar where he would open a window each day that featured some element to the story being told via the calendar. What I remember about the calendar is that it promoted memory and remembrance. Something had been opened on day one and now it was day twelve, what was on day one? And day three? And so on and so on.
I thought of the calendar yesterday when I clicked on a website that features Sarah Palin sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office. Each day the creator of the site adds a new feature particular to something associated with Sarah which you discover by hovering the mouse over and around until the cursor indicates that there is a hyperlink below.
It’s pretty funny (and I am sure that some folks looking at it would find it more than a little frightening). And if you go there on a daily basis you welcome the new element while remembering what preceded it. Just like when I was a kid with Ray Rayner. So there’s a dart board with names like Melon and Crisp and Bristol and Prego. Or there are oil derricks on the lawn of the White House behind the window. There’s also a lot more that you will see if you check out the site.
On a very real note, this kind of creative satire is a lot safer than the hooting and hollering reflected in news reports that I have seen for the past week that show some incredibly angry people at rallies hosted by Palin. In instances of disagreement, especially in an election now with our economic markets reeling and the housing market sputtering because of the lack of available credit, the need for informed and reasonble conversation is as important as it has ever been.
I guess one of the reasons that after all this time why I look back at Ray Rayner with such fondness is that he always was steady, reasonable, informed, kind, and never had a bad thing to say about anybody. Sounds like a person worthy of emulating. Sounds kind of like the team here at The Real Estate Lounge Chicago as we help our buyers and sellers with their Chicago real estate decisions.
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[...] Original post by The Real Estate Lounge Chicago with Tom McCarey [...]