Growing up a white kid in the Houston suburbs, I was fascinated with anything and everything that seemed completely different from myself. My heroes growing up included Bruce Lee, Dr. J and KISS, and much of what fueled my interest in these divergent people was Saturday afternoon television. In the '70s and even into the mid- '80s, there were limited numbers of TV stations. Even in a city as large as Houston there were, essentially, six channels: the networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), PBS and a couple random local channels like KRIV (long before Fox) or KHTV 39 (which is now CW39).
I knew the stations by the programming. NBC was home to Diff'rent Strokes, The Facts of Life and Chico and the Man. CBS had All in the Family and The Jeffersons. ABC had Happy Days and The Love Boat. PBC was all about Mister Rogers, Sesame Street and Villa Allegre. And the local stations had reruns of shows in syndication, particularly in the afternoons.
Sure, I watched plenty of primetime and afternoon TV, but it was Saturday when I sunk my teeth into stuff I really thought was interesting.
After Saturday morning cartoons, there was a wealth of stuff worth checking out for a youngster bored on a rainy afternoon. First and foremost there was always sports. In addition college and pro athletics, there was Wide World of Sports that actually got people interested in Olympic events in the off years. But, surprisingly, there wasn't the wall-to-wall coverage of every sporting event like there is today. And when there was no basketball or football on, there were always old movies.
Westerns, creep shows, mystery theater (how my mom managed to get a tween watching Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes in black and white, I still don't know), kung fu flicks and, of course, monster movies. As a young boy, the latter two in that list were my jam. Every cheesy, overdubbed minute of The Five Deadly Venoms or King Kong vs. Godzilla had my rapt attention.
Looking back at particularly the Godzilla films now, it is pretty clear the "monster" was just some dude in a rubber costume trampling a bunch of miniature models. But, at the time, it seemed like magic.
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