Sometime around Christmas in the late 1960s, something transformative happened in my family. My father bought us a color television. It was the first one I had ever seen and the best Christmas gift ever.
Imagine that you had only tasted vanilla ice cream and Baskin & Robbins comes along offering 64 flavors, opening up a whole new sensory experience. It was sort of like that. I was so enamored with our Magnavox color TV, a true technological marvel, that I started calling it the “Magic Box.”
When you have only experienced television broadcasting in black and white, the transition to color is a profound, life-changing event. Ours was the first color TV in the Slater Mill village and people would come over on Sunday nights after church to watch the “World of Color.” There were only a few programs broadcast in color at the time, but one of the most popular was “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”
Every “World of Color” episode began with a screen that featured the somewhat-dark background image of a castle, and then a little winged pixie named Tinkerbell would appear and, with a sweeping stroke of her wand, splashes of color filled the screen. It was our first taste of the magic of Walt Disney.
TV dinners also became popular during that time period because no one wanted to miss even a moment of Disney’s weekly extravaganza and other popular programming. We nibbled on Salisbury steak, peas and carrots, along with a glop of something they called “mashed potatoes” – all the while transfixed on luscious, vivid, full-color images of magnificent waterfalls, the Grand Canyon, hummingbirds sipping nectar from orchids, and bison roaming on the plains. There were also color cartoons and sometimes stories like Davy Crocket.
One of the most popular westerns of that era, “Bonanza,” was also broadcast in color, but we had only seen it on our black-and-white TV. Once we saw our favorite, best-dressed, faux “cowboys” in natural flesh tones and in a full-color context, we felt like we personally knew the Cartwright brothers, Hoss, Little Joe and Adam, along with silver-haired patriarch Ben. We felt right at home at the Ponderosa.
“Gunsmoke” also eventually made the transition to color. The show was popular even when it was black and white, but with the advent of color, virtually everything took on new meaning. We realized for the first time that Miss Kitty had flaming red hair and a mole – called a “beauty mark” in those days – on her cheek.
I suppose that little “beauty mark” had always been there, but that’s the thing about seeing something in color versus black and white. Full color draws attention to detail, and adds depth to the image, bringing things in focus that you had never noticed before. I’m glad we’re naturally imbued with color vision. The world would be pretty boring in black and white.
Over time, more and more programs were broadcast in color, but nothing will ever take away from the experience of seeing it for the first time. Nothing will ever erase the magic in the Magic Box.
Dennis Chastain is a Pickens County naturalist, historian and former tour guide. He has been writing feature articles for South Carolina Wildlife magazine and other outdoor publications since 1989.
