Remember when TV shut off for the night?

As I got ready for work the other day, Hank Williams Jr.’s song I’m One of You was playing on the radio. It’s one of those remember-when songs with a refrain reassuring that Bocephus is just like us, too.

One line that struck me asks if you had three channels on the TV when you were young. Yep, we did. There were 13 channels on the dial, but only three carried signals.

I’ve heard similar lines in other songs about the good ol’ days, and I think having three channels on your TV when you grew up has become a new touchstone for nostalgia. It’s like the country songs of the ’60s and ’70s that referenced listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio every Saturday night. That way you knew the writer, and maybe the singer, grew up country, and most likely poor, or at least lower-middle class.

Remember when local TV stations signed off with the National Anthem at midnight during the week, and maybe 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday? Then they’d sign back on about 5 a.m. with the National Anthem followed by the farm report.

During the interim there were no TV broadcasts. And since there wasn’t an Internet and Facebook, night owls had to listen to the radio, read or write, or maybe keep other folks awake with their phone calls.

Little things like that remind us just how much our world has changed. Can you imagine the world today with only three TV channels on your set? What would it be like if we didn’t have 572 1/2 cable and satellite TV channels? What if there wasn’t 24/7 news with everything from the big story of the day to Lithuanian celebrity hog wrestling to fill the time? Could we survive without 2 a.m. infomercials about pressure cookers and growth pills?

It makes me wonder if we’d have all the turmoil we do, or if we just wouldn’t be aware of all the unrest and craziness in the world, and thus wouldn’t be so worried about what happens on the other side of the planet. Would not having minute-by-minute reports about centuries-old disputes among religious fanatics on the other side of the globe be better for us, would it have kept us from getting dragged into our own conflict with them?

Of course, back then we didn’t have the Internet, either, but I wonder what it would be like to have it and still have only three TV channels, four if you were lucky enough to have public television. What if cable and satellite television hadn’t developed as the world grew more computerized? You have to wonder how different life would be.

I have to admit, sometimes I miss having just three TV channels, or maybe it’s just the way life I miss. I know they really weren’t the good ol’ days for everyone, but in my world they were. Getting home from school to catch Flash Gordon serials on the local afternoon show, watching old movies at night with Mom while Dad worked the swing shift, then getting a color TV and discovering whether Mr. Spock was green or not.

Breaking news meant something bad had happened, not just that some celebrity had broken a nail. And even as the news from around the country showed how the world was changing, it didn’t seem to bother us, except for Dad having to work overtime at Red River Army Depot.

I don’t know about other folks, but I think missing what seemed like a simpler life, a simpler time, may be why I listen to classic rock and country stations that play real country music, why I like old TV shows and still like old movies, although they’re much older now and the ones that were brand new when I was a mere lad are now 50 years old.