Roger O Green

Black people on television in 1968

Ruby Dee was on Peyton Place

Mission Impossible After Diahann Carroll, star of the sitcom Julia (1968-1971) died in October 2019, I wondered how many black people on television were there in 1968.

I came across a list of all the American television shows with black actors in that pivotal year. It did not indicate the performers by name, but I could easily come up with:
Bill Cosby as tennis trainer/spy on I Spy (1965-1968), who won three Emmys for the role
Ivan Dixon as Sgt. James Kinchloe on Hogan’s Heroes (1965-1970)
Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek (1966-1969)
Hari Rhodes as Mike on Daktari (1966-1969)
Greg Morris as electronics expert Barney Collier on Mission: Impossible (1966-1973), probably my favorite performer at the time
Don Mitchell as aide Mark Sanger on Ironside (1967-1975)
Clarence Williams III as “youth squad” member Linc Hayes on The Mod Squad (1968-1973)
Gail Fisher as secretary Peggy Fair on Mannix (1968-1975)

Also

There were blacks on some other programs, but I don’t remember the shows. Cowboy in Africa (1967-1968) featured Gerald Edwards as an orphaned ten-year-old named Samson. N.Y.P.D. (1967-1969) had Robert Hooks as detective Jeff Ward. The Outcasts (1968-1969) co-starred Otis Young as Jemal Davis as a freed slave turned bounty hunter after the Civil War.

Then there were the programs I recall but not the characters. Gentle Ben (1968-1969) had a guy named Willie (Angelo Rutherford) its second and final season. In its fifth and final season, Peyton Place (1968-1969) added a family: Dr. Harry Miles (Percy Rodriguez), his wife Alma (Ruby Dee), and the teenage son Lew (Glynn Turman).

The High Chaparral (1967-1970) featured Frank Silvera, who was born in Jamaica, playing Don Sebastian Montoyo until Silvera died in 1970, and his character died as well. Daniel Boone (1968-1970) also had black actors, initially Don Pedro Coley as Gideon, a “black Indian.”

Laugh-In

Finally, I certainly remembered Chelsea Brown and her 26 episodes on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In in 1968-1969. But I had to look up the fact that Dewey ‘Pigmeat’ Markham also appeared 15 times during that season. The show had started in January 1968.

Per Mark Evanier, there were two different black guys named Gilliam who were on Laugh-In. Byron Gilliam was born on November 3, 1940, in Gary, IN. He was known for his work on Playboy After Dark (1969). He died on November 22, 1990, in Wisconsin. He was on Laugh-In from the beginning of the 1968-1969 season to 1971, for 41 episodes.

He’s not to be confused, as Google has done, with Stu Gilliam, who was on Laugh-In for four episodes in 1970. Stu was born on July 27, 1933, in Detroit, MI, as Stewart Byron Gilliam. I remember him from Roll Out, created by Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds in the early 1970s. He was married to Vivian White. He died on October 11, 2013, in Ceské Budejovice, Czech Republic.

Rhode Island: longest name

What’s not to like?

Rhode Island I always favored conceptually because it was founded by Roger Williams in the 17th century. As a kid, I was a sucker for people named Roger: Bannister, Daltrey, Maris, Miller, e.g., but not Taney.

Williams was “a Puritan minister, theologian, and author… He was a staunch advocate for religious freedom, separation of church and state, and fair dealings with American Indians, and he was one of the first abolitionists.” What’s not to like?

Ironically, the smallest state in the United States bears the longest official name. It is the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The state is the seventh least populous, but the second-most densely populated.

The Ocean State is also the 13th state, the last of the original colonies to ratify the Constitution, on May 29, 1790. In fact, it was “the only state not to send a representative to the Constitutional Convention,” which had approved the document on September 17, 1787. The First Congress subsequently “passed 12 proposed amendments to the Constitution” without RI, most of which became the Bill of Rights.

I have visited Providence a few times. Its view of the Atlantic Ocean was spectacular. My daughter particularly enjoyed it. But back in 2007 or so, a friend of mine tried to wean her from her fear of dogs with his very tame canine; it did not work at the time.

In 2012, many of my in-laws were staying in Newport at a couple of timeshares. We spent a good chunk of time visiting the mansions of the Gilded Age. Very Upstairs/Downstairs, or I suppose now, Downton Abbey.

Some of us also visited the Tennis Hall of Fame. I STILL get emails from the organization, where I give my opinions on who should next be enshrined. I’m a sucker for a good Hall of Fame, and that one definitely qualified.

RI Rhode Island, a US state in New England. Capital and largest city: Providence. I recommend the New England Clam Chowder.

Little Rhody for ABC Wednesday

Universal product code anniversary

invented specifically for grocery stores

UPC-GTIN-12@2x-e1497650777803 A few months back, we hit the fortieth anniversary of the UPC code or universal product code. How DID I miss that?

Before getting into the particulars, there some sort of designation for abbreviations that then use the actual word in an unnecessary manner. The C in UPC IS Code, so UPC code is redundant. Likewise, ATM machine, since the abbreviation means automatic teller machine. They are Redundant Acronyms and Initialisms.

UPC is a barcode that is widely used for tracking trade items in stores. It “consists of 12 numeric digits that are uniquely assigned to each trade item. Along with the related EAN barcode, the UPC is the barcode mainly used for scanning of trade items at the point of sale, per GS1 specifications.”

Wrigley’s

“In 1974, the first Universal Product Code was scanned… at a Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. [It] had agreed to serve as a test facility for the new technology, and the first item scanned was a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum. There’s no significance to [that]; it just happened to be the first thing pulled from the cart. That pack of gum is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.”

That gum must be REALLY stale.

“The UPC bar code system was originally invented specifically for grocery stores, to speed checkout and help them keep better track of their inventory, but it proved so successful that it spread quickly to other retailers. The first patent for a bar code went to N. Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952. They didn’t do anything with it for 20 years, because the scanning technology didn’t exist yet.

“By 1972, Woodland was working for IBM, and it was there that the bar code design was perfected and the prototype scanner was built in 1973. The IBM 3660 included a digital cash register and checkout scanner, and the grocery industry, which had been collaborating with IBM on the invention, began requiring its suppliers to start putting bar codes on their packaging.”

And now, as a sardonic friend of mine notes, these days we scan it ourselves, and cashiers have been laid off.

The Waitress phenomenon

Larry Dallas

When I was still working, there was a woman in one of the other departments in my building who was obsessed with the musical Waitress. She had seen it more than once on Broadway and had selfies with members of the cast. When it hit Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, she saw the touring show.

But she also had a Waitress cookbook and even promised to bake me a pie before I retired. (She tried to, but the pie failed, so she bought me one.)

When my wife, daughter and I saw it back in June, I thought it was… fine. Pleasant. It reminded me structurally to the TV show Alice. Alice never fell for her gynecologist, as Jenna (Christine Dwyer) did, though. Becky, the black waitress (Melody A. Betts), reminded me of the white, wisecracking Flo on the TV show. The timid Dawn (Ephie Aardema) is not dissimilar to the flaky Vera.

Even the diner managers, Mel, and Cal (Ryan G. Dunkin) were guys with rough exteriors but with hearts of gold. Odd that I didn’t get that deja vu feeling with the movie.

All she found was Earl

In the musical, Jenna’s abusive and controlling husband Earl (Jeremy Woodard) made my daughter extremely uncomfortable. In both stage and screen, Earl reminded me of the villain in the Dixie Chicks’ video for Goodbye Earl with Jane Krakowski, Dennis Franz, and Lauren Holly.

Another difference is that in Waitress, the actual diner owner was an older man named Joe, played in the show I saw by Richard Kline. You may remember Kline best from the sitcom Three’s Company as Larry Dallas.

The most interesting/bizarre character in Waitress is Ogie (Jeremy Morse), who is wooing Dawn. A local reviewer suggested that he seemed to belong in another play entirely, he was so off the wall. He was the most entertaining part of the production.

Waitress opened on Broadway on April 24, 2016, and has over 1450 performances. But it will close on January 5, 2020. Several people I’ve actually heard of have played Jenna, including Sara Bareilles, who wrote the serviceable music, and former American Idol contestants Katharine McPhee and Jordin Sparks. Meanwhile, the touring show continues through at least mid-2020.

Washington Nationals win; I care!

The Washington Senators won the World Series in 1924

Juan Soto, the baby shark of the Nationals

The Washington Nationals won the 2019 World Series. An old friend of mine, who lives in the DC area, wrote, “I think I’m supposed to care.” It’s weird because I actually did.

This surprised me a bit because I barely followed the regular baseball season this year. I did note that the New York Yankees were going to win the American League East. Meanwhile the Boston Red Sox, who won the Series in 2018, weren’t even going to make the playoffs.

I could tell you who won every WS from 1949 to 1964, and most of the ones from 1965 to 2001. But my awareness this century is rather spotty. I knew when the Yankees won (2009), or when the Red Sox (2004) and Chicago Cubs (2016) ended 86- and 108-year WS victory droughts, respectively. Or the Houston Astros, who were formed in 1962 but had never won until 2017.

The DC history in Major League Baseball is complicated. The Washington Senators played in the National League, off and on, until 1899.

Then the city received an original franchise in the American League in 1901. It was called the Nationals by the new owners “so as not to have them confused with the old Senators. But fans kept calling them the Senators, while the team kept calling itself the Nationals.”

The team won the World Series in 1924, and lost the WS in 1925 and 1933, but generally had a dismal record. The team relocated and was renamed the Minnesota Twins at the start of the 1961 season.

Expansion teams

DC got a new team in the American League that, confusingly, was also called the Washington Senators. The one game I saw in the original Yankee Stadium was on July 21, 1962, when the Bronx Bombers beat the Senators 4-3. Then THAT DC franchise moved and became the Texas Rangers in for the 1972 season.

Meanwhile, the Montreal Expos became an expansion team in the National League in 1969 “and made the playoffs only once in 36 seasons. Montreal’s best team, the 1994 Expos, might have won a World Series, but there was no World Series that year due to a work stoppage.”

When the Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005, they were nearly insolvent, quite literally owned by Major League Baseball. They never reached the playoffs before 2019. Going into the Memorial Day weekend this season, they were 19-31.

Yet they won the wild card game and three more playoff rounds to hoist the trophy to the only World Series in which the road team won every game. It was truly a Fall Classic.

With more concern over injuries from playing football, I have the romantic notion that fans will rediscover baseball. I will admit having watched every game in the Series on tape delay this year. I zapped through the commercials, usually watching half the game before going to bed, and the rest by getting up early and avoiding the computer.