Well, hi again, y’all! I’ll have to admit that I’ve been very remiss in doing my duties as a co-blogger here at A Thousand Country Roads. I’ve had many another roads to travel over the past year, therefore I’ve not been here since 4-November 2021 when I shared about my favorite team, the Atlanta Braves, winning the World Series.

I had hopes of doing another such post this year if they had went back-to-back, winning two in a row, which would have made them the first National League team to do so since the ’75-’76 Cincinnati Reds, the “Big Red Machine!”, my other all-time favorite team. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. They had their chance, but they got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs!!!

Oh well, such is the heartbreaking game of baseball, so now the Braves will have to fall back on the adage of the former Brooklyn Dodgers, “Wait till next year!”, the Dodgers’ exclamation each time after losing a series to those “DAMN YANKEES!” before finally claiming the title. But having been gone for over an entire year, I’m sure you’ll forgive me for running my mouth…I hope!!!

Other than baseball, one of my most favorite pastimes is turning back the clock and enjoying oldies. As I’ve shared here many-a-time, I’m truly an “old school “type-o’-guy”, be it music, movies or TV programs, though I’m not a stick-in-the-mud. I just have this thing about nostalgia as I’ve moved onward into today’s newer age.

As of late, I’ve been totally wrapped up in streaming a few oldies from the ’60s: The Twilight Zone, The FBI and Honey West.

As for The Twilight Zone, I fell in love with it as an extremely young kid. One of the very first TV episodes I recall ever seeing in my young life was “A Hundred Yards over the Rim”, starring Cliff Robertson, where he portrays a pioneer on his way to California in 1847 who, on crossing over the rim of a sand dune in search of help, finds himself in a strange new Zone, 1961 New Mexico. Another time travel episode was “The Odyssey of Flight 33”, which filled my 8-year-old mind with visions of the possibilities of a parallel, unknown world. It had to be these very shows that filled my young mind with the idea of time travel, giving me an early love of the unknown, such as science fiction, fantasy or the supernatural. That later led to me falling in love with the Quantum Leap series, purely a sci-fi-time-travel series, which has recently been reborn with a follow-up version, following the same plot with references to the predecessor.

But over the years, I finally got to see every one of the 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone in syndication, including the four episodes that weren’t released in the original syndication due to legal or moral racist reasons, which were later finally released.

There is, however, a truly rare television episode that has seldom been seen again. The Time Element was originally shown November 24, 1958, on the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, hosted by Desi Arnez. This production featured William Bendix, remembered for the series The Life of Riley, a show I watched on a regular basis when I was a kid. But Bendix was also well known for his Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in an early WWII movie, Wake Island, which was based on the Marine Corps’ Alamo-like battle at the beginning of the war. In a supporting role was the soon-to-be-well-known Martin Balsam as well as Darryl Hickman, the brother of Dwayne Hickman, the star of a later series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

Though not the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone, it was a Rod Serling production that eventually led to the debut of the iconic series on October 2, 1959. This episode was well received by viewers, leading CBS to pursue a new series with Serling so, technically, it could be said that The Time Element truly was the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. Not being used to the kind of surprise, O. Henry twist ending this episode had, Arnaz appeared on-screen at the end of the episode to offer his “explanation” of “what really happened.” Nonetheless, this script showed the beginning of the genius of Rod Serling’s exploration of the unknown, sometimes dark zone us baby boomers came to love. For what I feel will be a true treat, you can see “The Time Element” here.

Another piece of The Twilight Zone history ties in with my discovery of the Honey West series. Anne Frances was the star of Honey West, but the first thing I ever saw her in was a 1st Season episode of The Twilight Zone, “The After Hours”, where she plays, of all things, a mannequin, another episode that’s stuck in my mind all these years for it truly did have an O. Henry trick finale. She also appeared in one of the hour-long Zone episodes, “Jess-Belle”. But along with Petula Clark, the ’60s song artist, she was one of the two blondes that I fell in love with during my pre-teen years. Ironically, I never dated a blonde in my entire life, so go figure that one!

The Honey West series was groundbreaking in the fact that for the first time ever a woman had the lead character’s name as the title of a series. She was also one of the first female “private eyes” on TV. She and her partner, Sam Bolt (John Ericson), used all types of James Bond gadgets in their work, such as a high-tech surveillance van, an exploding compact, a garter-belt gas mask, and tear-gas earrings as well as a lipstick case radio. She was often armed with a pistol and was proficient in the martial arts; definitely one tough cookie! She also drove a souped-up AC Shelby Cobra and had a pet ocelot named Bruce, surprisingly, the true love of her life, though it did seem at times that she and her partner Sam had a little something going on other than work.

I found the series online and enjoyed watching all 30 episodes which you can see here at InternetTV archive.org. But in my research, I also discovered the origin of the series. Honey first appeared in a 2nd Season episode of Burke’s Law, “Who Killed the Jackpot”. Gene Barry starred as Amos Burke, a millionaire captain of Los Angeles police homicide. Here you can see a colorized print of the original black-and-white Burke’s Law’ episode. It was from this episode that sprung the term private-eye-full, describing Honey. And from this appearance on Burke’s Law, ABC created the spin-off series Honey West for Anne Frances and John Ericson. Though towards the end of the 30 episodes there were a few lame-brain plots, still, it was totally enjoyable, truly some of my old-school stuff! To my surprise, I found the Burke’s Law episode one of the best Honey West stories!

The series only lasted one season due to the competition it got from, of a questionable source, Gomer Pyle, USMC, a show I never came to pursue, as much that I’d enjoyed Gomer during his Andy Griffith days.

Another show that brings back so many memories is that Quinn Martin Production of The FBI. It ran for nine years, ’65-’74, and me and my Mama would watch it every week. Great stories based on actual cases sure made all the regular crime dramas on TV kinda-sorta lame. The show was truly serious for Director J. Edgar Hoover served as series consultant until his death and every detail of every episode was carefully vetted by F.B.I. second-in-command Clyde Tolson, so every story was factual and up to snuff.

A thing that one cannot help but notice is all the Ford vehicles in the show. Ford was the regular sponsor for the entire series, and in some shots, like the opening credits of the streets of Washington, D.C. all you can see are Fords. I haven’t a clue how they did that without today’s high tech computer-generated imagery. However, it was truly great to see all those great Fords such as Thunderbirds, Fairlanes, Galaxies, Falcons, Mercury Comets and Mustangs. The star of the show, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. can be seen in the closing credits of the first four years of the series driving a Mustang convertible, most likely a 64-65 introductory model, the first so-called pony car of the era, an automobile which has now lived through six generations.

Another sponsor, just for the first year, was the American Tobacco Company (Tareyton and Pall Mall), which was quite obvious due to all the cigarettes seen being smoked, something you don’t see much of in this day and age on television shows seeing that non-smoking is all the rage now. Surprisingly, Tareytons are still produced, though available only on the internet or at specialty tobacco stores.

That’s it for this time around. There are other shows I’ve come to love since those early years, such as Barney Miller, Wings and Becker but I’ll save them for another time. I would love to know if any of y’all made use of and enjoyed watching the episodes I so love.But, as it is, I’ve already written a novella here; however, I have been gone one year, one month and one day, so I had a lot of catching up to do!, So ’nuff said, for now.