We continued as a family to watch TV shows most every night, still a lot of westerners but several new shows started including The Beverly Hillbillies which we thought was the most hilarious thing about the dumb antics of a hillbilly family moving to Beverly Hills after discovering oil or as the theme song said  

Come and listen to my story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
And then one day he was shootin at some food,
And up through the ground come a bubblin crude.
Oil that is, black gold.  

We also enjoyed Candid Camera in which tricks were played on people without them knowing, and then there were the Red Skelton, and the Jackie Gleason shows which I didn’t care much for as they were more adult humor but they were Grandpa Junior’s favorites and he would always watch them even when we were visiting.   There were the new game shows What’s My Line, I’ve Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth which we would watch if there was nothing else on and The Flintstones was a must watch during Saturday morning cartoons.  

The songs “The Twist" and "Twist and Shout" became popular on the radio which had a dance that went with them called, yes of course, The Twist which was shown on the Ed Sullivan show as well as on Dick Clark’s Saturday morning American Bandstand TV show and we kids would dance the twist when the songs played. The song Duke of Earl became number one on the radio, and I would always sing along the opening lines of “Duke of Earl” repeated many times in different ways.  With Kennedy as president the song PT-109 by James Dean became popular as it was about Kennedy’s experience during the war which was later made into a movie.  

The Disney movie “In Search of the Castaways” came out and the whole family went to see it. We also went to see the adventure comedy “Hatari!” and  “How the West Was Won” but other famous movies that premiered in ’62 were “Mutiny on the Bounty” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” but we were to young to go to them it and it would be many years later before I saw them.  Dad took David and I to see the first James Bond movie Dr. No. When I saw Ursula Andress walking out of the water in a white bikini, knife in hand, I thought she was the most beautiful woman there was. 

Updated: 07-13-2022

The Ranchette