Saturday Morning Cartoons

Saturday morning and my grandson gets up early, comes into my bedroom, jumps on my bed and plays his DSI. I am awake, reading a book along to some music coming from his DSI. The song is something like, "Just another story..." while he plays his skateboard game. My granddaughter, too, is awake and making a birthday card for a friend. I assume the birthday party will be a sleepover.

I start to think...this is how my grandchildren spend Saturday mornings in 2011. This was a change from when my brother and I would get up and watch Saturday morning cartoons. We watched the cartoons on a small black and white television, all three channels offered something - Tom and Jerry, along with a fuzzy snowy picture as we adjusted the old rabbit ears on top of the TV. Along with good old Tom and Jerry, there was Gene Autry, or Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Saturday morning series, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Howdy Doody, Flash Gordon, Cisco Kid, Sky King and others. There were more show to watch but my old mind is having its usual senior moment about it.


Then along came my children. We still had a black and white television set. My kids would say we were the only people with a black and white set in our neighborhood. They were right. There were way more cartoons to watch on Saturday mornings, starting with the test pattern before the television stations were on the air. Some of my children would come home from their early morning paper routes, take their place on the couch, the chairs, and on the floor with their younger brothers and sisters, eating a bowl of their favorite cereal ready to watch their favorite shows.

The shows would progress from the 70s to the late 80s for my kids and they would include: Scooby All Stars, Daffy Duck, Dark Wing Duck (my personal favorite...and yes, I would watch the cartoons with them), Fantastic Four, Plastic Man, Popeye, Transformers, Thunder Cats, Smurfs, New Adventures of Mr. T., Looney Tunes' Merrie Melodies, GI Joe, Flintstones, Jeffersons, Super Mario Show, Captain Lou Albano...and a host of others.

Now it is 2011, my grandchildren don't even bother to watch Saturday morning cartoons or watch any children shows. Probably because the cartoons and children shows are on television all the time, every day, and repeated over and over. Besides there are all the other new technical devises that they can occupy themselves with, like the DSI, Game Boy, Wii system, and computer games.

But I still long for the old days when my kids were little. Or maybe I am nostalgic for the old days of the simple, innocent routine when my children were little and under my roof...when we could share breakfast together and watch all those cartoons. I think that might be it but I know that I can't go back in time, except for my memories. So, I now enjoy my grandson on my bed, playing with his DSI, and me, reading my book on Kindle.