What was bad can sometimes be good

In many cases, I prefer to watch black & white television shows. It isn’t as much about the content as it is being able to revisit the comfort from a time when I was young. The cold war brewed, civil defense signs were plastered in buildings, families went to schools to eat sugar-cube polio vaccines and defrosting the refrigerator was a major event.

I was way too young to worry about nuclear war or viral epidemics so there was a palpable feeling of safety that emanated from and around our home -- simple things like hearing my dad clear his throat as he read the newspaper, the sound of my mom hacking on her Eve cigarettes, or the cracking and creaking of the heating ducts when the furnace fired.

Nowadays, when I miss half of what has transpired in a Perry Mason episode, it doesn’t matter, because I know the model year of the cars, the women wore hats like the ones my mom had, and nearly all the characters smoked.