Many years ago, when my wife and I were first married, we visited her maternal grandmother in the wow-they’ve-got-a-Sonic-here hamlet of Chickasha, Oklahoma. We stayed the night and attended church the next morning before returning home.
I’d been to the house once before for a de facto family reunion at Thanksgiving. We’d been dating for three months at the time and the enormity of my wife’s family frightened and overwhelmed me. It’s large and free of dysfunction. I wasn’t sure I could handle being involved in such a thing.
After dinner, we repaired to the den, where Kristen’s grandmother turned the television on to the local PBS station. It was time for the Saturday night rerun of the Lawrence Welk Show and she had a standing date.
I can typically find something of interest in most things musical, but the only thing I got out of the program was drowsiness. Bubbles, baby blue suits, and singing sisters made for one of the longer hours of my life. My wife, spending quality time with her grandmother, cast frequent looks in my direction to gauge my well-being. It was a gorgeous spring Saturday night, and I was sitting on a floral print sofa watching Lawrence Welk on public television.
So this is what old looks like.
To my credit, I’d fought off the old age quinella of fatigue and grumpiness to join my wife and daughter downtown on the canal for a team dinner. It was a nice evening, and I’d even flirted with the notion of an adult beverage. There was also the possibility of a nightcap at the lobby bar. However, I’d done that one before—in the similarly quaint Hilton in Wichita. Furthermore, reconnaissance during check-in revealed an unattractive tap selection. I didn’t want to check out the next morning to find that $25 had been charged to the room for three Michelob Ultras that had left me cotton-mouthed and pissing all night. Plus, the optics would’ve been less than favorable. It’s one thing when you’re young and traveling on business. It’s quite another when you’re with your family in the hotel where your teenage daughter’s volleyball team is staying.
The girls occupied themselves with their iPhones. I resisted both the book on the nightstand and the yawning laptop with the incomplete essay on the desk. I flipped on the television to see if I could find anything moderately interesting.
I’m not a huge fan of television, and Hilton’s repackaging of local cable didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. As I expected, quantity exceeded quality. In these instances, I often look for something awful. Especially when I have a captive audience. Hotel rooms are ideal for turning on something ridiculous like Baywatch.
This is an old trick of mine. I used to torture my younger sister with it. Not finding anything worthwhile on television, I’d turn to a station where the programming would elicit a response. Typically, a negative one. This is why I’m a Baywatch trivia expert. This is why I know that if Mitch takes a shine to a female guest star, she’s terminally ill.
This became a summer ritual when late nights were common. We’d find the worst thing we could and derive entertainment by mercilessly mocking and making fun of it. It was slam television, though he never referred to it as such. In fact, I just made up the term. “Shit Television Shows that My Sister and I Used to Watch to Make Fun of Because We Were Bored” is a touch ungainly on the page.
A partial list of Slam TelevisionTM programs:
Baywatch
Mama’s Family
Any Time-Life Music long-form ads
The Joy of Painting
Barney and Friends
Gumby Adventures
BodyShaping
George Michael Sports Machine
Infatuation
Love Connection
Roggin’s Heroes
Beverly Exercise
The Brady Bunch
The 700 Club
American Gladiators
The formal name for Bob Ross’s program was The Joy of Painting, which you might have noticed on the Slam TelevisionTM list. In my defense, I was just beginning college at the time and maturity and understanding might have been lacking. Likewise, my sister was in her early teens and just beginning to find her cynical voice. I was pleased and obliged to mentor her. To us, Bob Ross was a stoner with a brown Afro, painting the same damn scene every day while making bizarre comments in that creepy pillow-talk voice. Wardrobe by S Walton and Company, Bentonville. It was fun–and easy–to assume that Bob Ross had killed a bowl before stepping to the easel for that day’s taping. Never mind the paint thinner needed for his wet-on-wet technique. Trees with friends. Happy clouds. The dude had to be lit.
Despite our shallow criticism, there was no escaping that Bob Ross had talent. My only real complaint is who in his right mind would befriend and bottle-feed a squirrel?
In our hotel room above blustery Oklahoma City, I persisted. I knew it was just a matter of time before both my wife and daughter noticed what was on, dropped their phones, and paid rapt attention to the serial masterpiece being created on the LG flatscreen.
A few years ago, my wife and I attended a costumed fundraiser for our daughter’s school. Along with our table mates, we dressed as Bob Ross. I thought this meant my wife had a least a modicum of appreciation for the man. I’d made the same assumption about the Disney film, Midnight Madness, years earlier. At times, my perception sails wide of the target.
After a few minutes, I’d given up on trying to get their attention and found myself engrossed in Bob Ross’s painting. Young me would’ve been appalled. The girls had yet to look up, but my vocal absorption gave them a nudge.
“Look at this,” I said with a tone of genuine amazement. “He’s painting perfect mountains with a putty knife! I can barely cover a nail hole with spackling using a putty knife.”
“You are differently talented,” said my wife still not looking up. She delivered the words from rote and free of inflection like a script delivered by a morose telemarketer.
However, she finally took the bait. She lowered her phone and readers and looked at the television.
“Oh, a landscape. What do you know?” she noted, unimpressed.
“Of course it’s a landscape,” I responded with a tsk.
Bob Ross is one of the great landscape artists of the 20th Century. The fact that I couldn’t name another artist in the category was immaterial. I mean, what do you expect, the Mona Lisa? I can say with some certainty that if Bob Ross painted a version of the Mona Lisa, he would’ve included a happy pair of eyebrows–in Van Dyke Brown.
“I mean, he’s kind of a one-trick pony,” said my wife, possibly pining for a high-volume hotel argument.
“It’s his specialty,” I defended.
I chalked it up to novice-speak. I had six hours of art history under my belt. I learned to appreciate these things. So what if Bob Ross’s portfolio is dominated by paintings of mountains in the middle of bumfuck nowhere? He was good at it. I mean, In-N-Out is a one-trick pony. And it’s one hell of a trick. They don’t need chicken nuggets or salads. And Bob didn’t need portraits or still lifes. Bob Ross is a success story. He took a talent, perfected it, shared it with the world, and became a celebrity. He's also made a lot of money. Or the Kowalski family has, at least.
My wife went back to her phone. My daughter never left hers. I remained in bed, warm beneath the alizarin crimson comforter as a sharp cold front rode in on an icy wind that beat the devil out of the window. I watched as Bob constructed another amazing painting, that old rascal. At the conclusion of the program, I was reminded of that spring evening in Chickasha.
This is what old looks like.
