Monday, May 28, 2012

Midway & Memorial Day Weekend

Cable TV was a luxury for my family when I was a kid.  I don't know when cable TV was invented, but my parents didn't get it hooked up until the mid-80s ... I don't even remember the exact year.  If I were to guess, it'd be 1985 or 1986.  Anyway, the coolest thing about cable TV were the movies!  Back then before TBS was a comedy station, it was a movie and Atlanta Braves baseball station.  So I would spend my summers watching movies on TBS and then flipping back and forth between WGN and TBS watching Cubs and Braves baseball.

With Memorial Day weekend, TBS would usually air the movie Midway or Tora, Tora, Tora.  I loved these movies!  My parents would often remark that my (much) older brothers would replay the battle of Midway with these little wood blocks.  I remember finding those blocks in our first home's garage.

On Saturday, my wife took one of our kids out on a date and errands.  While they were out, my oldest son and I were watching TV.  We started watching the Texas Rangers plays, but then started flipping channels and landed on the AMC channel which was playing Midway.  We caught it about half-way through - right in the thick of the battle.  I didn't know if my son would like such an old movie, but we watched and he was hooked. Yeah, the special effects aren't great ... or the original film footage they spliced in was kind of grainy ... but it was still great action and it was history.

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