Dean Shalhoup

Floating down the proverbial lonesome stream of consciousness, pondering whether TB12 will show up on the sidelines at the start of next season in the uniform of whichever team wins next week’s Super Bowl. …

Chatting recently with a fellow baby boomer a couple years my junior (at this age, a couple of years plus or minus matter about as much as whether the real-feel temperature is 1 degree above zero or 1 degree below zero), we suddenly began taking turns conjuring up from our respective cobweb-encrusted memory banks some of the more memorable highlights of our generation’s must-see TV: The Uncle Gus Show.

As most any boomer who lived their formative years in the Granite State – as long as it was south of the Lakes Region, north of the Massachusetts-NH border, west of Portsmouth and Hampton and east of Keene, that is – will remember, clicking on the big box with the little screen, waiting for the vacuum tubes to warm up, turning the big knob until the number “9” was on top, then tweaking the little knobs that controlled contrast and setting the vertical and horizontal hold levels just right was as much a late weekday afternoon ritual as was devouring the after-school Hostess cupcake and downing the glass of milk.

What’s funny is one of the memories that quickly came to mind for me was when Uncle Gus – he was meteorologist Gus Bernier when he was doing the weather, one of his other gigs at Channel 9 – brought onto the set a popular new game called “Boob Tube,” in which two contestants each got a plastic cylinder about 12-14 inches tall and full of marbles. The object was to shake the tubes so the marbles fell to the bottom; first player who did so won.

The funny part is that when I Googled “Uncle Gus” and found a short video in which he reminisces about – you got it – the show’s “Boob Tube” competitions.

(WMUR-TV file photo) An old black and white photo of "Uncle Gus" Bernier, the late Channel 9 newscaster and meteorologist who is best remembered by baby boomers as the host of "The Uncle Gus Show," the late afternoon children's variety show.

Gus, who, if he hadn’t died in 2005, would have turned 102 last month, typically introduced each show’s two or three Popeye cartoons by picking one of the younger audience members to crank a Jack-in-the-Box. When the spring-powered “Jack” popped up, the cartoon began.

Toward the end of each show, for a number of years, Gus would bring out a Jiffy Pop, fire up the hot plate on his desk – yeah, that would go over well with today’s fire prevention officials – and entertain the kids as he vigorously shook the pan until the foil bubble reached full size.

On their way out, kids in the audience – and sometimes a parent or two – grabbed a handful of popcorn as a de facto parting gift.

Another vintage 1960s thing that for some reason came to mind the other day was the phrase “It’s Atlantic Red Ball Time!” If I remember correctly, one of the Red Sox TV announcers welcomed fans to the telecast with the plug for one of their sponsors – Atlantic Imperial Gasoline – whose “Red Ball Service” motto led to a “match-the-red-ball” cash giveaway game and the production of small scale plastic red balls that were distributed to customers.

They were designed to be attached to your car’s radio antenna to make the car easier to find in a big parking lot. Being a kid, I probably mocked my elders for finding the low-tech “car locator” invaluable on shopping day; now, even with big parking lots marked with numbers or letters, there are plenty of times I would really appreciate having a shiny Red Ball as a beacon.

Speaking of service stations – aka “fillin’ stations” or “gas stations” – I believe it was at Ernest “Pete” Levesque’s Atlantic station on Canal Street, across from then-Sanders Associates and just down the hill from the Atherton Avenue homestead, where I first heard about some kind of fuel that was called “white gas.”

Pop used to get a container of white gas from Levesque’s every once in a while; he’d use it in the Coleman stove and lanterns back when family camping meant pitching a tent, unfurling a square of canvas called a “dining fly” and blowing up Army surplus-issue air mattresses – and saying “bye, see you Sunday” to Mom, who, for reasons a kid couldn’t understand, much preferred staying home with the cats than venturing into the buggy, sometimes rainy, sometimes hot and sometimes cold semi-wilderness.

“Ah, she won’t come camping until the tent has electricity and central heating,” Pop liked to say.

Given a little time, I’m sure I could come up with 100 more nuggets of 1950s-60s nostalgia unique to Nashua – more like 500 if I cheated by perusing old city directories, but that would be like smuggling your phone into Trivia Night.

If I had to choose my favorites, there are two that would be right up near the top of my list. See if you agree:

One would be that seriously cool, I-wish-it-was-still-there (or better, I-wish-it-was-on-the-wall-in-my-house) lighted advertising sign for Cott beverages that was mounted on the north-facing side of the block at Main and West Hollis streets, where 7-Star pizza is today.

The other is the Christmas lights displayed each season along Main Street from Railroad Square to Kinsley Street and on several side streets.

They were as colorful as could be, punctuated at several junctions with white, bell-shaped lights, all of them scalloped in three or four-foot sections along their support wires.

I wonder if they’re still around somewhere, perhaps stored in boxes just waiting for someone to find them, dust them off and pitch the idea of bringing them back to life come holiday season 2022.

Just a thought.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.