![]() Before making our way to the next table, I asked Shirley, “Where’s your Oscar?” She mockingly raised a half-empty water bottle and waved it high over head, an ersatz solemn expression on her face. We offered our collective thanks and expressed our pleasure to have met her. With her pen poised in anticipation, she asked, “Would you like a name on it?” “Yes,”I replied, “preferably yours.” Shirley chuckled and I added, “Look at me! I’m smart-assing Shirley Jones!” She laughed again. I selected a photo (a reproduction of the Oklahoma lobby card) and presented it to Shirley for a twenty dollar inscription. She seemed a tad distant, but politely and graciously accepted our compliments. My wife joined me and we sang her praises and gushed as we mentioned our favorites of her roles. Meeting Shirley Jones was surreal, to say the least. Partridge over there.” The white-haired, yet still-striking, Miss Jones was seated behind an array of items chronicling her long and illustrious career, from her motion picture debut in 1955’s Oklahoma through her Oscar-winning turn in Elmer Gantry to The Music Man to, of course, The Partridge Family. While my wife examined a display of antique Lone Ranger publicity shots, I spotted Shirley Jones. We descended the escalator and headed to the main room. It makes me sound like a “trick” and them sound like “Sharpie pen whores.”) (That sounds tacky when phrased so bluntly. I was anxious to get to the lower level to see the ‘special guests” and happily pay them for their signatures. The centerpiece of the room was a squared blockade of long banquet tables, stocked with glossy photos and manned by celebrities eager to sign them. The downstairs housed a huge ball room outfitted with more vendors. There were vintage theatrical posters, publicity stills of long-forgotten matinee idols and DVDs of obscure B-grade movies – all for sale with mostly over-inflated price tags. Once we strapped on our all-access wristbands, we strolled the first-floor level of dealer-lined hallways of the convention center. We arrived at the suburban hotel that hosted the festivities. ** (With very few exceptions, my spouse steers clear of the celebrity autograph area, or as she refers to it, “ the human zoo.” ) Mrs, P, on the other hand, loves buying memorabilia and haggling with the dealers who display their wares in the marketplace areas alongside the featured stars. Pincus and I set out for the drive to Cockeysville, Maryland (that’s right – Cockeysville) for this annual gathering of people who haven’t quite accepted the fact that television broadcasts are now in color.Īs mentioned previously, I collect celebrity autographed photos and I have been frequenting these shows for over twenty years to add to my collection. So today, on my 51st birthday, my TV habit was further indulged when I attended the final day of the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. I have a difficult time leaving the house while I weigh the benefits of going to work versus watching forty-year-old reruns of Family Affair. Instead, I have discovered Antenna TV and MeTV and my television-watching has come full circle. ![]() Now, I rarely watch any regular programming on the ∻ig Three networks. ![]() Once networks like TV Land and Nick at Nite began, I barely got any sleep because I couldn’t tear myself away from that glowing cathode ray tube time machine. On local UHF * stations, I revisited some of the classic shows from my youth. In the pre-cable days of television, I watched weekly series with diligent regularity – both comedies and dramas. My formative years with television were the late 60s and early 70s. But, my relationship with television has changed over the years.
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