Sea Hunt..Wild Kingdom....Cousteau
Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 12:52 am
I posted this on the VDH Facebook page but I thought I would share it here as well.
I was born too late for Sea Hunt..I was a kid during the time we watched moon launches and landings at school on a tiny TV shared by every student in the elementary school. Astronauts were revered as as national heroes.
I was more interested in the Frogmen that pulled them from the capsules when they got home. Watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom when Jim was SCUBA diving and wrestling the shark while Marlin Perkins narrated was the deal....But Nirvana was reached only when a new episode or replay of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau was on TV.
I would count the days like it was Christmas.....I would lay out my diving gear days in advance...It consisted of some poorly formed white fins, blue mask and some cheap snorkel from Katz drug or a Coast to Coast store. I would put them on and pretend to SCUBA dive along with the divers of the Calypso as they appeared on the screen. My mind racing 110 miles an hour as I explored shipwrecks and salvaged priceless amphoras from antiquity all the time fighting off dangerous sharks and octopi that threatened the dive team that I was part of. The fascination was to the fanatical stage at that time and if Cousteau would have come on screen and said " All divers of the Calypso only have their left eye" I would have gouged out my right eye with a dull butter knife....
I was born too late for Sea Hunt..I was a kid during the time we watched moon launches and landings at school on a tiny TV shared by every student in the elementary school. Astronauts were revered as as national heroes.
I was more interested in the Frogmen that pulled them from the capsules when they got home. Watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom when Jim was SCUBA diving and wrestling the shark while Marlin Perkins narrated was the deal....But Nirvana was reached only when a new episode or replay of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau was on TV.
I would count the days like it was Christmas.....I would lay out my diving gear days in advance...It consisted of some poorly formed white fins, blue mask and some cheap snorkel from Katz drug or a Coast to Coast store. I would put them on and pretend to SCUBA dive along with the divers of the Calypso as they appeared on the screen. My mind racing 110 miles an hour as I explored shipwrecks and salvaged priceless amphoras from antiquity all the time fighting off dangerous sharks and octopi that threatened the dive team that I was part of. The fascination was to the fanatical stage at that time and if Cousteau would have come on screen and said " All divers of the Calypso only have their left eye" I would have gouged out my right eye with a dull butter knife....