Saturday spaghetti supper, anyone?

By Ed Goldman

The concepts of Taco Tuesday and Throwback Thursday make me simultaneously hungry and nostalgic. 

When I was a kid, and before my middle brother Stuart left home (the U.S. Army insisted on it), and our eldest brother Jerry was either working or dating, my folks would grant Stu and me two special at-home nights that included getting to eat remarkably mediocre dinners off TV trays.

Friday was Frozen Pizza Night, during which we watched the ABC-TV private-eye show, “77 Sunset Strip.” My Mom would thaw out and bake the pizza during the commercial breaks so she wouldn’t miss a single moment of glam actors Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith and Edd “Kookie” Byrnes compete to see who had the coolest hair. 

Byrnes always won but he had the on-air advantage of always being seen combing it. This was what TV shows in those days considered character development. These days, the back story for even a minor character can include various forms of suffering—from an Electra or Oedipal complex to being an alien life form or having a plethora of bionic body parts. And these are just the comedies.

Then there was Saturday Spaghetti Supper. My parents often attended what they called “a function” (which I’ve always done in private) and would serve us an early dinner and movie.

My Mom would make what she labeled spaghetti marinara (the key ingredient in her sauce being generic ketchup from Fedco, the long-shuttered nonprofit consumers’ cooperative started by Post Office employees). Around 5:30 p.m., the CBS affiliate would then run old Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller, the former Olympics aquatic champion who, as an actor, was a really good swimmer.

These films were, in retrospect, somewhat racist and somewhat sexist:

• Somewhat racist: The African natives were depicted as inept unless the transplanted upper-crust white guy, Tarzan, swung his way into a melee on vines that couldn’t support the weight of a housecat; and
• Somewhat sexist:  As the upper-crust Jane—initially kidnapped by Tarzan and soon his Stockholm-victim common-law wife—Maureen O’Sullivan, Mia Farrow’s mama, wore the kind of loin-cloth ensemble that even the Victoria’s Secret catalogue might have found “a tad daring.”

But Stu and I loved our Saturday Spaghetti Supper, especially because our folks would leave after the movie ended around 7:30 p.m. (most of the films were barely 65 minutes long but their running times were lengthened by the intrusion of from 20 to 30 commercials—and in those days, very few TV spots were shorter than 60 seconds).

Once they were out of the house, Stu and I could commence doing what brothers who were 14 (Stu) and 10 (moi) really enjoy—like wrestling and playing non-contact football in the living room, using as flags the dishrags and towels we were supposed to be using to wash and dry the dinner plates.