Tuning the dial to the mists of time...

I love old-time radio.

I know what you're thinking. "Here Mabe goes again. He's standing at the corner of Nostalgia and Anachronism."

I don't care. I love it.

(I still prefer listening to the news on the radio than on television, such as I can get it. CBS Radio News. NPR. BBC World Service.)

I like to listen at night, just before bedtime. It is relaxing. It is fun.

Sirius/XM has a great OTR channel, but I still like to listen to the shows a la carte. My favorite website is www.otr.net. My favorite show is Jack Benny's. He invented the modern sitcom as we know it. I've gotten to laughing at these things so much I can't get to sleep. That was entertainment, baby.

I also love "Gunsmoke." Entertaining. Inventive, especially with its sound effects. Trivia: Marshal Dillon was played by William Conrad. Chester was played by Parley Baer. Doc was played by Howard McNear. (The last two were part of "The Andy Griffith Show" cast.)

Radio shows aren't as passive as TV. You have to use your imagination. My pictures are still better than those on the boob tube, even on "Gunsmoke."

Plus, it's a lot of fun.

At least I had the weekend...

It's easy to make it through a rainy Monday when you've got such a great life.

Friday night found me on Norris Lake, eating shrimp and watching baseball. The rain ran us inside, but that was OK. The Yankees beat the Twins. Boston lost.

Listened to Marvin West, the sportswriter with no equal, tell tales. Good ones, too. Like the time John Majors kept calling his hotel room in Lexington. John was angry because Marvin found out about a coaching change and put it in the paper before the coach had told the assistant. Oops.

Marvin said Majors called him back about seven times. The next time they saw each other it was as if the incident never happened. Which is the way it should be if you think about it.

Was under the weather Saturday. So, I stayed home and rooted the Vols to victory over the Dawgs. The boys looked good. I'm thinking I need to get sick and stay home more if they keep playing like that without me.

I started Sunday, like always, reading Rheta Grimsley Johnson. Her column is a graduate course in great writing. This week's piece was about the too-short month of October. Poignant.

She's coming to town, by the way. I'll get to hear her at a lecture on Oct. 29. Can't wait.

Enjoyed breakfast at Amber with my dear friend Jaci Spicer. It was so good to see her again. And, as it always does, two hours flew by like a house at the side of the road. It was a nice treat. (In case you're wondering: two eggs, medium, sausage, biscuits and gravy, regular coffee.)

Singing practice was canceled, so I plopped down in the recliner and watched a "Gunsmoke" marathon for most of the afternoon. Doesn't get much better than that.

Last night, I headed out to Oak Ridge, to hang out with Mike and Judy Finn awhile. We have to re-create our Barley's experience now.

So, Mike put on a few Robinella bootlegs, we downed some cold ones and chatted about the songs, and the Detroit Tigers, and Napoleon's Waterloo and how the weather was. Mike and I caught a little bit of football and baseball on the tube before time to go home.

Then, to top it all off, Dean Harned called to say that Dean, his wife Allison and I are going to see Glen Campbell this Friday night in North Carolina. He's always been one of our favorite singers. After all, Glen's the Rhinestone Cowboy. He even played opposite John Wayne in "True Grit"!

So, yeah. If I can't have a pretty Monday, at least I had the weekend...

Left in the dark...

I had it all planned.

Sunday afternoon was going to be my time. I was skipping the UT baseball finale (good move as it turned out), had already gone to eat with Mom and given her a present (Happy Mother's Day!) and now had the day to myself.

I threw some laundry into the washer (sigh), put Jon Schwartz's "Sunday Show" on XM and leaned back in my recliner. Now, this is more like it!

Then I heard the clap of thunder. Tony Bennett stopped singing on the XM. The power was out.

But, wait. No clouds. Huh?

A few minutes later I heard the utility trucks. Seems the high winds had knocked down a power line. After awhile, KUB blocked off a section of Brown Gap Road while they worked.

This isn't so bad, I thought. I opened all the blinds, grabbed the issues of Sports Illustrated and Newsweek I'd neglected all week and polished them off. Somewhere in the midst of stories about Obama's pastor and the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks, I drifted off to slumber.

Woke up about 4. Still no power.

I met some friends for supper at Puleo's, hoping things would be fixed in a couple of hours.

Nope. Still black as the night. So much for watching that Sinatra special on TCM.

Instead, I grabbed the iPod and tried to listen to Charles Frazier read "Cold Mountain," a book I'd read a decade ago. But that got boring, so I managed to find a candle, then sat back in the chair, picked back up the iPod and tuned to some old time radio shows I'd downloaded a year ago.

Suddenly I was solving a mystery with Ellery Queen. After that, Marshal Matt Dillon and I helped Doc Holiday get out of a jam on "Gunsmoke." It was silly, but it was fun, and I couldn't help but wonder how many kids developed their imaginations doing this exact same thing on rainy Sunday nights of yesteryear.

Between acts, the announcer told us to "stay tuned to CBS Radio for the upcoming Democratic National Convention." I couldn't help but feel nostalgic for something I'd never known.

After "Gunsmoke" ended, I listened awhile to Miles Davis and his quintet work magic on "Flamenco Sketches." Then I gave up and went to bed.

Loud jazz music woke me up about 1 a.m.; the TV receiver was still resting in the "on" position. I shut it off and went back to sleep, glad in a way that I'd been left in the dark.

Where the good guys always win

I often like to relax during a free winter evening by watching a good, old fashioned black-and-white western.

Oaters went out of style several years ago -- or so we keep being told. Funny, though, how virtually every time one airs on TV it garners huge ratings. But, anyway, that's another story for another day. I've never been too concerned with what's popular -- mainly because more often than not passing fads are a bunch of crap. I watch what I enjoy, and westerns tend to top the list.

Tonight I popped in an episode of the classic CBS TV series "Gunsmoke." During the early part of its run, "Gunsmoke" was a half-hour show. The drama played quickly; the script by necessity had to be lean and tight.

It's a little hokey, sure. But it's also an appealing fantasy.

Times weren't simpler back in the Old West. If anything, they were extremely violent, full of upheaval and uncertainty.

But the Hollywood version is the exact opposite. Good wears white. Bad dons black. Evil is always punished and the whole thing is usually wrapped up rather nicely in about 30 minutes or an hour. The black and white clarity -- literally and figuratively -- makes for a nice contrast to the blurred colors of the real world.

My good friend Doug Harned and I get together every now and again to screen one of our favorite classics. We're tough critics.



I liked "Comanche Moon," the recent CBS miniseries based on Larry McMurtry's last installment in the "Lonesome Dove" saga, better than Doug did. I know one thing. I'd love to find a woman like Linda Cardellini's Clara Forsythe. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

But I digress.

CBS has brought "Gunsmoke" to DVD in season sets. At the rate they're going ("Gunsmoke" ran for 20 years during its original run; they've chosen to release the episodes a half season at a time), I'll be in my 50s when every show is available.

Some nights I'll even surf over to OTR.net and listen to an episode or two of the 1950s radio version of "Gunsmoke." (I'm a little sad I missed out on radio shows. It's fun, and you get to use your own imagination to visualize the characters.)

As someone who was trained to be a historian, I know I should prefer the actuality to the myth. But, in this case, I guess my heart will always be on the side of the legend -- that wonderful place where the crook is always punished, the girl always comes back and the good guys always win.