Nothing transports me back in time to my childhood quite as much as watching old local TV commercials and station I.D.’s. This is clearly the result of spending way too much time staring at the tube as a kid but what the hell–it was back in the days before children were ‘overscheduled’. I didn’t have soccer and french and karate and piano lessons each day after school. (Actually I did have a piano lesson every Thursday but that was an easy and redundant chore since I already played better than my teacher did). Since there wasn’t much homework in our elementary school my free afternoons were spent watching TV and listening to records. In fact so were my evenings. (Perhaps we did have homework and I just didn’t do mine? It’s very possible). Anyway, above is a nice five-minute segment of commercials on KHJ-TV, Channel 9 (‘an RKO general station’). It’s the holiday season so it’s very gift-oriented. The mostly L.A. based businesses include names that are forever embedded into my youthful consciousness–Wilson’s House Of Suede and Leather, C&R Clothiers, Coberly Ford…even Thrifty’s Drug and Discount Store gets a brief plug (though not its own spot). All these businesses are either defunct or were absorbed into other companies. Thus this little compilation reel serves as a kind of memorial service to the businesses in the Los Angeles of my youth. It ends with a very nice KHJ station I.D. And then, from the safe haven of 1974, we are plunged forward into the terrifying hell of 2023.