It Was the End of Summer . . . and Almost the End of TV

There are hazards in semi-retirement. Whereas I wrote five columns a week for 20 years (and three for another 10) I am now reduced to one a week.

That does give me some time to muddle about in.

So far, that’s what I’ve been doing with my extra time. Muddling. I have taken a few young women out to lunch, but I sense that they didn’t find my company scintillating. I may have to give that up.

I have thought about finishing my novel--”Summer’s End.” But so far I have written only the first six words. “It was the end of summer.”

I have subscribed to the New York Times, so that I have both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times to read every morning. If you do a thorough job it takes half a day.

We have season tickets to the Philharmonic and the Mark Taper Forum, so several evenings are devoted to cultural pursuits.

That leaves the afternoons and most of the evenings. And that’s where the deadly specter of television comes in.

I have never been addicted to daytime television. I didn’t have time. But lately I have found myself watching it more and more. I never watch the talk shows. They are mostly about sex. I like sex, but I’d rather see it as fiction in a movie than in the real life confession of some adulterous wife.

Now and then I watch a movie. I especially like the old movies shown on AMC, and also Westerns. Watching an old Western is a good way to spend an afternoon, and my wife, being at work, is none the wiser.

In the evening it is our custom to watch a movie--usually sex and violence--while eating a microwave dinner on trays. My wife doesn’t like it when I say we eat microwave dinners, pointing that she often cooks dinners from fresh ingredients. True. But I am not picky about what I eat. I never complain about microwave dinners. If I really cared I’d cook dinner myself.

But I’ve been slipping. I spent two weeks in front of the tube during the U.S. Tennis Open. Lately I’ve had to watch football: College on Saturdays, pros on Sundays.

Last Monday I had a dilemma. I was watching Monday Night Football, a habit I’ve had for years, and one that my wife excuses, but I turned away from it to watch “Once Upon a Time in the West,” a Western that runs for 3 hours and 30 minutes.

“What’s that?” my wife asked.

I told her. “It’s got three stars,” I said. “Henry Fonda plays a villain.”

“What about football?”

I told her I was taping it in the bedroom. “That means you’ll watch it tomorrow,” she said. I said yes, of course.

She said, “You’re watching more television than a school kid.”

I was stung. I am very sensitive to her innuendoes about the way I spend my time. I especially didn’t like being compared with a school kid in my television habits. I’m told the average school kid watches 28 hours of TV every week. That’s scandalous and I certainly didn’t want to be in that category.

I turned off both sets. The game and the Western. “What are you doing?” she asked rather nervously.

“I’m giving up television,” I said. “I don’t like being compared to a school kid. From now on, if you want to watch a movie at night, you can pick it out yourself. I’m no longer going to do our programming.”

That evening we ate dinner in the dining room, for the first time in months. It happened to be lamb chops that she had prepared herself.

We began talking about this and that. It seemed we had a lot to catch up on.

“I don’t know when we’ve talked this much at dinner,” she said.

It was the same thing the next night. I didn’t watch TV during the day, and that night I didn’t suggest a movie. We ate in the dining room again.

I hadn’t realized how much television was stealing away our lives. I made us each a vodka tonic; actually, they were doubles. We became very talkative. After dinner my wife caught up on her paper work and I did some reading.

So far I haven’t cracked yet. I have a great deal of negative strength. When I say I’m not going to do something I don’t do it.

I did watch “Hunter” reruns every weekday. I was waiting for a rerun of that unusual episode in which the cop partners, Hunter and DeeDee McCall, go to bed together. I’d heard about it. By an improbable coincidence, it turned up just the other day. They ended up confessing to a police psychiatrist.

That finishes me with “Hunter.”