Duffy A. Latham Oral History Project
Interview with Duffy Latham
Date of Interview: June 1, 2008; Spanish Fork, Utah
Interviewer: Allisa Thomas
Transcriber: Allisa Thomas
Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Thomas: This is the Duffy Latham Oral History, session number one with Duffy Latham on June 1st. We’re here in his basement at 1134 South 1180 East Spanish Fork, Utah. The interviewer is his lovely daughter-in-law, Allisa Thomas, Brigham Young University Student.
Thomas: So, Duffy when were you born?
Latham: August 16, 1949.
Thomas: Forty-nine. That’s a good year.
Thomas: Do you remember listening to the radio growing up, or did you have a television?
Latham: Well, we had radio, of course, and I remember when I was very young we had a black and white television. I don’t ever remember a time when we didn’t have a television. We may not have when I was very young. I don’t know.
Thomas: What types of television shows did you watch?
Latham: So… all the different TV shows we used to watch. There was the Howdy Doody show, and all the different Westerns. We used to watch a number of different old westerns that were on back when I was little. That was the media that we had. We also used to go to the movies.
Thomas: Do you remember any movies you used to watch?
Latham: Well, I remember the old old original Frankenstein, and Dracula. Of course I used to love the horror movies when I was little. So I used to watch all those movies in black and white.
Thomas: What number sibling are you in your family?
Latham: I am number two.
Thomas: So did you ever get control of the remote at home?
Latham: (Laughs) There were no remotes when I was growing up. It was you go over and turn the dials on the television. When I was living in the San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area we had antennas and there were channel two through thirteen. But you had channel two, four, five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, and that was it! We had those seven channels. And so you would decide which one you wanted to see. Whether you were watching Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Lone Ranger, or the westerns like Howdy Doody. We used to watch Captain Kangaroo. And there was one were he was dressed up like a cowboy. Sheriff John I think it was called. Yes, Sheriff John.
Thomas: I’ve never even heard of that one.
Latham: Yeah, it’s a kid’s show. And we also used to enjoy Roy Rogers and Dale Evens. That was another western show I used to watch. I also used to watch the Gene Autry show. He would be riding along on his horse singing songs. It was really corny but it was fun.
Thomas: Sounds like fun.
Latham: And I liked cartoons when I was little. We used to have Felix the Cat, which was one I liked when I was really little and Tom and Jerry. Hanna Barbara was one of those producers of a lot of cartoons I used to watch a lot of those. So it was kinda fun. Those were the things that were on TV that I watched.
Thomas: Was it like it is now with cartoons on Saturday mornings?
Latham: Oh yes, there were a lot of Saturday morning cartoons. Cartoons were not on a lot during the week. There were some but not much, mostly just on Saturdays.
Thomas: Did your parents let you want television after school?
Latham: There wasn’t much on TV that I was interested in. I used to go outside and play all the time.
Latham: In the evening we’d gather around the TV and there’d be the shows that my folks liked to watch. And they’d let us watch. Pretty much everything was definitely G rated. And then you had your news. And there was only one news cast a day. It wasn’t like today when you have your three o’clock, four o’clock, five o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven. They had news usually just at ten or eleven depending on what area you were in. And that was a big thing for my folks to watch the news.
Thomas: Do you remember any big event that happened while you were growing up, and how you heard about it?
Latham: Well, I was in junior high school when John F. Kennedy was killed. I remember that. I was in junior high at that time. I remember the Watts Riots in California. Happened in Watts. My dad was a firefighter and I used to sit and watch the news and listen to the radio. That was quite intense knowing my dad was out there.
Thomas: I didn’t know your dad was a firefighter. I just knew he was in the navy going down in the submarines.
Latham: Yep, he worked for LA city fire and he was down there trying to put the fires out while getting shot at at the same time. So I definitely remember that. That was an event that really sticks in my mind.
Thomas: So they were covering the Watts Riot on the television?
Latham: Yes, they were covering it quite a bit.
Thomas: That must have been nerve racking, listening to that, knowing your Dad was out there.
Latham: Yes, it was.
Thomas: Do you remember when your family switched from a black and white to a colored television?
Latham: Yes. I remember when it happened. I remember my dad bringing it home. Colored TV had been out of a little while already, and my dad finally was able to get enough money to afford to get one. He brought in this great big console. It must have been four feet wide and a good three feet off the ground and it had a screen that was about a thirteen inch circle. And you’d turn it on and you had colored TV. The color was fairly poor. You had these knobs you had to adjust. The red, blue, green, and yellow you had to adjust. And you’d adjust those and the color would come close. (Laughs). And almost every new show that came on you’d have to run up there and adjust the color.
Thomas: How was the reception while you were growing up?
Latham: Well, with the antenna a lot of times you’d have interference whether it was caused by weather, electrical storms, and we didn’t know it at the time, but a lot of times we’d have solar flares from the sun, and that radiation would cause interference and it would mess with the picture and we’d have funny lines or we’d have snow or the picture would go sideways.
Thomas: Do you remember about how old you were when you first got the color television?
Latham: I must have been around ten or twelve when we first got it. Kind of around that time. I also remember getting my first transistor radio it was probably, oh, four by six inches and you’d walk around with that up against your ear because it was portable. (Laughs) That was probably in the early sixties and I listened to rock and roll and Elvis Presley and all the contemporary music at the time. I remember when the Beetles came out. (Laughs)
Thomas: Did color television make TV watching more exciting.
Latham: Oh yeah. It made it more real. At that time was when Disney Land came out with the Disney show, The Wonderful World of Color, and when you would turn it on the show would be in black and white then Tinker Bell would fly across the screen and color would follow her. And everything would be in color from then on. And so it was neat and of course it’s exciting. They’d put on shows like The Mickey Mouse Club. I used to watch it in black and white and then it was on in color. And you know I had a crush on some of the members of The Mickey Mouse Club, to me they were my age but they weren’t, of course, they were way older.
Thomas: Did the movies have color around the same time as televisions at home?
Latham: Oh, they had it before.
Thomas: Do you remember any of the color movies you watched.
Latham: I really don’t know what the first color film was that I saw. Maybe it was Bambi. And the Disney cartoons that came out in color around that time. Those are the ones that I can remember quite clearly that I watched in color.
Thomas: What do you think about all the media developments that popped up recently?
Latham: Well, the advancements that have happened in my lifetime are phenomenal. We thought it was great when we were able to have a transistor radio. And high fidelity was a reel to reel tape player. And you could have music on that, but it was very expensive. We never had anything like that. We had records and 45’s, and such like that. And I remember I had my first four track tape player to put in my car. And I was 16. And then shortly there after they came out with the eight track, which was petty neat because the same cartridge gave you twice as much music. And we had that for a short time and then the tape discs came out. And by that time I had already changed out my tape player twice and I thought I can’t afford to change this out again so when I sold my El Camino when I was eighteen it still had my eight track in it.
