Most retired people will tell you that, at the top of their “perks” list, are those two words.

Sunday night.

It’s amazing how perspectives of a day of the week can change when Monday morning doesn’t loom before you. Sunday, once intended as a day of rest, has become a day of scrambling. People often use the day to get everything they didn’t accomplish over the weekend tied up and crammed into their busy schedule.

Sundays have completely lost their original purpose.

But ahhhh, when you are retired. Sunday nights are really a moment to reflect and settle your brain. Monday morning does not loom anymore.  

I can’t help but think of what Sunday nights were when I was a kid. Sure, school was still on the horizon on Sundays, but childhood didn’t have the same responsibilities.  

As usual, I think about Sunday nights and what was on television. We didn’t watch an overabundance of TV on Sundays, especially if there was something to do outside. But, when it was too dark or cold or wet, we retreated inside and clicked on the TV.

Sundays were typically a wasteland for most little kids as far as programming.  We were still basking in the glow of Saturday morning cartoons, and most of us didn’t have the attention span for Wide World of Sports – even though I remember a rare baseball game on the fuzzy reception of KPLR, and most of my baseball game memories are from the radio.

 There might be, if you were lucky, some rerun of a cartoon or two on Sunday.  But mostly, there would be late afternoon nature shows or that type of non-threatening television that wasn’t animated or violent. Once in a while, Mutual of Omaha would show a lion killing something. It wasn’t as intriguing as a crime show or even “The Three Stooges,” but once in a while, Marlin Perkins could provide something exciting.

 Since we were usually at my grandparents’ house on Sundays, we watched what they liked. TV had really only been around 25 years when I was growing up in the 1970s. It was still quite a novel thing for people who had once lived without it.

“Lawrence Welk” was something that we moaned and groaned about, but my grandma would come in and out of the living room when there was a lull in the kitchen and see what was going on with Larry and the gang. She liked certain songs, but was mostly drawn in to watch the dancing and costumes.  Grandpa watched too, between naps, and I’m not sure where his interest lied. Maybe he liked to laugh at the quirkiness of Lawrence, who had a distinct style and an accent.

I remember my friend Scott and I talking about hanging out at our grandparents’ houses on Sunday nights, and we’d laugh about the segments where a family of half a dozen sisters would be paraded on stage, dressed identically, singing an old standard.  We’d laugh when the camera would do a close-up of the youngest sisters, singing while their entire face filled up the screen.

Cheap laughs, but entertaining.

Because my grandparents remembered a time of black-and-white TV, The Magical World of Disney was appointment television, and it was with great fascination that we watched each week to see what old Walt had to offer; in “living color,” as the announcer boasted. 

I remember the time Walt took us on a televised tour of Disneyland, and at that time, it was pretty much a dream to be able to go there. I can remember my grandparents thinking it was special enough to be watching it on TV, probably resigning themselves to the fact that their visit would only be via television.

Once the early evening programs were done and the news had been reported, there would be Sunday night crime shows like “Mannix,” “Kojak,” “Columbo,” “McCloud” or “Mcmillan and Wife.”  When I rode my bike up and down the street, I’d pretend I was one of those guys in their cool cop cars, speeding along to catch a perp.  

McCloud rode a horse sometimes, but my bike made a better Ford Gran Torino like the one on “Starsky and Hutch.”

Sunday nights have changed in many ways, but looking at them from the perspective of a retired person is, how should I say it?

Fantastic.