The recent Jay Leno–Conan O'Brien flap has made me more nostalgic than usual for the days when Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show.
If you're too young to remember Johnny Carson, you have my sympathy. You missed what was truly a golden age for television. Frankly, I don't think either Jay or Conan is very funny, and The Tonight Show was never as good after Johnny retired. It's probably been 16 or 17 years since I've watched it.
But Johnny was different. It was one of the indisputable signs that I was growing up that my parents agreed to let me stay up to watch The Tonight Show occasionally. But even when I got into high school, it wasn't the sort of thing they let me do every night, so, when I moved on to college and I was living in the dorm, there were few things that made me feel as grown up as being able to watch Carson whenever I wanted.
Carson continued to define that feeling of freedom for me. And it was constant. I probably moved five or six times before Carson retired, and every place I lived, I could switch on my TV on a weeknight and see the familiar face and hear the familiar voice of Johnny Carson. I was home.
It reminds me of a lady who knew my parents. After they retired, she and her husband traveled around in an RV, visiting their children and grandchildren — and old friends, like my parents. Once, when they were visiting, I was in the RV with my mother and her friend, who was showing us the window sill over her sink, which was filled with doodads — salt and pepper shakers, a small figurine of a bird, a framed picture of one of her grandchildren.
"Everywhere I go," she said, "I make my little home."
That was what Carson's presence did for me. It made my little home. It was reassuring, like being able to see Walter Cronkite deliver the news of the day.
How could NBC get me back as a viewer? Start running reruns of the old Carson shows in the slot that is currently being given to The Tonight Show. I would stay up and watch those.
