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LIFE IMITATES ART
Did Green Acres Inspire My Dad to Move Us to a Farm in 1966? Maybe.
Chapter 5: It was the peak of the rural comedy era, but our life was no sitcom
If you watched TV in the 60s, you’ll remember a popular theme. Rural comedies, like The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and Hee-Haw dominated prime time.
Rural comedies featured “just plain folks” who used words of few syllables, did not work on Sundays, and did not go in much for the sophisticated ways of the big city. As such, the characters were profoundly likable to most Americans who subscribed to these same unpretentious cultural ideals.
Britannica.com > Television in the United States > The 1960s > Rural Humor
Green Acres premiered in 1965 and ran five seasons on CBS. Maybe the show inspired my dad to play Eddie Albert’s Oliver; in 1966, Dad bought a farm. My mom, like Eva Gabor’s Lisa, was not happy. Unlike Lisa, Mom didn’t rise to the occasion; she sulked the entire time she lived there.
Our rural family life at 7732 Winston Churchill Boulevard was no comedy. Though our rustic home was in a bucolic paradise, life within its walls was far from idyllic.
