by Lisa Fagan

Created on: May 14, 2010   Last Updated: July 18, 2010

The 60's may have been a time of social unrest, the Vietnam War, the drug culture, the hippie movement, the civil rights movement, the assassinations of both the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, the Beatles, the British Invasion, Motown, and the psychedelic era but to me, the sitcoms of the 60's were a breath of fresh air. They often told the more conservative style of American life. Old-fashioned dating, love, romance, and marriage. Childhood innocence. No curse words. No sex  No paternity tests. No lie detector tests. No "Who's My Baby's Daddy?" episodes.  The father worked while the mother stayed home and took care of the house and kids. No violence. Simple solutions to everyday problems. And of course, the 60's was the decade of my childhood.

1. The best 60's comedy of all time was my favorite: Green Acres. Six months after that show debuted on CBS, I started watching it on a regular basis. Hooterville was indeed the craziest and funniest farm community ever. Eva Gabor and Eddie Albert always wore their city clothes in Hooterville.They gave up city life to live in old broken-down shack. The roof leaked when it rained.  He had a rotten old broken down tractor. Mr. Haney kept on selling Oliver (Eddie Albert's character) worthless and useless junk. Lisa (Eva Gabor's character) didn't know how to cook, clean, or keep house. She kept on making those terrible "hotscakes".  A pet pig named Arnold who watched nothing but Westerns on television. The brother-and-sister carpenter team of Alf and Ralph Monroe who constantly kept delaying fixing up the Douglases' bedroom. A dim-witted county agent named Hank Kimball. A hired hand named Eb Dawson who had romantic problems. The Cannonball, an 1890's steam locomotive that provided the only form of public transportation in Hooterville. Oliver's speeches about how the American farmer is the "backbone of our economy, and his love of planting the seeds in the rich brown earth and watch them shoot (or "shoost" as Lisa would say) up toward the sun and the sky. But it was nothing but pure clean fun and comedy.

2. Petticoat Junction: Set in the same locale (Hooterville), this show was just good as Green Acres. In fact, Green Acres was a spinoff of Petticoat Junction. Watching Kate Bradley (Bea Benaderet) and her three daughters, Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, and Betty Jo week after week  run the Shady Rest Hotel, with Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) coming up with every get-rich-quick

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