I cut the cord, or in my case, since I have (had) satellite, I broke the dish. I got fed up paying for 400 channels and watching six. Saved $91 a month. I have switched to receiving over-the-air (OTA) channels through a Tivo device. That meant installing a TV antenna on my roof. Now I get over thirty local stations, mostly in HD, and all for FREE.
With the Tivo came some builtin apps like Netflix and Amazon among others. I was already getting Netflix via my AppleTV device and had switched a large portion of my TV viewing to streaming through Netflix using the AppleTV. That made the satellite even less relevant. Besides, it has been periodically failing and taking whatever I had stored on the DVR with it.
It was an easy decision for me, but less so for Janis. You have to change the way you manage your TV watching. I won’t go into that now, maybe later, because some interesting arguments over the controls have been experienced since the switch. I may write about them later.
The title of this post is “Yancy Derringer.” If you were born later than the early fifties, you may never have heard of Yancy, because the old black and white TV show by that name aired in 1958 and 1959. I have discovered that old Yancy episodes are available for FREE on Amazon if you are an Amazon Prime member. So are a lot of other old TV shows, but more on that later.
Yancy is a Rhett Butler wannabe, and in some ways is better than Rhett. He doesn’t have all that emotional baggage and drama associated with Scarlet. The series takes place in New Orleans just after the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War if you are a Yankee), and Yancy is an unrepentant southerner and gambler who owns a riverboat (the Sultana) and a bar in Yankee occupied New Orleans. Yancy actually works for the northern city administer, not because he is a sympathizer with the Yankees, but because he loves New Orleans. He acts as the city administrator’s undercover enforcer to help manage crime in the city.
Yancy usually dresses in the uniform of the day, that being a white linen suit with a brocade vest and a broad rimmed white planter’s hat—oh, and a pencil thin mustache. He is also armed, though not obviously so. Being a gambler, he carries a four barrel derringer pistol up his left sleeve and another inside his hat. Of course Yancy can hit a squirrel at a hundred paces with that little pipsqueak pistol. (Sarcasm off.) But his main weapon is Pahoo.
Yancy has a faithful Indian companion, which was kind of the vogue for westerns in those days. His name is Pahoo-Ka-Te-Wah, which means “wolf-who-stands-in-water.” It seems that Pahoo once saved Yancy’s life, thus altering fate, and now he is responsible for Yancy’s life. Pahoo is a big Indian dude and wears a blanket over his shoulder, which hides the double barrel shotgun hanging from a strap over his shoulder. It comes out from under that blanket a lot, and with both barrels, he blasts some evil doer into the next century. He also carries a really big knife behind his back up by his neck. And he throws it a lot—and always hits what he throws it at. Pahoo, being a non-PC Indian of that day, is also very sneaky, not in a negative way, but you NEVER know when he will be standing right there behind someone ready to protect Yancy. He appears out of nowhere with shotgun blasting, knife flying, and bad guys dying. And he never speaks, communicating instead using sign language.
Pahoo was played by Jay X Brands and is actually of European origin, Germany to be exact. He plays a Pawnee, and members of that nation sent him a letter congratulating him on his accurate portrayal of an Indian and, especially, his learning the native hand language, which evidently was accurate in the series.
Yancy is super cool and nothing ever gets him upset. He rarely raises his voice even when threatened. He is always in control. He is also something of a smartass, coming up with some very sarcastic one liners. Like the time the bearded city administrator is describing his sister to Yancy so he will recognize her on the boat when she arrives in NOLA, “She looks a lot like me with red hair, blue eyes…” Yancy adds without missing a beat, “…and a beard?”
The shows were for thirty minute time slots, so they are only about twenty minutes long with the commercials stripped off. I have also found “Wanted Dead or Alive” with Steve McQueen as a bounty hunter before he became a famous movie star and “The Rebel” with Nick Adams. I haven’t watched any of those yet. I also found three old movies I have been looking for to watch for decades.
Bottom line: I won’t miss satellite, however, Janis might, therefore, I will be made to miss satellite.
The photo above is public domain from Wikipedia. They are from the left Pahoo (X-Brands), Madame Francine (Francis Bergen, wife of Edger) and Yancy (Jock Mahoney)
In the summer our “uniform of choice” was shorts—period—no shoes, no shirts. That was from the end of school in May until it started again in September. At the beginning of summer our feet were tender and very sensitive from a year confined to shoes, and our skin was pale white. By the end of summer our feet were so calloused we could run across the clamshell-covered streets and feel no pain, and we were nearly as dark as some of the African Americans in Kenner.
Catahoula Chronicles 