Johnny

I’ve been reading a lot about Johnny Carson these last few days. Maybe a lot of us are, or maybe most people of my generation and younger have read maybe one or two tributes and moved on. He left television in 1992, when I was 22. I was certainly old enough to stay up to see his show, and old enough to enjoy and appreciate it. But I may be one of the last generations that did, I guess. And I’ve been realizing how much I’ve missed him for these last 10 years or so.

I just read Bob Dylan’s biography. (Okay, I listened to the abridged audio version read by Sean Penn, but cut me some slack, it was read by Sean Penn, okay?) And Dylan wrote (poorly paraphrased by memory): “There are some people who seem to slowly fade away, but then, when they die, it’s like they never faded at all. They’re still there, clear as day.” I think Johnny’s like that. Seeing his end-of-monologue golf swing once, twice, a dozen times – you could probably forget it. But hundreds? A thousand, for some people? That stays sharp, even when everything else blurs.

One thing my mom said to me on Sunday: “Your father and I probably watched him on every night of our marriage.” Now, that’s not factual, I know. I like to think they took a night off to give birth to me, for instance, although I may just be flattering myself. But I know that Johnny went off the air in 1992, and Mom and Dad kept broadcasting together for long after that. So the facts don’t bear her out, but I think it’s true just the same.

Which brings me to what’s driving this post. While I’ve read some great stories about Johnny and the Tonight Show – check here and here to find some – none of them have really touched on the Johnny Carson experience the way I remember it. Until I read this piece by Kim Ode in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The site is a little finicky with subscriptions and I’m not sure my link will work, so here are the key paragraphs if it doesn’t:

For those 15 minutes, I sat with my mom and dad and heard Johnny's take
on the day. I heard what made them laugh, and what made them groan with comic pain. If I made myself invisible enough to stay up a bit longer, I could witness their shocked delight when Johnny, as Carnac, said something a little sexy, a little naughty. I learned more about their politics listening to them listen to
Johnny than I ever did at the supper table.

Over the course of those odd weeknights, my parents grew to seem less like mom and dad and more like actual people. They had a sense of humor far more sophisticated than I'd imagined -- I hated having to ask them to explain a joke -- and far keener interest than I'd realized in a world that didn't include me. They had a life, long before I could have huffily urged them to get one.

So when the tributes began pouring in about Johnny this week, I realized how much I also was in his debt. He gave my folks a way to unwind, even when the headlines were awful, even when the sky brought no rain, even when I'd rolled my eyes at the supper table. And as they laughed, I saw their true selves, and slept the better for it.

Yeah, that’s it.

Rob