How 'The Big Valley' trashed my childhood

My mother was very progressive in her views about television and allowed my sister and me only an hour or two of TV watching per day.  We were allowed to watch Saturday morning cartoons, but as far as weekdays were concerned TV time was restricted.  She was also very restrictive about the types of shows we were allowed to watch.  For example we were allowed to watch the Lone Ranger, but were not allowed to watch the Cisco Kid. As she explained it, "If the Lone Ranger has to shoot his gun he will shoot the chandelier so it will fall down and trap the bad guy or if he has to shoot them he will shoot them in the hand.  If the Cisco Kid shoots his gun he shoots the bad guy dead."  She apparently felt a potential concussion or maiming hand injury was less violent than a quick death.

Interestingly, she did allow us to watch two adult shows called The Big Valley and also Star Trek, although it was a close call with Star Trek.  Once as she was watching it with us, Captain Kirk was attacked by someone wielding a sword.  The swordsman slashed Kirk across the chest which cut open his shirt.  It was not the violence of the sword fight she found objectionable.  She did not like the idea of us seeing his naked chest, but we pleaded for mercy, being big Star Trek fans and she relented.  She never once questioned us watching The Big Valley probably because she thought that Barbara Stanwick, one of the lead actresses was above reproach.  She also was probably lulled by the fact it was a western and several other western themed shows of the time were very tame.

Little did she know that The Big Valley was filled with all kinds of adult themes.  My sister and I were in love with the lead male characters.  I liked the dark and manly Nick character and she liked the fair haired and boyish Heath.  In one episode there was an encounter between Nick and Heath.  During this encounter Heath shouted out to Nick, "I am your father's bastard son."  Well, this made my sister gasp.  I looked at her and asked her what that word meant.  She said she didn't know but she knew it was a bad one.

(the exciting part begins at 21:59)

We immediately went to her room to consult the dictionary.   We looked up bastard and it said 'an illegitimate child'.  Well that did not help because neither of us knew what illegitimate meant.  So we looked up illegitimate in the dictionary.  It said 'a bastard child'.  We flipped back and forth between the two stumped as to how to decipher what either word meant.

We must have been at this for several minutes and because we were very quiet this aroused the suspicion of my mother.  She appeared at the door to my sister's room.  We froze.  "What are you doing?" she asked.  My sister became very quiet and would not look at my mother.  "We are looking up a word," I said, "But it keeps telling us another word and we can't find out what this other word means either."  "What word are you looking up," she asked.

Now, I really did not know what bastard meant and even though my sister was acting very guilty I brought the dictionary over to my mother and showed her our dilemma.  "See," I said, "We are trying to look up bastard, but it keeps telling us this other word and the other word keeps sending us back to bastard."

If my mother had been a cat her fur would have puffed up, or if she had been a dog her hackles would have raised, but since she was a mother she just got all cold and stiff.  "Where did you hear the word bastard," she said, ice dripping off of her voice.  I was rendered speechless from the drastic change in my otherwise warm and loving mother.  My sister spoke up, no doubt wanting to remove some of the blame as quickly as possible.  "It was on The Big Valley.  Heath said he was a bastard son."

My poor mother seemed to be going through some sort of crisis.  Here were her two little daughters whom she did everything in her power to protect from the corruptness of the world.  She monitored the books they read and the shows they watched and yet with all her care, here they were exposed to filth.  She couldn't even yell at us because: 1. She had approved the show we were watching;  2. We were doing exactly what she had told us to do when we did not know what a word meant; and 3. We did not know what the word meant so we couldn't know it was a bad word.  Now she was going to have to explain some nasty bit of the world to her sweet innocent daughters.

I did not actually know what she was thinking at the time, but the look on her face and her body language was telling me we were in very big trouble.  Add to that the fact that my sister, who was usually a know it all, loud and talkative, was trying a tactic of being as very still and small as possible and I was unnerved.  I figured we were going to be spanked, even though my parents had explained to us that we were not going to ever be spanked anymore.  We were also probably going to be sent to our rooms, which was the typical punishment and probably there would be something worse like having our mouths washed out with soap, which had never happened, but got a lot of air time on TV shows.

Then my mother sort of deflated.  She said with a voice that was more sad and embarrassed than angry.  "I will tell you what the word means but you are never, ever allowed to use this word because it is bad and hurtful.  Bastard means a baby that is born when the mother and father are not married."

You could have knocked me over with a feather.  I was immediately embarrassed, upset and confused.  How could this possibly happen I wondered.  You had to be married before you could have a baby.  A whole knew dark world was opened up beneath my feet.  What did it all mean?

My mother left us, but not before telling us we would not be watching The Big Valley any more.  She also threatened us that if we told our cousins what this word was or what it meant she would make our lives miserable.  After she left my sister and I quibbled.  She was mad at me for showing the word to my mother.  I was filled with questions about this new word and all that it meant.  She ended up blaming me for losing The Big Valley.  She banished me from her room.

From then on I became an even more devoted Star Trek fan.  That show might have even more bizarre themes I didn't understand but at least it didn't have me looking up bad words.