9:30 on Saturday night, EVERY Saturday night, my Mother would fire up the "Popcorn Burner" on the stovetop while I and my sister Connie would wait on the couch while the corn popped so that we could see "Gunsmoke" come on. I can still smell it popping - I think it was Jolly Time popcorn, in the little paper can (remember?)!!

Two episodes stuck in my young mind:
Matt ran up against a tribe of probably Navajos, and they were naturally pissed, 'cause they were still fighting to keep their land! He was shot with one arrow and fell off the horse, then a warrior ran up and at point-blank range, shot Matt in the chest with an arrow. I was only 8, and this all looked quite real to me, and I got upset, because what if he died? The show couldn't come back on, because Matt Dillon would be dead! My mother did explain it to me, though. Matt turned out ok.

The other show stuck in my head is the Nitro-Glycerine episode. The actor who plays Adam and Stuart on "All My Children" was wound up tightly in the nitro racket. I know this is who the actor was, because I saw it recently on TV Land, and it was Adam! No one would have known who he was going to become back then. I didn't remember exactly how that one ended, but like I said I saw it recently, and he BLOWS UP at the end. Sorry for all of you out there who hadn't seen it!

I used to think ol'Doc was mean, and I would almost cry when he would save someone's life, especially Matt's! We also had no idea back then that Mis Kitty ran a Cathouse! How clever; "Miss Kitty. . . "!!!

--Wish it was still the Super70s!!!

The first episode of Gunsmoke I ever saw was Prime Of Life. This was such an intense episode-Festus is beaten so badly Doc is not sure he is going to live and I could really see right from the start how much Festus meant to everybody. Doc might have been awful cranky, but he never could fool me into thinking he was mean-not after seeing him standing in tears over Festus, saying "Don't die, don't die. " The other characters were very concernced too-Matt went running up to Doc's office as soon as he found out what happened to Festus and he went back to check on him later in the episode. Kitty took Festus a tray and was feeding him beef broth. The last scene really sticks in my mind too-Festus is still bandaged but he's up and around and they're all sitting in the Longbranch. Doc is going on about children growing like plants and he says Festus is like a skunk cabbage. At that point Ken Curtis lost it-he just started to laugh and then they all broke character and started laughing. Ken just went on laughing and then he got up and left. It was just a priceless moment to see those people who were all friends in real life enjoying a moment of real fun-I'm always so glad that scene is there.

--Pan