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Cheers, Norm!
An important influence on my life, ‘Norm Peterson,’ has passed away.
Norm entered my life during NBC’s “must-see TV line-up” starting around 1983. My mother and I never missed an episode on New York’s Channel 4. First, we watched Cosby, and then the place where everyone knew your name entered our home.
As a teenager going through adolescence’s hormonal and emotional ups and downs, sharing those laughs with my mother on Thursday evenings was always grounding. My mom laughed from a life of experience, and I laughed at a life that I imagined one day I might experience in some way. When this show became popular, sneaking a few beers on the weekends was a regular ritual.
Beer had become the social lubricant that eased us through the doldrums of our budding lives, and Norm Peterson, in his endless banter, quite often about nothing, with his buddies Cliff, Sammy, Coach, Woody, Carla, Diane, and Frazier, created a context for many of us going forward in our lives.
Less than 10 years later, I would move to Russia, but not before I served in the army, having lived in Monterey, California, and then San Antonio, Texas. In both places, I found my “Cheers” style bars. Under age at the time, I drank in hip establishments where few would suspect a kid trying to sneak some beers would be found. The first was a jazz…
