Cheers to My Dad, the Biggest Unsolved Mysteries Fan

Happy Father’s Day, folks! I thought on this day, I’d share one of my favorite memories of my dear ol’ dad.

Dad, I doubt you’ll ever find this website, but if you do, hi!

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Picture it: small town Wisconsin 1995…

My dad calls me: “Unsolved Mysteries is on!” I rush down the wooden basement stars, clunking as I go. If I was lucky, I’d catch the super spooky intro music.

At this point in time, the show was running previous seasons on Lifetime: television for women, as the tagline went. My dad did not care that this was the network’s tagline because he watched Lifetime regularly, and that was how he had his finger on the pulse of these reruns. I, however, perceived their airing to be totally random which is why they seemed like such a big treat.

Every time the show was on, my dad and I had a fairly standard procedure. First and foremost, we’d have to watch it in the basement because no one else was interested in watching reruns with us. Relegated to the downstairs TV, we’d set up camp: Dad on the ugly blue couch, me on the ugly pink recliner (which STILL sits in the basement today). The other component to this ritual was snacks. My dad is a big candy person, so it’s not surprising that Unsolved Mysteries time was synonymous with treats like button candy, Skittles and – most notably and importantly – grape Laffy Taffy. I also drank my fair share of grape soda.

Snacks in hand, we’d settle in and watch Robert Stack in his trench coat tell us about all sorts of spooky stuff. As a kid, I loved hearing about stuff like aliens, ghosts, buried treasure – all those really fantastical tales. But the most iconic story to me was one about Billy the Kid. The story, as presented on TV, isn’t that great of a mystery. Some old man in Texas claimed he was Billy the Kid despite the common knowledge that Billy the Kid died in New Mexico at the age of 21 (and their photos looking nothing alike!). The mystery itself doesn’t really matter; what matters is that this was my dad’s and my favorite unsolved mystery. It became our favorite by repetition alone – we probably saw that same episode six or seven times. And that’s how I know how great my dad really is: He saw this same lame mystery a half dozen times and never once did he suggest we watch something else. Instead, we’d open our bag of licorice and watch the whole darn episode. I loved every minute.

A quick aside: Unsolved Mysteries had plenty of family-friendly cases, like the couple that found $20 bills raining from the sky or people reconnecting with their adoptive siblings. The show was also packed with really grim and horrible stories, like people who were found murdered or kids who were kidnapped. In retrospect, this wasn’t a great show for a six year old. I don’t really recall any of these horrible stories and definitely was not scarred by them in any way. I do find it odd though that my dad found this to be appropriate TV for me but also forbade me from watching Rugrats during this same time period. Um, OK.