The Orange County Register - News - AP

RIP Tom Poston: the peeper, and a man on the street

When I was a kid, the TV highlight of our family's Sunday night was the Steve Allen show. (We weren't an Ed Sullivan family unless there was an "event" booking, but I always regretted missing Maverick, which was also opposite Steverino. Sunday was a tough town in those days.) I suppose the three things that were most responsible for shaping my sense of humor were (1) my dad (2) Steve Allen (3) Mad Magazine. Not necessarily in that order.

Steve's most common faces in the "men on the street" segment represented a mantra oft-repeated in our household: "Louis Nye, Tom Poston, Don Knotts." Childhood memories are so formative that I never stopped thinking of the three of them as a set, even though their lives went in completely separate directions when Steve went off the air. The three of them lived long lives and their deaths came quite close together. Nye in 2005. Knotts 2006. Poston 2007. Lot of years. Lot of laughs.

Pat "Schneider" Harrington and Bill "Jose Jimenez" Dana were the other men on the street. I think they are both still alive.