From Bubbles to Boredom: How Kids “Suffered” Through The Lawrence Welk Show

For many chil­dren of the ’60s and ’70s, Sat­ur­day nights weren’t just about car­toons or Crea­ture Dou­ble Feature—they were about sur­viv­ing the slow, sparkling march of The Lawrence Welk Show.

On Reddit’s r/70s, users recent­ly trad­ed mem­o­ries about being “forced” to sit through the show when­ev­er they vis­it­ed their grand­par­ents. For kids, the sig­nal was clear: the bub­ble machine turned on, the orches­tra struck up, and the next hour felt like a life­time. One com­menter summed it up per­fect­ly: “I remem­ber rolling around on the floor in bore­dom while my grand­par­ents drank scotch and were glued to this show.”

A Gen­er­a­tional Divide in Enter­tain­ment

While grand­par­ents adored Welk’s “cham­pagne music,” kids often bolt­ed to the base­ment or hid upstairs until the real Sat­ur­day night line-up kicked in—The Love Boat, Fan­ta­sy Island, or even wrestling. As one user joked, Welk was “so white it made the Osmonds look like Par­lia­ment Funkadel­ic.”

Oth­ers recalled com­pet­ing tastes with­in the fam­i­ly: one side of the fam­i­ly insist­ed on Lawrence Welk, while the oth­er swore by Hee Haw. Nei­ther choice thrilled the younger crowd, though some admit­ted that corny coun­try humor was slight­ly more tol­er­a­ble than end­less polkas and bal­lads.

Corny, Yes—But Packed with Tal­ent

Despite child­hood groans, many now admit that the show’s musi­cians and per­form­ers were world-class. “Dis­like the music if you must, but the musi­cians were top shelf!” one pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian wrote, point­ing out that the band often record­ed in a sin­gle take. Anoth­er called accor­dion­ist Myron Flo­ren “the Steve Vai of the accordion”—a com­par­i­son few saw com­ing, but hard to argue against.

Min­nie Pearl, the Lennon Sis­ters, and End­less Bub­bles

The com­ment thread also over­flowed with side mem­o­ries: Min­nie Pearl’s famous hat (with the $1.98 price tag still dan­gling), Bob­by and Sissy’s tap-danc­ing duets, and the Lennon Sis­ters har­mo­niz­ing their way through squeaky-clean num­bers. And, of course, the icon­ic bub­ble machine, which one user admit­ted was their favorite part of the entire show.

From Eye-Rolls to Fond Mem­o­ries

What makes the thread so touch­ing is how those once-annoyed kids now look back with nos­tal­gia. “I hat­ed it at the time. Now it’s a fond mem­o­ry,” one wrote. For many, watch­ing The Lawrence Welk Show became less about the music and more about the peo­ple they watched it with—grandparents, par­ents, or sib­lings who are long gone.

As one user put it: “I’d go back in a heart­beat and watch a thou­sand episodes for the priv­i­lege of being near them again.”

The Lega­cy of “Wun­ner­ful, Wun­ner­ful”

Whether mocked for its squeaky-clean image, remem­bered for its bizarre cov­ers of songs like “One Toke Over the Line,” or cher­ished as a fam­i­ly rit­u­al, The Lawrence Welk Show left its mark. What was once endured with groans is now revis­it­ed with laugh­ter, affec­tion, and even a lit­tle awe at the tal­ent behind the corni­ness.

After all, as Welk him­self might say with a smile and a baton in hand: “And a one, and a two…”