thank you, Thing

Imagine yourself going for a swim in at a beach in Florida. Maybe you get too tired, maybe you get caught in an undertow. Next thing you know, a lifeguard is dragging you out of the water. He's unusually tall and powerful. You look up and realize that your life has been saved by Lurch from "The Addams Family." If this were an episode of the show, you would probably run back into the ocean as the laugh track swelled. In reality, you would have been swimming some time around 1953 and lifeguard Ted Cassidy had not yet landed the role that would define him forever. The article about Lurch's previous career was my favorite link in Perry Simon's Talk Topics column on AllAccess.com this week. If the Internet is to be believed, Cassidy worked at a Dallas radio station in 1963, ad-libbed his famous "you rang" line and his cremains were buried in his own backyard.