“Sock it to meee?” That awkward query by presidential candidate Richard Milhous Nixon (on the Sept. 16, 1968 episode of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In”) was probably haunting my mind on Aug. 8, 1974. On the afternoon of that fateful day, I tagged along as my flea-marketeer mother purchased antiques from farm couple Gerald and Kate Killingsworth. On the Killingsworths’ TV, the usual game shows and …