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Somewhere fairly early in my life we got a television. While the details remain sketchy, I do remember that for the longest time it was Black-and-White. In my memory the box was big, and the screen was small. Back in the day (which is what we all said “back in the day”) all the televisions had big tubes. The most obvious was a humungous glass cathode ray vacuum tube with a heavy lead glass screen, deeper than it was wide. Behind it, in the furniture-sized cabinet with spindle legs that held everything together, were a dozen or so smaller tubes that did, well, I’m not sure what they did but there were plenty of them back there. Every so often we had to replace one or two or many.
Dad, of course, was in total control of the television. What he wanted to watch, we all watched. Luckily, at least in a sense, there weren’t very many choices. You had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and some other stations that were mostly spots on the dial and snow on the screen. Snow was what we called the visual static that some channels seemed to broadcast all but a few hours of the day. [In retrospect, I wondered if we used the term “snow” because we had long, cold, snowy winters while folks down South or West used a more regional term, like “sand” or “dust.” But I digress.]
That total control included the ability to order one of us kids to change the channel whenever he barked his command. The nightly news would end and, depending on the day, he would tell one of us to get up from wherever we were sitting (or in my case, sprawled on the floor) and physically turn the dial to the desired station. If needed, and it was almost always needed, we would jiggle the rabbit ears or other inside antenna to alleviate the blizzard and get a clear(ish) picture. Occasionally we would have to get up on the roof to adjust the big flying external antenna, though to the delight of my mild acrophobia, Dad usually took on that responsibility himself.
I should mention that the most used channels were all VHF (very high frequency) stations, with numbers like 2, 4, and 7. We had a second dial with UHF (ultra high frequency) stations, most notably Channel 38, our source for our sometimes obsessive-compulsive watching of the Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics, and Patriots (and for one season only, the Lobsters).
At some point in time we got a television that came with an actual remote control and our days as human remotes were over. The Black-and-White television went Color sometime after I entered my teen years, which was good because I had recently been zapped onto my butt trying to unplug an old TV billowing smoke into our rented house. My life getting zapped is a story for another day.
Not surprisingly, Dad controlled the remote control like he was Charlton Heston making his stand at an NRA convention. We still watched what he wanted to watch, we just lost a lot of exercise watching it. As we got older we often found something else to do anyway. Today he continues to lounge in his favorite recliner, remote in hand, ready to turn off the sound as each commercial roars to life at twice the volume of the program. The remote now seems to be something off a future starship, so complicated that even turning off the television takes several tries and yet another look at the 30-page operator’s manual.
Given the quality of programming today, however, Dad is most likely dozing off in the middle of whatever, the television remotely controlled as background noise. Life has moved on, but sometimes when I’m home visiting I find myself wanting to sprawl on the floor, poised to leap up and change the channel in anticipation of Dad’s wishes.
Lincoln: The Fire of Genius is available for purchase at all bookseller outlets. Limited signed copies are available here. The book is also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. If you read the book, please leave a review and/or rating.
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
ru.smiln said:
I remember our first TV as well, similar to what you described. But we only had one channel. 🙂
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davidjkentwriter said:
At least that made it easy to choose a program. 🙂
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Lightness Traveling said:
Ha! Your Dad was making sure you got some exercise in front of the TV.
I don’t remember a TV in Japan. But I remember that our TV in the US had an ultrasonic remote. I could barely push the buttons, which apparently snapped a striker against some kind of tuning fork. High-tech, for the time.
My TV in the States is probably collectable. It’s an early HD set — with a BIG tube. It recently took two burly guys to move it. Unfortunately, by the time HD actually arrived in the US, I’d lost interest.
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davidjkentwriter said:
I got rid of my 15 year-old TV when I moved to Europe, knowing that the US electronics wouldn’t work there. During my three years overseas I didn’t bother buying a TV and found I had a more interesting life without it. Now back in the US, the only TV in the house is an old 1st generation “big screen” (i.e., wide screen, big butt, on a table-sized stand). It, along with an equally ancient DVD player, get used only for the twice-a-month Netflicks movies since I still don’t have any actual TV service.
My Dad is bored silly when he visits. A big screen dominating one room, two remotes, and nothing to watch.
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Lightness Traveling said:
I didn’t realize that you had lived in Europe. I’m curious where?
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davidjkentwriter said:
Brussels, from spring 2008 to spring 2011. Great place – home of the EU (well, at least one of the homes of the EU), very much like DC as far as tons of expats and foreigners from all over the world, great beer, and a reasonably short flight or train to 25 or more countries.
Oh, I also lived a summer in Edinburgh a few years before that. Both times were for work (different companies), but tried to get around as much as possible on off days.
I’ve been back here in the states in (more or less) one place for too long; I’m getting antsy.
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pambrittain said:
I remember those days. The snow, the antennea, the rabbit ears and the (yuck) outhouse. At midnight, the shows would stop, they play the National Anthem and then some kind of hypnotizing round symbol.
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davidjkentwriter said:
I almost forgot that – yes, this was pre-24-hour-TV. They actually stopped broadcasting during the wee hours of the morning (which, in retrospect, must have irritated people just getting home from working the late shift).
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Success Inspirers' World said:
Your dad wasn’t different from many dads at the time. We are the same in many ways, aren’t we?.
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davidjkentwriter said:
Indeed we are.
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