Looking out my den window, I see the snowflakes coming down
and I realize that they are really not flakes but specks. When I was a kid,
they had real snowflakes, big enough to recognize a pattern. I don’t know for
sure, but is it possible that the snowflakes in Brooklyn really are bigger? Or
was I smaller so the flecks became flakes?
It’s funny how so much has changed through the years,
attitudes to TV’s all made slow then overnight transformations. Once TLW (The
Little Woman) gave me a list of all her sizes for me to shop for her on her
birthday or Christmas or gifts, and now I need a whole new list. I mean
everything on that list is now a smaller size!
Cars are computerized so much you need to reboot rather than
start them. TV camera’s now help you see who you are running over as you back the
car up, the signal indicator on your side view mirror helps you know that you
made that turn long ago, and yes you should probably keep it on in case you
make another turn, freeing on hand for the radio or, pardon me, Bluetooth. If
you have more than one is it Blueteeth? Should you say I have Bluetooth or
Blueteeth?
We used to have vacuums that plugged into the wall for their
source of power, now they are the walls.
And remember the TV itself? Maybe 9 channels, and tubes for
all kinds of reasons, picture, sound, volume, tubes to make the other tubes
look good. TV was a piece of the living room furniture, had to be placed
strategically to be seen as it cast it’s black and white presence, that often
tumbled up and down and side to side zigzagged left to right, or if you
preferred right to left. It had a set time of hours and started with and ended
with the Star-Spangled Banner. But TV was good for you then, because you had to
climb onto your roof every now and then to adjust the antennae so you could
watch it. Dad would go on the roof, start to twist the metal tree and we would
holler up to him on the third floor roof, “A little more! Noooo, too much, back
a little, a little more, More, more morrrrrrre, no the other way, no I’m not fooling
around, ask Tessie, that’s it!
If you are old like me, you remember the push mower. A
twisted bladed human propelled grass cutter body sweater that took forever to
cut the grass and built tone in the arms. And it worked if you sharpened the
blades every few weeks, or you were just struggling over grass that just popped
right up again. You looked at it and said to yourself: “I thought I just cut
the lawn, it needs it again!”
Then some genius came along and said: “Here try this” and
you did, a motorized lawnmower that left the taste of gasoline in your nose and
mouth, a sore hand and arm from trying to start it and a deep need to sob. This
machine could cut grass too and did so. But come the next spring, out you went
to overhaul the whole thing.
Remember the ‘I Love Lucy’ show? They had little
Rickey. How? They slept in
separate beds! Someone wasn’t in bed all night! Now that is all changed, today
she would be sleeping on top of him under silk sheets.
But back in those days, the snowflakes were larger.
Like to wish my Brother-In-Law Dennis Manning a very Happy
Birthday today. Today Dennis is over the age of consent. In fact he is so old, he is over
everything.
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