THINGS THEY ARE A-CHANGING!

MR. TV

Dad was a TV watcher, loved to sit in front of the set and indulge in some Dodger and later Mets TV. This was his hobby, more than anything else this is what he did in his free time.

In 1949, he decided to get a TV for the apartment on Hull Street and it was a big event in my house for my older sister (much older) Tessie and me. I remember it like it was yesterday, as he took the big box into the ‘parlor’ and set it on a table in the corner next to the couch.

It was about 5:30 pm and my sister and I watched as Dad wired the set from behind, then went out on the roof and set up an aerial for the reception. That first program we watched was Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a puppet show that introduced me to the world of entertainment.

In the black and white days of TV, everyday there was a little problem, the picture would skip, jump, turn to snow and/or continuously run. This made for unhappy viewing, and if the wind got a good hold on your aerial, snow was on the screen. Poor Dad would have to go onto the roof and adjust the aerial and fix the picture.

NOT FROM DAD'S PERSONAL COLLECTION

One of the biggest problems was when the vacuum tubes would blow. You had to look at all the tubes and pull out the dead one to replace it and have the TV up and running. By then, if the TV was down, it was a crisis, of major proportions, with Mom upset and worried about Dad getting angry, who was swearing in Italian while my older sister (much older) Tessie would cover her ears and I tried to emulate the curse words. Finally, Dad had the brilliant idea of collecting from the set old tubes that still worked but were near the end and replacing them before they died. Soon he had a collection of tubes that he guarded with his life. Once the TV died, he extracted all the tubes and bought a new set holding onto the old box of tubes for the next crisis!

WHERE'S THE REMOTE?

About 20 years later Dad bought a color console by Magnavox. This was a piece of furniture that Dad proudly set as the centerpiece of the house, consisting of a radio on one side, a record player on the other and in the center was the TV. Suddenly Dad was high-tech, but there was one problem, it came with a remote. Amazed I said: “Dad, it has a remote!”

“What’s that?”

“You know, so you can sit in your chair and change the channel!”

“Ah, it doesn’t work, I tried it and nothing happens!”

Turns out it was high-techer than I thought: little did we know that it needed batteries! How did we finally figure it out? Well the TV died one day and Dad calls me over to help him move it out. I happen to come across the remote and noticed it had a plastic door cut into it, and started to laugh myself silly. Dad was not amused.

Today, there are no tubes, no wires that run up to the roof and thank God no more ugly antennae to ruin the lovely view of the roof lines in the hood. Recently I bought two new flat screen TV’s for Mom’s house which took very little to hook up and except for the programming with the cable box, it was all done indoors and not on the roof!

BEFORE

AFTER

But if you look around you, there is the coffee pods to replace making whole pots of coffee, cars with backup screens, GPS equipped and sensors that tell you if you are about to hit something. You can now buy movies for your computer or the big screen TV, hand held computers and let’s not even mention the smart phones, that have more technology and memory than the first computers.

Yes, things they ARE a-changing!