I grew up on TV. TV was a focal point of my home. This will
date me--but vain to deny it!--I grew up in a time when television was a member
of the family! It was a piece of furniture as vital as a couch to any
respectable living room. The very first TV I remember was a black & white
and when you turned it on, you had to wait for it to "warm up" before
the picture showed up on the glass screen. (Can I get a witness?) Around 1969,
my dad bought us a new model and the ever present TV Repair man who came
to replace faulty vacuum tubes like one would replace fuses on the old
electrical boxes disappeared.
Whatever the model or innovation, the culture of television
pervaded my home from my earliest memories in the mid 1960's to my departure
for college in the fall of 1979. My father worked in a factory on the 3rd shift
from 3 to midnight through most of my youth. Thus dinner was simply an event
with my mom alone that involved TV-Trays! We ate our meals not at a table, but
at little "tables" and the TV was always the guest of honor.
Now another year passes with icons of TV passing into
ancestry. Granted, I never knew any of the these people, even though they were
part of my extended family as much or more as most of my blood relatives. May
each long live in the minds and hearts they entertained as a tribute to their
diligence and craft.
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