Idiot box

One week before I was born on Friday, May 19, 1950, my father walked into a store in Atlanta and was the millionth customer or some such thing. He won a television set. When I ran across this image on a blog today, I thought at first that it was our set. Ours did look a lot like this, although as I recall, it had doors on the front that closed over the screen to protect it when it was not in use. 

I grew up, therefore, always having a television in the house. In those days of yore, when the occasional wandering apatasaur might topple your antenna, there were not so many stations, however. For most of my childhood, we only got one station with much clarity, and it was NBC. ABC, CBS and the University of Houston educational channel could be viewed only through heavy veils of snow, if at all.

The screen on that major piece of furniture was fairly small, too, although I don't recall exactly how small. The television was the center of attention in the den in the house where I grew up. My father built a set of bookcases that surrounded it, and set up a stereo as well. It was an early entertainment center, I suppose. 

On the wall across from the desk in my basement office as I write is a 42-inch flat-screen Samsung TV that gets dozens, maybe hundreds of channels. It probably weighs a quarter of what that old set did.

We recently changed our television service provider and have been entered in a drawing for another 42 inch television. Maybe the spirit of my father -- who was always winning things like that -- will intercede for us so that we win. Because that's what we most need -- another big television besides the one in the basement and the one in the living room.