television tales

 Today is "National Television Heritage Day" according to my west coast brother.  It seems to me he should be getting special treatment today. He got his training in the Air Force and has been involved in television broadcasting for almost 50 years.  Alas, he tells me he had to go to work anyway.  So sad.  But the topic did stir up memories for me.  My aunt and uncle, who lived a mile down the road from us, had the first television I ever saw.  We spent a lot of time with our cousins watching static and fuzz with an occasional picture popping through. I was in sixth grade when my family got our first TV.  It was a Zenith 13 inch table top model hooked up to a butterfly antenna on the roof.  Happily it had much better reception than my uncle's model.  The first shows we saw on that set were Howdy Doody and Flash Gordon.  Even then I thought that the way Flash's space ship landed looked pretty fake, but we were thrilled to watch anyway.  Then came Superman, and, in the mornings, Captain Kangaroo.  Of course we only watched that to keep our little brother company.  On Saturday nights we watched Gunsmoke and Ed Sullivan while munching popcorn and drinking Coca Cola.  We were allowed one coke a week.  Bliss!  Many years later my first husband and I celebrated our first anniversary by buying a COLOR TV.  "When it's in color, Rarick's is open." was a frequently heard ad around Fort Wayne. We bought that TV to watch the first walk on the moon.  As it turned out, the moon shots were all black and white and gray, but it was still so exciting.  Do you remember how you had to adjust the color on color TVs?  Sometimes people looked fairly normal but sometimes they were purple or sun-burn red.  Now we just plug it in, turn it on, and get perfect color.  And we won't even talk about how heavy those old sets were, especially the console ones.  The last time I bought a TV, a 21 inch flat screen, I was able to easily carry it out to my car by the handle attached to the very light weight package.  I love heritage, but there's also a lot to be said for progress.