Television

Last night our oldest son asked why we don’t have a nice big flat screen ‘like everyone else’. My wife simply told him that our television is perfectly fine and that buying a new HD flat screen would require more investments that we don’t want to make at this point. That being said, we can both certainly relate to where he’s coming from. We’re looking forward to that day, too, but my wife’s right. There is nothing wrong with our current television. It’s just not as wide and much bulkier than a sleek flat screen. It looks dated now, but fourteen years ago, this television was state-of-the-art. I couldn’t help but think about one of the televisions we had at home when I was growing up.

Not many kids can boast the fact that they owned a television that their dad built, but we did. It was a huge Heathkit console television that owned it’s space on the floor. For all intents and purposes it was furniture. Yes, back then, we liked our tv’s with rich, hardwood surrounds, tweed speaker covers and brass hardware and we didn’t need remotes because you had only four channels to surf (the one Dad built had a very futuristic four button channel switcher, but the channels were never in the same order). If you didn’t find something to watch you simply turned it off. Cartoons were on before and after school for a couple hours or Saturday morning, not 24/7 like today.

For better reception we dug out the “rabbit ears” and wrapped the antennae ends with aluminum foil (to this day, I’m not sure what this did to improve the reception). I never remembered a VCR being hooked up to that beast but we certainly watched it ’til it could be watched no more.

In the final days we were having to open the console door and tweak the V-HOLD dial to keep from losing the picture to static and lines. Viewing ceased to be entertaining when this process necessitated that you move no further than arm’s length away because you had to do it every couple minutes. Who knows, my nearsightedness may have been preventable.

I don’t think we’ll get to that point with our current television, but it’s always fun to share an ‘uphill both ways’ story of our ‘difficult’ childhoods to the kids to make them appreciate what they have. Did I mention our set has PIP?