Then & Now ~ Rabbit Ears

For you younger folks out there, that is a TV. No, really. That dial thingy there? Yeah, thats how you changed the channel. Those little knobs underneath there you used to adjust vertical and horizontal hold and the color.. if you had color. This is a fancy Magnaxox TV, very similar to the first TV better 1/2 and I had in our first house.

Through the generosity of her step mom, we got this big old 'portable' TV and put it in our bedroom. It took two people to carry it! Often, the color would not work and it would revert to black and white, and the rabbit ears did not get that good of reception. We had to resort to adding tin foil so our TV looked like a buck with horns in velvet.

Of course, this comes from the time when the average american knew the terms UHF and VHF and what those terms meant. (If you don't know, google is your friend.) Way back before cable, remotes and it was a fifty-fifty chance if you had a color TV. Dad did not have a remote, he had a child to turn the button.Then again, it was only three channels, maybe PBS if it would come in on that day, so it wasn't too hard.

But when it came to adjusting the antenna, aka rabbit ears, dad was king. Dad could do TV Antenna Acrobatics and if there had been an Olympic sport in that field, the American Dad would have swept the medals. Well, if the female soviet judge did not give him too bad a score. Of course, this was done while the kids and Mom would be cheering him on and giving often contradictory advice.

The antenna on the roof was like the Iron Man Triathalon compared to the marathon of the TV Rabbit Ears. Or maybe more like a relay race with the kids yelling yes or no to Mom as she hung her head out the window to yell up to the roof the latest report. Naturally, she would be trying to get the kids to behave, and constantly warn father not to fall. Mom was the ultimate middle manager.

This is something I remember from forty years ago, rather fondly actually. Enter the techno-kid today and we can see the difference. He was bouncing around and hit the delicate balance of the cable lead precariously balanced going into the ancient VCR in our bedroom. Well, it is my fault really, we were playing and he hit the cable and boom, the TV screen becomes snow filled. Static echoing out of the bedroom and scaring the cats. I mumbled something under my breath, probably very similar to what my father said all those years ago.

A pic of the mess, the closet door is the cable's nemesis.

The kiddo says, 'Its ok, I can fix it!' Egads! I head for the TV and he says, 'Look at the screen, see if it works.' He proceeds to wiggle cables and wires and the like and I am five again, saying, a little more, a little more, no the other way. In no time flat, he had it working again, he brushes his hands together and says, 'I do it all the time, it's easy.'

On a not so random side note. I was watching a black & white movie the other day and the t-k bounded in and said, 'Ohhh.. TV is broke again, I fix it.' I then spent fifteen minutes explaining black & white movies and, silly me, TV's that were black & white. He looked at me after my soliloquy, shrugged and said.. 'Oh, that's weird.'

Apparently, the rabbit ear gene bypassed me and morphed into the cable gene. Not only that, but I can never find the remote, and the kiddo will say please change the channel to Bob the Builder, or Thomas, or whatever. My role has not changed.

That old chestnut rings true.. 'The more things change, the more they stay the same...' I would bet cave man dad had junior cave boy adjusting his view of the wall paintings(how I don't know, but I can picture the scene).

And on that note.. I am off to tune the TV and catch a movie with t-k.

Happy Wanderings

 

 

Comments

[Acadia]

1: send your kid to my house to unscrew a bunch of weirdness I've created.

2: I'm sending some kind of building inspector to your house because of that...fire trap.

3: Nice article. Really nice.

[Patrick]

Thank you. That is a closet door, and keeping kids and cats away from cables is a full time job and one we have not mastered as of yet. And unlike super heroes, I do not use the closet to change into my super suit.. alas, I have no super suit. It was neat at one time, really, it was.

[better 1/2]

Acadia - technokid is pretty amazing, but i really dont think he's qualified to unscrew weirdness that ~you~ have created.