Television, Back in the Day

From the primordial ooze that was radio, television was born.  Yes, in the beginning, your wide screen, thousand channel, gazillion inch, super high definition, 3D, color, smart television with Internet access, was a small dumb black and white glass fish bowl with maybe three stations.  The TV programming was free and came in through a set of aluminum sticks on a pole called an antennae.

TV Antennae

The first television on our block was at Tommy’s house.  This was in the early 50’s and Tommy’s dad was an engineer who flew for Eastern Airlines.  I guess it just made sense that the family of an engineer would have the first TV.  I would spend as much time as I could at Tommy’s watching countless old movie westerns, Tarzan, Ramar of the Jungle, The Cisco Kid, Superman, Howdy Doody, Broken Arrow, Sky King, Merry Melodies cartoons, The Lone Ranger, Adventure Time, The Mickey Mouse Club, Felix the Cat, Winky Dink and You, and The Dungeon with Miami’s own, MT Graves (Charlie Baxter).

MT Graves, Host of The Dungeon

In the string above one show, Adventure Time, was like crack cocaine in the innocent 50's.  They played the old movie serials where the car with the good guy runs over the cliff just before you heard the words, "tune in tomorrow to see..."  When you tuned in the next day you would see that the good guy jumped out of the car and grabbed a branch just before the car exploded in the valley below.

Another innovative show in the list above was Winky Dink and You.  I say innovative since this was perhaps the first interactive television program.  I had my Winky Dink and You kit, purchased at a local store.  The kit had a flexible piece of plastic that stuck to the television screen with static electricity.  It also had special crayons that could be used to draw a needed bridge or tool that Winky Dink needed to complete his journey.  The cartoon would stop at the crucial moment and you were directed to connect the dots to draw something essential to the cartoon story.  I'm sure that, more than once, parents came home to watch the Huntley-Brinkley Report only to see the two of them looking out from behind a bridge or tree freshly drawn directly on their new television screen.

Winky Dink and You Opening Screen

TV westerns were perhaps my favorites.  I would watch stars like Audie Murphy, Duncan Reynaldo and his sidekick, Leo Carillo (Cisco and Pancho on The Cisco Kid), Bob Steele, Johnny Mack Brown, Randolph Scott, Slim Pickens, Roy Rogers, Kirby Grant (Sky King), Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, Fuzzy Knight, Tom Mix, Tex Ritter, Smiley Burnett, Guy Madison and his sidekick, Andy Devine (Wild Bill and Jingles on Wild Bill Hickock), and William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy).

Johnny Mack Brown

I watched so much TV at Tommy’s house my parents finally broke down and bought our first set.  They did this as it was their last hope of ever seeing me again.  Our first set was a Magnavox 19” beauty mounted in an upright light oak cabinet on wheels.  It had a large 12-inch speaker at the bottom with the screen up top.  All of this was behind two hinged doors which, if I had anything to say about it, would never close.

Magnavox TV circa 1950's

Television, back in the day, was not a passive experience, you had to work at it.  You see, TV sets regularly broke down.  I guess that's why they had wheels on the cabinet.  You would roll your broken TV out into the floor and you would remove the six screws that held the back cover in place.  You would then hold the flashlight while your dad removed all of the tubes from their sockets while uttering words you hadn't heard before and for which your mom would remind your dad that he had children.  The tubes were placed in a paper bag and then you drove to the local Eagle's Army Navy Store.  They had a tube tester.  This was always a fun trip because the Eagle's Army Navy Store always shared a parking lot with a Royal Castle.  Nothing like a burger and birch beer to help take some of the sting out of having a broken TV.

TV Tube Tester

The tube tester was your friend.  It was a life saver.  You first looked up the number of the tube in a catalog chained to the tester.  Then you would look up the proper socket number on the tester and the settings for the two knobs.  After the tube warmed up you would turn the "TEST" knob and watch the needle swing across the dial telling you the tube was GOOD or REPLACE or the dreaded question mark meaning it might still be good enough.  With the question mark: You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?’

Good, Replace or WTF

When you found the bad tube(s) you wrote down the number, the clerk would open the lower cabinet on the tester and would hand you your new tube(s).  You then drove home and realized that you should have written down where each of the tubes needed to go.  Your dad only did this the first time.  Insert more expletives here.  Once the tubes found their proper homes you replaced the now 5 screws holding the rear cover in place, plugged the set back in and turned it on and waited, and waited, and waited in hopes of seeing a picture and hearing some audio.  If all went well you were back to watching your beloved TV for a few more months before you needed to make another trip to the tube tester and get another vocabulary lesson from your dad.  You would also lose another of the back screws and realize the importance of saving the 4 screws that remained.

Inside an Old TV

Another thing your dad only did once was to accidentally contact the high voltage wire connected to the big picture tube.  This wire is attached to the aptly named "flyback" circuitry.  I say aptly named because if you touch it, you not only fly back across the room, you can learn to speak in tongues.  My dad did this once and began a stream of words I had heard only on rare occasions.  My mom must of known of some of them because she once again reminded him he had children.  I just thought the whole thing was funny and laughed out loud.  I would pay for this laugh later in life when my dad was working on our lawnmower.  He had me hold the spark plug wire while he pulled the starter cord.  I got zapped and my dad merely stated, "Yup, we've got spark".

In the beginning you had three channels to choose from, CBS, ABC, and NBC.  If you wanted to change channels you had to get up off your butt and make a trip to the channel dial on the TV.  This was the only form of exercise most folks got in the 50's.  

Zenith Space Command

Eventually, Zenith removed even this activity with the Zenith Space Command.  The device was called "the clicker" as it produced an audible "thunking" noise when the button was pressed.  You could now change channels and raise and lower the volume from your chair.   It had just two buttons, one for Channel, one for Volume.  Push the Channel button to go up one channel.  Want to go down one channel?  Sorry, you have to go higher until you go all the way around the dial.  The same went for Volume.  You had  Low, Medium, and High.  If memory serves, this was also the Off button.  The quality of health in America hasn't been the same since.

A Delicious TV Dinner

Another health related effect of the TV revolution was the famous TV dinner.  Moms could drop a few of these in the oven for a specified length of time and, voila, dinner was ready.  Fried chicken and Salisbury steak were my favorites.  Actually, any of them that came with dessert were good.  I remember that they also had something they called roast beef, but it was really dark brown cardboard covered with sauce.  TV dinners were served right in the aluminum cooking container and placed on, wait for it, a TV tray.  So, now the family could gather around the television, pull up their TV tray, eat dinner and watch TV at the same time.  The decline of American civilization was guaranteed. 

Even Republicans Ate on TV Tables

TV programming wasn't a 24 hour affair like it is today either.  The stations would go off the air with the playing of the National Anthem, after which they would display a test pattern until morning.  Many people of my generation have stared at this screen waiting, waiting, standing by as directed.

TV Test Pattern

The first thing you would see in the morning might be The Today Show starring Dave Garroway and his regular sidekick J. Fred Muggs.  The Today show started in 1952 and is only the fifth longest running show in television history.  Of all the intellectual commentary I have heard over the many years coming from my various televisions, the utterances of J. Fred Muggs were perhaps the most profound.  He was certainly more eloquent than any of the political speeches I have heard recently.

Dave Garroway and J. Fred Muggs

I also remember that, unlike the kids programming that I watched, there were shows that I couldn't watch.  The one that comes to mind is The Untouchables.  In today's world, gangsters shooting people with machine guns would seem like PG fare but, in the late 50's, parents worried.  Not to be deterred, I would regularly go to bed, wait until The Untouchables came on, and then I would sneak into the hallway behind the couch where my parents were watching.  The Untouchables were now touchable, or at least watchable.  Cowboys shooting "bad guys" or Indians was one thing, but a guy in a suit shooting another guy in a suit was just too real for my young eyes.  I guess in today's world of television programming, I wouldn't want a child of mine watching a show like Dexter.

Opening Title Screen for The Untouchables

The next milestone in the evolution of television was color.  I only remember one family in my old neighborhood having a color set.  The Wagner's lived one block over.  I remember my amazement at first seeing a color television picture.  The grass was a beautiful shade of green.  The people were also a beautiful shade of green.  If they were wearing a red shirt that might show in red.  If they were wearing a yellow shirt it might show in red or green, but not a hint of yellow.  Eventually however, red, green and blue appeared and sometimes they would be associated with the appropriate item.

I remember my dad saying the reason we didn't have a color set was because they, "haven't perfected it yet."   This was in the late 50's and he was probably right that color was still a work in progress.  Throughout the 60's color television improved.  Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color was first broadcast in 1961.  To me however, it was Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Black and White.

By the early 70's all of the networks were broadcasting in color.  I think my parents bought their first color set in the mid to late 70's.

So, for all of you who are now growing up in a generation of hand held devices where you can drive your car while watching music videos, feature length movies, and clips of cats chasing red laser dots, you can thank my generation for putting seatbelts in cars.