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Volume 7, Issue 34 - Feature #786

Old TV Memories...

My family was never affluent enough to own a TV set during the time I lived at home, but I remember the first one I ever saw. It was at David Shafer's home (his dad was the Carl Shafer who owned Shafer's radio and TV store on the square). It was about 1949 or so, and there was no such thing as daytime television. We would turn it on anyway, just to gaze at the test pattern and wave our hands in front of the screen to see all of the "fingers." About this same time I went to a movie at the old Rialto and the newsreel featured the current progress of television. During the short feature, the commentator remarked that soon there would be a television set in just about every home in America. Everyone laughed out loud, knowing that the idea was absolutely beyond probability. About four years later, as a freshman in high school (fall of 1953), I stood on the top floor of the old AHS building and looked out across the town. I was amazed to see that almost every house in town had either a "stack" or "directional" TV antenna on top of it! I was later in the first class to graduate from the present high school building (Class of '57) and there was a television set in the lounge. It was there that I watched the last few inning's of Yankee pitcher Don Larsen's perfect game against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series. The medium had come a long way fast! (But I was still watching most of my television from the sidewalk in front of Shafer's TV store.)

Jim Barker - 2005-08-30 06:16:23

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