2006 Soap Box Archives

Television 02/27/06

I remember the first time I ever saw a picture on a television screen. It was at Russell Palmer’s house in Gulf, North Carolina and I was about 14 or so and television sets were few and far between.

In fact, to have a television set was to become a prime target of folks who didn’t have them and if you weren’t careful you could have a houseful of company most every night.

How Russell’s folks ever put up with us is beyond my comprehension. There’d be me, Tommy Wilkie, Ernest and Ralph Willets and assorted other stalwarts lounging on the furniture and sitting on the floor.

We never had any trouble deciding what to watch because there was only one channel out of Greensboro NC. And you had to put a big tall antenna on top of the house to pick it up. Sometimes the wind would move the antenna and you’d have to go up and turn it back around. And of course the person turning the aerial couldn’t see the TV screen.

“Is it working?”
“No, turn it a little bit more.”
“How about now?”
“That’s it, that’s it, now you went past it, turn it back a little bit.”

Well through trial and error you could usually get the antenna back in tilt and the t v watching would go on.

Of course we had our favorites but we’d watch anything. We’d watch the wrestling matches, the boxing matches, Jackie Gleason, The Hit Parade, kid’s shows, soap operas, we had even been known to stare at the test pattern for a few minutes.

The first show I ever saw was called,” The Web” and it was one of those typical fifties shows with spooky music and all. It was about people caught in “the web”.

Those were the good old days when television was young, decent and expensive to own. I bought our first one after I finished high school and went to work. I made payments on it.

Television has become just another household item these days. Everybody has a television set and we even get agitated if we misplace the remote control.

I still watch television although after the NFL season is over I feel a little let down. I like basketball, but there are so many games on that it takes me a while to get into it. Of course, I watch the news programs, but they could take every sitcom and reality show completely off the air and I’d never know it unless somebody told me about it.

I’ve never watched Survivor or any of the rest of the myriad
reality shows and although you’re probably not going to believe this, I’ve never watched American Idol.

So after the Super Bowl, the pickings on TV get pretty slim for me but somehow I always make it through to February when NASCAR starts again.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels
February 27, 2006