TV Revisited

In the "Odd Couple" Oscar Madison states, " getting a clear picture on channel two is not my idea of whoopee". The current season of "Ice Road Truckers" has concluded. This program really captured my interest. Perhaps, because it's just refreshing to see some Americans still working. Maybe it reminds me of my commute over Mount Storm in West Virginia. Last week was the first episode of this season's "Project Runway". It is a reality show where amateur designers compete for $100,000 to start their own clothing line. These are about the only weekly programming I watch, and they couldn't be more different.

Too bad TV has become so sedentary. When I was a child watching TV kept the kids hopping. One of us had to stand by to constantly adjust the horizontal hold to keep the picture from rolling. Every five minutes a nor-easter snow storm would white-out the picture and require one of us to jump up, run to the TV and give it a good slap on the side. The rabbit ears required constant attention. One kid's job was to turn the rabbit ears with all the finesse of a a navy sonar operator. I always felt that knob on the bottom of the rabbit ears did nothing at all; like the knobs on a Fisher-Price radio. There was one channel that only came in if my mother sat on a folding chair in one certain spot. I'm not sure if we were trying to reproduce the cinema experience but my family watched TV in absolute darkness. Maybe it helped the anemic image on the tube. You walked into the living room with a slice of pizza and a Coke and started tripping over people. I'm not sure if getting a clear picture on channel two was equal to whoopee, but it was exciting.