Daddy's Home by Tony Rubino and Gary Markstein for March 18, 2018

those sure were the days (not the Jurassic period)

Turn the knob to 5, adjust the rabbit ears (and foil).

Oh and tweak the V-Hold while you’re at it.

Tony asked, about 4 hours ago

How bout you?

No. And I refuse to be yours – sober up and change channels yourself!

When I was 7, our family became friends with a family down the street, who owned a television…

It was set in a big, dark wood cabinet…. and the screen was tiny and round…

but about once a week all four adults and five children would gather in their living room…

adults on chairs behind the kids sitting on the floor… for a “TV night”.

My Dad hated being outdone.

We kids had been asking for a TV but he kept saying they weren’t good enough yet….

Of course, we had no concept of improvements to something already magical.

Finally, I guess, the screens got big enough for one-upmanship purposes….

and he came home with a big, blonde wood cabinet, with speakers behind doors on the sides, and a huge rectangular screen…. I believe it was 14".

TV nights moved to our house.

But the kids weren’t remote controls yet…. because for the first few years, we were Not. Allowed. To. Touch. It.

We had that TV for about 20 years…. it went overseas with us, and came back for my high school years, and moved out to California with my parents.

At some point Dad realised he didn’t have to get up if his minions changed the channel, adjusted the rabbit ears, etc.

I seem to recall that vertical hold was a small knob in front, but horizontal was a tiny plastic gizmo sticking out in back that was way too sensitive.

I hated to adjust that cos it often got worse instead of better.

When we finally got a roof antenna, I was the designated indoor watcher while Dad stood on a ladder and barked questions at me through the window.

When I was in college, and none of us kids still lived at home, Dad retired.

He finally decided color TV’s had gotten “good enough” and bought one of those…. I think it had a remote, to replace the minions.

Did not have to worry much about moving channels who ever was closes to the TV was the channel changer. Big family several choices to chose as designative changer-of-channels!!!

But the argument was what we were to watch and sometimes a vote was declared!!!

Our 1st tv had a 6" screen with a magnifier stuck over it. There were only 2 channels to choose from.

Whichever kid lying in front of the TV console got to change channels with his toes when called upon. TV’s had big knobs back then.

I was one of my father’s remote controls. Sometimes we were so remote that he had to yell for one of us to come into the TV room and change the channel. I wonder how he changed the channel after we went to bed? ;-)

I didn’t have a remote control until televisions became nobless.

Does anyone remember when the very first remote controls were attached to the TV by wires? I know why those did not last. Aside from that, my Father was a TV repairman and he said to never use those remote controls because they were flawed and could make a channel “stick” so you could not change it. Perhaps he was right. We did not have remote control until after color sets came out. By then, I think the remote controls had been perfected, and yes, there were no more dials to use.

…and we had to sit through all the commercials.

I remember seeing the first thing in color. I was waiting for the school bus with a friend. There was to be a space launch that morning; probably one of the Gemini series. He said let’s go see if we can see the launch. So we ran into his house. The thing I remember most was the red launch tower. The color wasn’t great, but it was color. Only a few programs were in color; Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color which I think ran from 1961-1969. I have a 252 lb behemoth of a TV in my basement. I use it for workout DVD’s. It is the biggest tube television that Sony made. I tried to include it in the sale of my last house, but the guy said he had his own TV. I practically begged him to take it, because I knew it would be a pain to move.

I remember seeing the first thing in color. I was waiting for the school bus with a friend. There was to be a space launch that morning; probably one of the Gemini series. He said let’s go see if we can see the launch. So we ran into his house. The thing I remember most was the red launch tower. The color wasn’t great, but it was color. Only a few programs were in color; Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color which I think ran from 1961-1969. I have a 252 lb behemoth of a TV in my basement. I use it for workout DVD’s. It is the biggest tube television that Sony made. I tried to include it in the sale of my last house, but the guy said he had his own TV. I practically begged him to take it, because I knew it would be a pain to move.

We got our first TV when I was seven or eight. Magnavox, with a mahogany cabinet that had doors on it so you didn’t have to see that “blank stare” when the stations weren’t on. My parents sat up to watch it the first night and my mum suddenly turned to my dad and cried, “It’s broken already!” They’d fallen asleep and the station had signed off for the night.

I was allowed to stay up until “half-past Uncle Miltie.”

No, we kids were not the remote – because we only got one channel – B&W until I ws in HS. Sundays we’d go over to Granny & Pap’s to watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color (yes, it was so new it was in the program name) and, if we were really good, Bonanza..

My grandparents had an old Packard-Bell B & W TV that had a remote control box that had all the controls that were on the front of the set, including vertical and horizontal hold and a small speaker and it was connected, yes, connected, to the tv with a ½ inch thick cable. Tubes and no chips and I don’t think it even had circuit boards. Still working the last time I saw it in 2014. Antenna only, no cable hookup. My aunt sold it on eBay last year for $568.76. What a bargain.

My grandfather had a great inventive bent, and he rigged up a string and pulley arrangement so he could turn the sound down and back up from his easy chair in order to not listen to the commercials. The channel tuner knob took too much force to change that way, but there weren’t many channels anyway.

We didn’t get a TV until 1952 because my Dad kept saying he was waiting for color to get perfected. But he finally broke down and had one delivered the night of the presidential election results that year so we could watch the results. Eisenhower won, in case anyone forgot.