TV's

Mr. Segerist, a neighbor was a TV repair men. I remember him coming over to the house to fix the TV . This was the day of TV's with large tubes in the back. He would come over and say, "OK, whats wrong with the set?" He would then proceed to take the back of the set off and find the tube
, normally the one with all the black inside and replace it. It was usually a very simple thing to do and it was with just such a sense of relief and joy to again be able to turn on the TV and have it work. The Picture would not flutter or roll any more. (Yeah, I know you have no idea what I'm talking about now, just wait I got more)
     Sometimes to help Us get a better picture Mr. Segerist would sometimes stick a wire hanger in the rabbit ears. (Yeah, You want to know what rabbit ears are, and maybe even what a TV is? I'll answer the first one, because in 2018 when I am writing this rabbit ears are a relic of the distant past TV's not yet.)
     Old time TV programs were beamed over the air from antennas on top of the Empire State building, later the first World Trade Center, both being the highest points from where the signal came from. To receive the signal you needed an antenna. Our original one on our black and white TV was put on the ceiling of the sun porch (now the front part of my Mom's bedroom) It had two positions you could put it. A slightly north/ south position and a slightly east/ west position. It had a clicker in the middle of the antenna that changed something sometimes making the picture better. If that didn't work, you switched the position of the antenna on the ceiling.
The first TV I remember was a black and white set with the channel selector on the side. The Selector had a dial around the outer edge of the selector, which was supposed to help make the picture better, it would help fine tune the picture.  Now a selector would turn the channels from one to the next. The biggest Headache was when the selector started to got bad. Old Sets were like tuning in a radio (Really? You don't know what tuning in a radio is either?) With a bad selector sometimes you could tape it to make it work. Most times, no TV.
The stations we had were WCBS, channel 2, WNBC channel 4, WNEW channel 5, WABC channel 7, WOR channel 9,WPIX channel 11 and WNET channel 13, the big local non profit PBS station Channel 2, 4 and 7 aired original programs that started the week after Labor day in September and ran uninterrupted until the first week or two of June. No repeats, if you missed a show, you would never get the chance to see it, well you might get to see it after it had gone off the air and would be aired years later on channel 5, 9 or 11. Channel 9 used the saying, 'the best of all seasons' in the early 70's. Those were the VHF channels, which stood for Very High Frequency.
     The Weird channels were on UHF, which stood for Ultra High Frequency.

This is were the very small local channels would hide out and all the small, what would later become known as PBS stations were. On our first color TV, the UHF stations were on the lower selector. You would turn the upper one past channel 13 and then you could use the lower one to find the UHF stations. They never came in very good and the selector never had that click were you knew you were going from one station to the next. You just had to turn the selector until you came across something. And when you hadn't come across a station in the last several minutes you'd stop figuring you'd come to the end of the UHF stations. UHF TV was more important to more rural areas I believe.
    The Yankees were on channel 11 in the sixties and seventies. They aired several dozen games a year. Same for the Mets who aired on channel 9. One Year, channel 11 aired a news program they were very proud of  that ended at 8 PM.The Yankees decided to switch starting time of the games from 8 pm to 7:30. WPIX threatened to join the games in progress. Everyone was how dare you. WPIX ended the drama by ending their new program early.
            Sometime in the early 1970's We got our first color TV. Everyone else in the neighborhood had one by then. There would be no more going over to Uncle Ken's house when the Wizard of Oz was on to be amazed by the change from the black and white of Kansas to the amazing color of Oz. There would be no more friends saying, "You didn't know Beatty Jo's hair on Petticoat Junction was red?" Finally the NBC peacock announcing 'the following program is brought to you in living color' would mean something. It was all just too beautiful.
      Later in the 1970's I'd take the old Black and White, there was nothing wrong with it and bring it into my room over in the front part of the sun porch and the old master bedroom and I'd stay up sometimes to three in the morning watching old TV programs like 'One Step Beyond' the precursor to the Twilight zone. Yeah, it all means nothing to you, go look up the Twilight Zone with Rod Serling, not any of the remakes, it was a good show. It'll look a little dated, but once you get past that it is better than One Step Beyond. For several Years I'd watch that TV until one day when I was changing my room around, something I liked to do every so often, I hit the back of the set and broke the end of the picture tube. It was the end of the line for a TV that by that time was at least twenty years old 195?-1978.
     With no TV in my room I got the great idea to go out and buy myself a color TV. In the Living Room we had a huge, at the time 19 inch TV. I didn't think it was right for me to go out and buy a set that was bigger then that so I purchased, I believe from Sears a 17 inch Sylvania TV. I would keep this set until the 90's when I'd move to Stony Point and buy a huge 38 inch TV. What made all these TV's huge was the TV tube. And the size of sets were limited to the size and weight of the TV tubes. Once TV went flat screen and tubes were obsolete sizes of TV's were only limited by your imagination and room.
       When I moved to Stony Point the 17" TV went into my Video Store. I don't know what happened to it after that. It was a good set, never a problem 1978-1990?.
     My Apartment in Stony Point was the third floor of an old house. It was spacious and if you watched the peaks and corners a great place to live. I setup my TV on a stand I bought from an antique reproduction store in Nyack in the early 90's, when I thought I had money. When I put the 17" set on it it didn't look right. So immediately I knew the answer, a bigger TV. I purchased a 34" tube set and I lived in a third floor walk up.There were several steps to the deck, then two or so flights of stairs up to my apartment. I was in great shape in the early 90's I hauled stacks of milk around all day so I figured it was no big deal to carry this set up to my apartment. The Stairs onto the deck were no problem. There were maybe six? I then had to set the TV down to unlock open my door. I didn't plan this very well.  I pick up the set. Now I haven't described the set too much up to now. When it was picked up,you knew it. It was a very heavy set. Modern sets come in a thin cardboard box with a handle. This set was almost square. The tube most of been at least 20" deep.It was made of glass, plastic and metal. It weighted probably over 100 pounds, or maybe I think it did, because half way up those stair I had to stop and lean the set against the wall. I wasn't going to put it down and then have to pick it back up. I catch my breath and stagger up the last of the stairs, then slide it onto the floor a few steps short of the landing,where it stayed for a while. I was spent.
     When Teri and I moved into Nyack, the set came with us. It worked without a problem for the nine years we were there. When We moved to Congers I thought I'd be smart.I took the set out of the rental truck, put it on a hand truck and rolled it to the steps in front of the house. I leaned the hand truck back and began to pull the set up the stairs. I was feeling very smart I had the set,with minimal effort almost to the top of the stairs,when the hand truck leaned a little more up right then it should have.

The TV, never really secure on the hand truck leaned out, the screen looked at me from a moment, it reflected a dawning of the horror that was happening. I reached toward the set over the hand truck.The Set tried to grab my hand knowing what it's fate would be, but it had no hands and I missed the set. It rolled down the cement stairs to the bottom, mostly in one piece. I hustled down the stairs, but he was dead before I reached him. A major crack ran across the screen and he was gone, RIP 1990-2003.
     My Wife, that wonderful women went out for Christmas a month later and got me, us a TV exactly like the old one, except newer. A few months later it seemed they came out with flat screen TV's.
     With a brand new 34" TV,a new flat screen had to wait. It waited until one day, maybe around 2010, Teri was in Costco and called me."Hey, the flat screen TV's (that's all they sold now) are really cheap want to get one?" All I had to say was yes. So I did the spouse thing, "If You want." Well, She wanted it as much as I did. It was a forty odd inch set, beautiful. The old tube set, that had never given me an ounce of trouble, just like his father, he was set to the curb on junk day 2003-2010.
       On my fiftieth birthday in 2008 Teri threw me a great surprise party at a restaurant that was once in the original Nanuet Mall it was called Banchettos Feast. Everyone gave me money for turning fifty, like it was a miracle. If you read the entry sex, drugs and rock and roll, maybe it was. Well I put all that money, a nice size sum at the time together and bought a TV with it. It was a name brand, had a great picture and like all the other things in my life I did no research into it, As of 2019 it still sits in our bedroom working great but of course, then they came out with smart TVs.