What TV did you watch as a kid?
The one in our living room...it was the only one we had when I was a kid...!
The one in the living room, on the rear occasions Dad thought there was something on worth watching.
My older brother upset Dad by lipping off about beign smart enough he didn’t need to do his Algebra homework. Dad’s response was to pull the back of the TV off, then pull all of the tubes out. He then told my brother he could watch TV again, just as soon as he was smart to figure out how to make it work. Dad pulled the schematic diagram of the back panel and put it in his pocket, and hid it somewhere. When he wanted to watch TV, he put the tubes back in and we watched TV. When he didn’t see anything he liked, he left the tubes sitting on top of the TV.
In, 1966, I discovered big books of schematics, at the public library, which had the schematic for our TV. I told Dad, and he told me that I probably shouldn’t check one out and bring it home. But I could ask to watch TV, and if my homework was caught up, I could ask to watch TV.
In 1968, my brother graduated from high school, and left for the Army. Dad bought a new color TV so he could watch the Olympics.
Years later, I told him that it wasn’t fair that he punished my younger brother and I, because our Older brother was an idiot. He laughed, and told me that he felt it worked really well. My younger brother and I were both voracious readers.
