The Scene staff
I’ve been around for a while. Better than half a century. And I’ve done a lot of interesting things in my life.
In no particular order, my “titles” have included photographer, lifeguard, soldier, medic, living organ donor, published poet, illustrator, surveyor, inspector, cardboard factory worker, sewer plant employee and pipefitter.
I’m a son, a father, a husband, a divorcee, an athlete, a carpenter and a gas-station attendant. I’ve designed T-shirts, business cards and posters.
As a boy, I even served as a human remote control.
Yes, you young, hip cats at Forest Park, you heard me right. I was a human remote control.
In 1965, four years before man landed on the moon, my father bought a black-and-white console television. The 20-inch screen was mounted in a large wooden cabinet. It had two dials, one for channels 2 to 13 and one for volume.
Even though the first wireless TV remote control was invented in 1956, it was a very primitive device. And it was not within my family’s price range. So I became the remote control.
When Mom and Dad sat down for the evening news, they called me to my post. Standing beside the television, I was only a few inches taller than the dial was high.
I almost quivered with excitement, anticipation and the joy of being a “big boy” with an important job. I was honored to be assigned this task. My little brother would have to do something else.
This was my job.
Dad would say, “Turn it.”
Click, click.
“Turn it again.”
Click, click.
“One more time, boy.”
Click, click.
“That’s it.”
After Dad settled on a network, I was relieved of my duties, but I stayed mindful of my responsibility, ready to stop doing whatever a 5-year-old boy does and return to my position beside the box.
My batteries never ran down.
All this was before cable television, satellite dishes, 500 channels, pay-per-view, 24-hour news and sports packages.
Americans only had three major networks: ABC (American Broadcasting System), NBC (National Broadcasting System) and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System).
If you were extremely lucky, you could pick up “local programming.” In the 1950s and ‘60s, that meant someone broadcasting from his trailer, with a haphazard cameraman and questionable grammar.
Unlike today, my whole family watched television together. Mom, Dad and the kids sat in the same room.
We watched whatever my father wanted to watch; it was not a democracy. And it was completely unheard of for a family to have more than one TV set in those days.
Television went off the air at midnight. Can you believe it? There was nothing to watch until the next morning. People may have actually gotten more sleep.
The standard TV sign-off was, “This concludes your broadcast day.” Sometimes the networks would play a patriotic song. Then came the test pattern.
Those were happy times, but I think my father is happier today with more than 500 channels, 24-hour news and a real remote control in his hand.