Buying a TV on time for $10 a month

Published 2:05 am Tuesday, July 12, 2005

By Staff
As I look up on my roof, I see the ugly old TV antenna with one for UHF and the smaller one for VHF with an antenna rotor that had to be used to turn the darn thing to get the different channels.
I look back at how it got up on my roof years ago.
My backdoor neighbor Mike Bobik and his helper Wally Kuriata did the job.
They walked all over that very steep roof like a couple of squirrels.
I remember big Mike coming right down to the edge of the roof, which scared the bigigers out of me.
Mike said, "Don't worry, Charlie, I'm used to these steep old house roofs."
Mike was quite a guy and if you recall those first TVs, we seemed to always have a tube or two burn out.
Old Mike was always pretty prompt when I called him. In fact, he even came and put a tube in on Christmas Day once.
By the way, it was about 1954 when a friend of mine who worked for an appliance store helped me to get my first television set.
If I remember, I bought it on time and my payments were a whopping big $10 a month.
I probably had to do without my extra cup of coffee at the old doughnut shop to help me make my payments.
I remember years ago when they did a lot of advertising with airplanes.
It was called "skywriting" and could be seen for miles.
It is a "couch," a "sofa" or "davenport?" Whatever, you can sit or lie down on all of them.
Boy, did I ever have fun when someone came out with Chinese checkers and how quickly it became so popular. Another game I liked was dominoes.
How many remember when cars, telephones and record players had to be cranked by hand?
Years ago my mother used to make a dessert that came in box like Jell-O.
It was called Junket. I think it was mixed with milk and put in the aluminum ice cube tray without the cube divider inserts in it.
I can only remember a vanilla flavor, but there may have been others.
Something my old Aunt Emmy Baker used to do with a lady's handkerchief.
She would fold it to make it into a hammock that looked like it had two babies in it and then swing it with her hands.