Hanging in There for Obama
It was 1953 when the first TV moved into the Norris household in Ohio. It was a massive (most of them were then) Muntz with small screen in a big box. Although we were one of millions of families buying their first TV at that time, for our working class, family of nine, it was a real luxury. ( By 1955, within five years, 64.5% of U.S. households owned a TV). My dad was a techie before his time and loved the “new” advancements. Our TV viewing was highly monitored with NO TV during meal times or before homework. Forget violence, we weren’t allowed to watch boisterous shows like Howdy Doody or any that didn’t support our family values. Father Knows Best was unsurprisingly one that Dad believed conveyed just the right messages. As with all good rules there are exceptions; any activity would be preempted by Jim Doney’s Adventure Road or any show my father deemed as “history in the making”. Falling under this category was The McCarthy Hearings, political conventions, the launching of satellites, landing on the Moon, great speeches by great men, and inaugurals. Yes, I remember watching the McCarthy Hearings I would have been eight! The first political conventions I watched were in 1956. It was then when my father was touting the virtues of Eisenhower that I determined I liked Stevenson because even at eleven I knew that frankly he was a much better speaker.I relate this Norris family TV history to help explain the extraordinary lengths my youngest sister Patsy’s and her husband took to watch inauguration of Barack Obama.
Hi everybody, Just thought I would let you know at what lengths Bob will go for me. Monday afternoon our TV satellite dish decided to quit working. After checking things out, I figured the icicles hanging from the dish, while lovely, was not conducive to proper reception. Seeing that TC was not here to shoot them off, I concluded that I would not get to see Obamas inauguration or Bush’s welcomed retreat to Texas, ( the state of Texas has their idiot back ). In the cold and dead of night, after a hard day at the office, Bob hatched a plan. Since the new roof would probably act as ski slope if tread upon, he had to be resourceful. With simple tools like a broomstick, footstool, vacuum hose, my hairdryer, a pillow, my new purple duck tape, extension cord, his huge spotlight, and a tool case, we ventured upstairs to hang out the window. Mind you, all these tools were not thought of at one time so I got my exercise running up and down the stairs. After taping the hairdryer to the broomstick, turning it on and directing it at the dish, he decided a stool to stand on and a pillow on the window ledge would make things more comfortable. He then added the vacuum hose to make the broomstick more balanced. My job was to secure the window to stay open with the tool case, feed the extension cord and direct the spotlight. It worked! The icicles were gone. His creative genius saved the day! As with all good plans something is bound to go wrong. As I was trying to open the window wider, the tool case, with tools, decided to take a ride down the roof. Of course it stopped short of falling off and too far for us to reel it back in. Our thoughts … it would find its way down when the snow melted ….was just wishful thinking. My suggestion that we roll a bowling ball down to knock it off was greeted with a “what are you, crazy?”. So, next time a son or son-in-law comes by, I have a job for you! Tuesday was then spent watching the pageantry of the new administration being sworn in and the usual missteps of a gathering of two million people all in one place. Have a good day. Love, Patsy
- Television Bureau of Advertising, 2001
- As amazing as it may now seem, there were published concerns over violent content in Howdy Doody, but though the action in Doodyville generally involved slapstick, parents generally supported the show. Much of the mayhem was perpetrated by a lovable, mischievous clown named Clarabell Hornblow. Museum of Broadcasting
- Jim Doney Adventure Road was a local Cleveland, OH travel show
- The Subcommittee on Investigations hearings, chaired by Senator McCarthy, began on January 15, 1953 and ended on January 3, 1955, Wikipedia
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Family, Philosophy. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
