tvspecks

As kids, we had an old Sylvania black and white T.V. It sat on a turntable with legs against the east wall of our living room. The one”cool” thing it had was a “halo” that formed a frame around the viewing screen and emitted a fluorescent-like light. I think the design thinking was that it made it less of an eyestrain to watch the picture. That was sure considerate of the designers to “save our eyes” when as kids we watched too much Captain Video, Howdy Doody, and all the other neat shows that were on then! I think this brilliant design feature saved our “kid eyes” in spite of the parental warnings of not sitting too close to the screen or watching T.V. in the dark because these actions would result in “ruining our eyes”. We never listened to the warnings and persisted in sitting too close and watching in the dark, now my uncorrected eyesight is 20/400 (which means I can’t even see the first big“E”on the eye chart! Hmmm, maybe they were right after all! The one weird thing about this T.V. set was that in the summer, some flies would somehow manage to get in between the protective glass for the screen and the screen itself! We’d be watching Cheyenne or something with a fly or two buzzing around inside the screen! When they made their ubiquitous fly “specks,” it was impossible to clean the screen since the specks were all in the inside! We just got used to seeing all the T.V. shows being “speckled”! I think we were in our teens when we finally realized not everyone on T.V. had measles or small pox! Sometimes Tim and I would “help out” the cowboy “good guys” by shooting some of the Indians and/or “bad guys” with our dart guns. If we wet the suction cups with our “spit” enough, they would even stick on the screen glass! That way we knew we definitely “got them”! The protective screen glass must have been very thick and tough to take all the punishment we threw at it! Many cowboys and “good guys,” no doubt, owe their lives to us helping them out by all the “bad guys” we shot! Once and a while we’d get the thick black horizontal lines flipping the picture like a broken down 35 mm film projector. This was remedied by the “vertical hold” shaft on the back of the set. If you turned it the wrong way, the thick black stripes would REALLY flip the picture! Other times we had to adjust the “horizontal hold” shaft. Our Uncle Ned had an easy convenient solution to the occasional “vertical slow flip”; he would stomp his foot on the floor and that would often fix it. When Tim and I were in bed, we would often hear the “stomping sound” and we knew they were watching T.V. If the stomping didn’t work, then the local T.V. repairman would show up to replace a tube. One of the neat things the old TV’s used to do that modern ones don’t, is when you turned them off, there was a white dot, about the size of the head of a pin in the middle of the screen. I used to watch it till it slowly faded to black. It seemed to take a long time to do this, and it always fascinated me. (I still find similar things fascinating even today). Everyone who knows me always tells me, “It sure doesn’t take much to entertain you does it?” (No, it really doesn’t!)



	As kids As kids, we had an old Sylvania black and white T.V. It sat on a turntable with legs against the east wall of our living room. The one”cool” thing it had was a “halo” that formed a frame around the viewing screen and emitted a fluorescent-like light. I think the design thinking was that it made it less of an eyestrain to watch the picture. That was sure considerate of the designers to “save our eyes” when as kids we watched too much Captain Video, Howdy Doody, and all the other neat shows that were on then! I think this brilliant design feature saved our “kid eyes” in spite of the parental warnings of not sitting too close to the screen or watching T.V. in the dark because these actions would result in “ruining our eyes”. We never listened to the warnings and persisted in sitting too close and watching in the dark, now my uncorrected eyesight is 20/400 (which means I can’t even see the first big“E”on the eye chart! Hmmm, maybe they were right after all! The one weird thing about this T.V. set was that in the summer, some flies would somehow manage to get in between the protective glass for the screen and the screen itself! We’d be watching Cheyenne or something with a fly or two buzzing around inside the screen! When they made their ubiquitous fly “specks,” it was impossible to clean the screen since the specks were all in the inside! We just got used to seeing all the T.V. shows being “speckled”! I think we were in our teens when we finally realized not everyone on T.V. had measles or small pox! Sometimes Tim and I would “help out” the cowboy “good guys” by shooting some of the Indians and/or “bad guys” with our dart guns. If we wet the suction cups with our “spit” enough, they would even stick on the screen glass! That way we knew we definitely “got them”! The protective screen glass must have been very thick and tough to take all the punishment we threw at it! Many cowboys and “good guys,” no doubt, owe their lives to us helping them out by all the “bad guys” we shot! Once and a while we’d get the thick black horizontal lines flipping the picture like a broken down 35 mm film projector. This was remedied by the “vertical hold” shaft on the back of the set. If you turned it the wrong way, the thick black stripes would REALLY flip the picture! Other times we had to adjust the “horizontal hold” shaft. Our Uncle Ned had an easy convenient solution to the occasional “vertical slow flip”; he would stomp his foot on the floor and that would often fix it. When Tim and I were in bed, we would often hear the “stomping sound” and we knew they were watching T.V. If the stomping didn’t work, then the local T.V. repairman would show up to replace a tube. One of the neat things the old TV’s used to do that modern ones don’t, is when you turned them off, there was a white dot, about the size of the head of a pin in the middle of the screen. I used to watch it till it slowly faded to black. It seemed to take a long time to do this, and it always fascinated me. (I still find similar things fascinating even today). Everyone who knows me always tells me, “It sure doesn’t take much to entertain you does it?” (No, it really doesn’t!)