LOVING RECEPTION

LOVING RECEPTION

In 1954, my two brothers and I lived in a little rented cape down by Indian Creek, I was the oldest, at ten, Dick was eight and David was four.  On a certain night, the same night each week, Mom and Dad made it possible for the three of us to settle in around the white Westinghouse radio to listen to the Lone Ranger. Such excitement! It was a small house, such that to be sure we could enjoy the show, Mom would serve dinner a little earlier than usual so she could have the dishes washed and things cleaned up and put away before the broadcast began so there’d be no conflicting noise at the appointed hours, nothing to compromise our enjoyment, not a sound except that of Fred Roy, inviting us to ‘Return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when, from out of the past comes the thundering hooves of the great horse Silver as The Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, ride again!’ The alternative, to wait till after the broadcast to do dishes and put things away would have been unthinkable. Everything had to be just so and always. One late afternoon we and a couple of neighborhood youngsters were walking by Carl Williams’ house. We saw something through his living room window, something we we’d heard about but none of us had ever seen, a tall piece of furniture with a tiny screen in the middle and there were figures, human figures, moving about on the screen. We crept up toward the window. This was a TV! We’d heard about it but had never seen one in person. Suddenly Carl’s grandson jumped into view—having seen something on the screen that excited him. We ran up and rapped on the window and he opened the door and let us in but, utterly absorbed in Gunsmoke, he bade us sit down and be quiet. We crammed in next to him on the couch and were quickly as rapt as he was; no one said a word till the show ended. It was by then just past the time when we were all expected home and I, as eager as the others to make the same plea, ran home to tell my folks about what we’d seen and to beg that we be on an equal footing. As it happened, they were way ahead of us and a few months later, at Christmas, we found ourselves with a TV under the tree, a small Philco with a nine-inch screen and rabbit ear antennas. The reception was spotty but with someone continually moving the TV or the rabbit ears around we were able to enjoy most of what was broadcast but when the Lone Ranger came on, as it did once a week, most wasn’t good enough. Dad installed an antenna on the roof and sat there, on the ridge, for the half hour broadcast, responding to calls from the three of us in the living room below, alerting him to sporadically poor reception, a flaw that could be corrected by his moving the antennae a little this way or that which he lovingly did.