Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way

Epistle 11 – Test Patterns

Once upon a time doctors and TV repairmen made house calls. Now, neither do. TV repairmen are extinct and doctors think they will be if the government has its way. Of the two species, the TV guys were clearly the more critical in the early days of television. On average, they showed up about once a month with their medical bags filled with nifty little pliers and screwdrivers and an assortment of vacuum tubes to replace the mysterious, dusty ones that burned out just before your favorite program. We watched with baited breath to see if the picture tube had flat-lined, the kiss of death for months of entertainment.

The geeks of that era actually took their own tubes to the neighborhood drug store and soda fountain and tested them on a gadget that was converted from an old carnival fortune-telling machine. I tried it once, replacing two tubes at $3.95 each that the gypsy said were evil, and I still couldn’t remove the snow storm from the screen. After another panic call to Harold, our friendly repairman who was now treated as a member of the family, the snow and the vertical flickering were restored through alchemy.

Thanks to his video voodoo, we were all overjoyed to turn on the magic box in time for hours of the test pattern instead of I Love Lucy. The TV Guide said there was boxing on Fridays, Gunsmoke on Saturdays, and Ed Sullivan on Sundays, but they were just standbys in case the test pattern went off the air. We didn’t know why our local station preferred the test pattern instead of James Arness as Matt Dillon—maybe someone thought the test pattern was a better actor—but to its credit, the station occasionally displayed a bit of creativity by showing us a disconnected plug with an entertaining “oops”. No matter, we watched anyway. Can you imagine what the rest of life was like?

At our house, we were blessed with radio until I was 10, so I was forced to use my imagination (which became extinct with the TV repairman), to see Matt and Chester clean up Dodge instead of hanging around the Long Branch ogling Miss Kitty. Radio also saved me from a life of crime because The Shadow and Jack Webb convinced me it did not pay. But then TV sets with grand cabinets and tiny screens showed up at the local appliance store and I began living on the edge, watching Crusader Rabbit through the shop window until my father placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud enough to be heard across town. Since we didn’t have a dog, it was my job to race back home.

How do we cope today with our desolation, our lives bereft of test patterns, dusty tubes and trusted repairmen in our living rooms? Maybe government bureaucrats will make house calls. I’ll serve them coffee on a TV tray while they take my blood pressure.

We Will Win

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