Jack Remembers: They're Looking at Me

At 77 years of age it is hard for me to realize I am included in a small minority of people in this country who can remember when there was no television. I was a Junior in High School when Kansas City got it’s first television station, WDAF, in 1949. Randall Jessee was our first news anchorman, and Shelby Storck, a descendant of Civic War General Joe Shelby, was Kansas City’s first weatherman.

A twelve inch table top black and white television cost around $300.00. It was a huge thing and if it quit working, you didn’t throw it in the trash like they do now days. You called a repairman who would come to your house and fix it. Generally, it only needed a new tube. This was a tremendous amount of money back then, when you consider a postage stamp was three cents, a new Ford $1,600, a loaf of bread a dime, and gas was 20 cents a gallon.

My grandkids asked what we did before television for entertainment, and of course, we listened to Bob Hope, Amos and Andy, Fibber McGee and Molly, and different shows on the radio.

One night I was driving down the street in Independence and saw a huge crowd of people standing in front of an appliance store looking in the window. I stopped the car, walked over to where they were to see what they were looking at. It was a test pattern on a television set in the window.

A lot of people never understood how you could put an antenna up in the air and end up with a picture on a screen in your living room. One Saturday morning I went out to my best friend’s grandpa to help him on the farm. He was small, stooped-shouldered, probably about my age now. I asked him why he didn’t buy a television set and he said, “Well I would, but it seems to me like it would be awful expensive buying all that film.” Now, later on, he did buy a television, but to his dying day he would never undress in front of it. When he was told the people on TV couldn’t see him, he said, “Why, they can too, they’re looking right at me.”

Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com