The Possessed TV

When I was growing up, I thought we were really, really poor. My father took me to school - when I didn't ride the bus - in the oldest, ugliest, beat up Ford pickup you ever saw. We ate beans almost every meal; which made long hours sitting in classrooms interesting. We heated with firewood, shopped for my school clothes at yard sales… you name it, if it reeked of poor, we did it - often twice.

The reality, I discovered years later, was that he was just tight. I mean super tight: He squeaked when he walked, you couldn't drag a needle out of his ass with a tractor… you know, cheap as a Dumpster sale. We owned a farm, with over 100 acres of bottomland planted in alfalfa plus hundreds of cows... but kids have no grasp of their family's income I suppose.



We used to have an old tube type color TV. I understand now that this was unusual in the 80’s. The TV was frequently out of whack. Usually the tubes were at fault and my father never bolted the back down. He just let it hang on the screws so he could remove it in a hurry. When the TV acted up he would "plink" the tubes with a fingernail and have me watch for a reaction on the screen to locate the "weak" one. This is how we kept that old TV going - him plinking, me watching - and this went on for years.

The newspaper came one day and in it was an AD from Consumers Market; stating that they were selling off all the old tube stock for 50-75% off. As tubes were getting somewhat scarce in the 80’s this was unusual. My father's heritage would not let him walk away from a deal like that.
He immediately ordered me to find a bag and he jerked the back off of the old TV. He began removing tubes by the hand full and tossed them in the bag. Bag of tubes in hand we proceeded to Consumer's market ready to buy every tube that would fit the TV.

He spent no less than an hour pouring over the tubes - most of which didn't fit - but still got a couple of complete sets of brand new tubes. Mission accomplished! He had procured enough tubes to ensure that this ancient TV would be running until the cows came home.

Dad was kind of lost in his own thoughts on the way home… probably counting the quarters that he had saved per tube. When we finally got there he grabbed his bag of old tubes and plopped down behind the TV. The old tubes were fine of course as they were working before. Time to put them back in.

If only it were that simple. Now remember, tubes plug into holes on the board inside the TV. A large metal box with holes in it and sockets for the tubes was bolted to the large wooden case. All of the wiring appeared to have been done by hand, and was real wires...few, if any printed circuits existed in that TV’s day.

What’s more, I functioned as the remote. Click… Click… Click… You've done nothing till you've been the remote for a channel surfer on a rotary select TV.

As he began rooting in the bag to get a hand full those little glass bulbs who's orange glow and warmth he had counted on to keep him entertained for like the last hundred years or so; it hit him. He had not noted where the tubes had been in the first place. Each tube was somewhat different and each had its own values - its own job - and no other tube could quite do the job like the tube that was made for it.

There were no numbers on that old metal box full of sockets except such enlightening figures as "V1" and "V2" which is the schematic designation for "valve" and the number is its position in the circuit.

Certainly with a schematic, less beer, and profound powers of concentration, one might be expected to reason it out and get the right tubes in the right holes. This, however, is not how it worked out.

He frantically searched the back of the TV. The back was a large pressed paper sheet with holes in it that served as a back cover. He scoured it for some kind of road map… or clue… or even divine intervention to step in and help him with his seemingly insurmountable task. Alas, the bit of print still adhering to this rigid ventilated sheet of hard paper was very nearly gone. It had been decaying for years in the heat of the baking tubes and crumbled to dust in the bottom of the TV.

Finally he came upon a revelation: Many of the tubes were of different size and as such couldn't possibly fit where other tubes went...and with that for encouragement he proceeded to plug in tubes wherever they would fit. It seemed as if there was no way to go wrong!

As it turns out, the shape of a tube and the number and spacing of its pins do not always determine what is appropriate for a given application. Or in English: Just because a tube physically fits in a socket does not make it the right tube. The minute he plugged in the TV and turned it on, things began to go wrong.

First was a low rumble, which may or may not have been coming from the speakers. It sounded like an underfed tiger who and been poked with a stick one time more than he was willing to tolerate. Then came the smoke. Piles of smoke. Great billowing clouds of smoke in fact. It defied belief that anything the size of that TV could create such a cloud. James Bond could have lost the entire Soviet army in that choking fog.

The rumbling became worse, and I swear the TV began to shake, or at least vibrate, as a picture fell off of it. Then just when you expect a large bang, instead we got flames. My father ran around to the back of the set and tossed his full glass of lemonade in it. This seemed to anger the TV gods even more because now we had sparks and miniature lightening bolts shooting out. We thought it could get no worse when thankfully - mercifully - the fuse blew.

Not the fuse in the TV, but instead the fuse in our breaker box. Unlike most houses of the time, we still had those old screw in fuses that look like a set of light bulb threads with a wire inside. Luckily this was one of the ones my father hadn't reinforced with a penny behind it. "Pennies are cheaper than fuses". He used to say.

The death of that fuse cast us into almost complete darkness - just he, and I and the possessed TV - all alone in the dark. Without electricity, its poltergeist activity soon waned. We began throwing open windows in our madhouse to try and do away with some of the smoke.

My father unplugged the demon TV, put a fresh penny behind the recently deceased fuse and restored light to the living room. The aftermath was shocking: The TV was dripping lemonade - brown lemonade now - and the fire had burned itself out. Thankfully the fire was contained only to the TV. The cord had melted right where it came out of the TV and probably resulted in the blown fuse.

The next morning we loaded the expired TV into the truck and disposed of it unceremoniously at the dump. As soon as that deed was finished, we headed for town. On the way I learned two new words when he began ranting about what a new TV cost. Thankfully it was only a two-hour drive.