Lights, Camera, Action

On February 17, 2009, all over-the-air analog television transmission signals on channels in the United States will come to an end – or at least that is the current plan approved by the Government, via the Congress and the FCC. Since we have had to deal with this message “crawling” across the bottom of our televisions for months, I thought this would be a good time to talk about the progression of television in my life.

The first program I have any memory of watching was “The Monkees” - the misadventures of a struggling rock band. This show first aired in September of 1966, so I was only four years old. I can still remember begging my mom to let me stay up past my bedtime so I could watch. At the time “The Monkees” premiered, they were a fictional rock band, but Davy, Micky, Peter and Michael soon became overnight sensations.

I don’t remember if mom actually let me stay up late on the night in question – 8:00 pm was past my bedtime – but I do remember religiously watching “The Monkees” on Saturday afternoon television. According to Wikipedia, “The Monkees” began airing on Saturdays in September 1969 – by this time I was seven years old.
I have no recollection whether I first watched “The Monkees” on a black and white television, or if we had switched to color. Colorized television was wide-spread by the time I was born in 1962, but not many families could afford them. It wasn’t until 1972 that color television sets outsold black and white sets in the United States.

“Dark Shadows” is the first show I remember watching in color, although it started out as a black and white show. I know I wasn’t old enough to have watched “Dark Shadows” from the beginning – it started airing in 1966 – but I do remember at some point coming home from school in just enough time to see most of the daily episodes. This series ended in 1971 – I would have been nine years old.

“Dark Shadows” was one of the lucky television shows to make it into syndication in 1975. I think it was these repeated viewings that endeared me to “Dark Shadows” – I liked it during its original run, but I grew to love it through syndication. Now, thanks to digital technology, I can enjoy “Dark Shadows” on DVD any time I want.

By the time I became obsessed with my next television show – “Land of the Lost” – I know we had a color television. “Land of the Lost” premiered in 1974 and it was a weekly Saturday morning children’s show by Sid and Marty Krofft. To say I loved this campy show is an understatement. This show had everything a 12 year old could want – dinosaurs, danger and adventure.

It was because of “Land of the Lost” I had my first introduction into audio recording. I would audio tape this show every Saturday morning on my little yellow cassette recorder and then listen to it with my headphones every night. Today there are audio books to listen to, but for me it was always “Land of the Lost.” I still have to be listening to an audio book or have the television on very low to go to sleep – my youngest daughter is the same way.

By the time I was 13, I thought I was in love – with “Starsky and Hutch.” Actually, it was Starsky I loved the most. I never missed an episode of this show, but I had to keep it turned down very low because it came on past my bedtime. My bedroom was in the basement, so as long as I keep the volume down, I could get away with watching. Of course, this is another show I would audiotape and listen to at night.

In addition to “Starsky and Hutch”, 1975 also brought “Crockett’s Victory Garden” on PBS. James Underwood Crockett was my gardening idol and it is because of him I became so fascinated with plants and gardening. Every week I would tune in to see what was growing, dreaming of the days I would have my own garden. The show’s name changed to “The Victory Garden” after Crockett died in 1979.

With the mainstream use of VCRs, television viewing would never be the same. I can still remember the first video stores opening in Harrodsburg. Movies lining every shelf – all you had to do was take them home and pop them in the VCR, if you were lucky enough to own one. The video stores also had VCRs to rent and I can remember lugging home one of those huge machines and becoming frustrated when I couldn’t get it hooked up right. I didn’t own my first VCR until I started nursing school – way back in 1987.

No longer content to wait once a year to see “The Wizard of Oz,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” or “Star Wars,” you can now watch these beloved classics whenever you want. My children don’t remember much about Saturday morning cartoons, because they have always been able to watch cartoons at the flick of a switch. Videocassette recorders/players are slowly being replaced by DVD recorders/players. By 2003, DVDs were out-numbering VHS tapes in total rentals and sales.
Three years ago, I was introduced to the DVR and my television viewing will never be the same. Not only can I record programs for future viewing, but I don’t have to waste tapes or discs for recording, unless it is something I want to keep. The DVR allows me to record all my favorite shows and then watch them whenever I feel like it. Not only does it record, but it allows me to pause live television and rewind to catch something I missed.

Black and white versus color, analog versus digital, VHS versus DVD – as long as technology continues advancing, there will always be changes in viewing entertainment from your home. What will the future hold for my grandchildren? We’re already seeing movies on computers and cell phones. I don’t know how my grandchildren will view television, but I know one thing. There will be lots of stories from grandma about the good old days.

Blizzard of 1978

We've all heard stories of blizzards and snowstorms from our parents and grandparents, tales of epic snows and the struggles each one brought.

"I used to walk through snow 3 feet deep just to get to school."

"I remember the snow was up to the window eaves."

"We were snowed in for over a month."

Of course, I have a few stories of my own, like the snowstorm of 2001 when we were supposed to only get a "dusting" and we ended up with 2 feet of snow. This was the winter my middle daughter, Marie, made an igloo by digging out a 3 foot snow drift. This was not a legendary storm, but it is one all three of my children remember. And although I've lived through a few snowstorms and ice storms in my 46 years, nothing compares to my grandparent's epic storms of legend.

Not unless you count the blizzard of 1978. I was 15 years old at the time of this storm, but I'll never forget that winter. Although I kept a journal at the time, many of my facts may not be accurate because at the time, I was more concerned with writing about my boyfriend than the weather conditions. However, I was able to record some of my feelings and the increasing boredom, and my memories have grown each time I tell the story to my girls.

In my telling of the story, we were out of school from Christmas break until Valentine's Day, but I don't think this is exactly right. According to newspaper articles, the big blizzard didn't hit until January 25th, so my slice of reality doesn't hold up to historical facts. We probably had a few “snow days” between Christmas and the big blizzard, but I'm also sure we went to school a few days.

I remember the weathermen had predicted the approaching storm several days before it hit. My parents, like everyone else, had stocked up on food and supplies anticipating a few days of cabin fever. As I researched the blizzard of 1978, I found a report from the National Weather Service, who categorized the storm “as a rare severe blizzard – the most severe grade of storm.” I do have my own records showing at the height of the storm, winds were gusting up to 100 miles per hour. There were also a couple of days when the wind chill was more than 30 degrees below zero. I don't know what the official snow totals were for Harrodsburg, but in our backyard we had 26 inches.

I remember the water lines froze and we didn't have water for days on end. This happened all over town, not just in the subdivision of Riverview where I lived. I remember Daddy hauling water from my grandparents farm in Bohon so we would have water to drink and cook with, as well as to flush the toilets. We also went to the laundromat in Danville to wash clothes because the ones in Harrodsburg didn't have water.

It's funny, I can remember the water lines being frozen, but I don't remember if the electricity was on or off. Our home had a gas furnace, so I guess that would have kept us warm. And I remember we had telephone service because I kept the phone lines hot talking to my boyfriend.

The first few days after the storm were fun because we could go sledding, make snow angels and have snowball fights. My younger brother and his friends made an igloo in the backyard and it was fun watching the building process. After the igloo was finished, they spent hours having the grandest snowball fights!

Although I was a tomboy growing up, I was a wimp about snow and cold weather. After the first few days, I was tired of the snow, so I spent most of my days indoors reading. At the time I owned the first 16 “Trixie Belden Mystery” books and I re-read the entire series twice during this extended vacation. But no matter how much I loved Trixie Belden, I was getting tired of reading the same books over and over again. With school closed I was not able to check books out of the library and the bookmobile was not able to travel to our subdivision. I did have "A Wrinkle in Time" checked out from school, but even Charles Wallace and the Tesseract were not enough to hold my boredom at bay.

And bored became an understatement! After the first week, I would wake early every weekday, only to be disappointed when the radio announced school was closed again. I was actually envious of the Harrodsburg students because they went back to school sooner than we did.

Needless to say, I was so excited to go back to school - to see my friends, to see my boyfriend, to get new books from the library, and ending the overpowering boredom of cabin fever. This will probably be the snowstorm story I tell my grandchildren, and I'm sure the tale will get exaggerated, just the way my grandsparents' and my parents' stories did. But one thing is for sure, I will always remember the beauty and power of the Blizzard of 1978.

Hurray For Books

I love books! I have loved them since I was a little girl. When I was growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of extra money, so I didn’t own very many books, but the books I did own were precious to me. I treated them with respect and I cared for them much better than I did my toys. The first book collection I owned was the Trixie Belden Mysteries and these books still hold a special place in my heart.

My Granny Devine always told me to never, ever dog-ear the pages of a book and this is something I adhere to strongly. When I became a mother, this was also a lesson I taught my three girls. To me, dog-earing a book is a sign of disrespect and should be frowned on in all settings and societies.

Now that I’m older, my home library has grown by leaps and bounds. I have bookshelf after bookshelf full of wonderful books. I keep bookmarks in every room of my house, plus I also use those dang inserts from magazines as bookmarks – they’re made of cardboard, so they work nicely.

I don’t write in the majority of my books, unless it is an inscription of who bought me the book or when I received it. I also have many autographed books that are special to my collection. I do have a tendency to write in “self-help” books or in text books that are my own – this helps me if I’m studying something new. Other than that, I never write in a book.

I try very hard to keep the book jackets with the books, but sometimes this is hard, especially if it is a book that I like to reread. In that case, I’ll laminate the jacket cover, much the way the public library does to protect its books. This keeps the cover nice and clean and I don’t have to worry about tearing the cover every time I reread a book.

When it comes to checking books out of the library, I try to follow the same rules as with my own books. I always use a bookmark and I never dog-ear the pages. It makes me so mad to check out a book and find half the pages have been dog-eared at one time or another. I would also never think of writing in a library book, or anyone else’s book.

My earliest memories of the Mercer County Public Library are that the entire building used to be housed in the Historical Society. It still amazes me when I visit the Historical Society, how tiny this building really is! My mom would always take me to the library, sometimes several times a week.

When I started elementary school, I fell I n love with the school library. So many books! By the time I was in the 4th grade, I was a library assistant for Miss Joy, the librarian. I really thought I was something special. I would get to preview new books before they were ever put into circulation.

By the time I reached high school, I was sill visiting the library often, but I was getting lots of flack from my peers for reading so much. Looking back now, I shouldn’t have let this bother me, but you know how peer pressure can be when you’re a teenager – you try to fit in instead of being your own person.

Now as an adult, I visit the public library two or three times a week. The public library got a brand new building – in its current location – while I was still in grade school – and it has gone through several renovations since them.

Some of the biggest changes in the public library have been the addition of computers. There are several computer stations and it keeps the librarians busy scheduling computer time. This is a wonderful service for people who don’t have computers at home. Another big change over the past few years has been in the card catalog. Gone are the days of flipping through the drawers and cards in the old card catalog – now all you need to do is input a few words into the computer and you quickly learn the location of the books you are looking for. You don’t even need to know the exact name of the book; you can search just the author’s name or even a specific keyword.

Currently, the Mercer Public Library is working on plans for another expansion. I’m so excited! It is really wonderful when a library outgrows its space and has to expand. This tells me there are many people in our community are calling the library home.

Books have always been my friends, so I think they deserve the same kindness and consideration that I would give to a living friend. Books are our legacy and they will endure long after I have left this world.