And it was mine.
Before I had a car or my own apartment or even my own television, I owned a VCR. Talk about your trend setter.
When I was a kid, my television viewing every night was not only sacred. It was extremely regimented. You had your regular programs to watch on Monday night and Tuesday night and so forth. There were shows I watched with my grandmother downstairs. There were those programs that she didn't like. I watched those on the black and white portable in my bedroom. On Fridays, I got to stay up and watch Johnny Carson. On Saturdays, I camped out in my room to watch "Get Smart" while the other two television consoles in the house were tuned to Lawrence Welk.
It was all very intricate, yet incredibly simple. A ten-year-old could engineer it all.
This ten-year-old did.
But, of course, you had a problem maintaining this viewership. When life got in the way.
If I got dragged to a relative's house.
On Sundays, when I was virtually kidnapped by my own parents to visit somebody out on Long Island. The later we stayed on Sunday, the earlier my bedtime would become on Monday when I desperately wanted to stay up to watch my beloved Andy Griffith.
Or if it snowed. And I was forced to go outside and watch a family member shovel.
I can remember one blizzard that happened on a Friday night. I was anxiously waiting to watch some unmemorable sitcom called "Fair Exchange." The damn thing had about five viewers. I was one of them. And, since it had been recently cancelled, the episode that evening would be the last one. Except Mom was home.
"You have to come outside with me to help shovel the driveway before your father comes home from work."
But, I want to watch....
"Now."
Shit. Or whatever was my favorite curse word when I was six.
"Fair Exchange" was gone by 9PM. I was still sweeping snow flakes.
Back then, when a TV show was done, it was over. If you missed it, you missed it. Oh, maybe, you got lucky and they repeated it during the summer. But, usually, gone was gone. And, if it was a show I particularly like, I was momentarily destroyed.
Of course, as I got older, I became less dependent upon a regular television viewing regimen.
Sort of.
In high school and college, there were still TV shows that I was hopelessly in love with. And hated to miss. I can remember one Saturday night while living in a college dorm that I raced back from the gym at halftime of a Fordham Ram basketball game to watch part of the CBS sitcom block.
Yeah, I was older and still crazy after all those years.
So, out of college and with even more of a social life, I was torn. How do I cope with my TV mania when I'm in such...ahem...demand?
My good buddy from college and subsequently the rest of my life, the Bibster, had the answer.
"I just got a RCA Selectavision."
A who made by what?
This innovation was a godsend. You could record TV shows while you were out. Well, as long as your TV show aired during the next 24 hours. And, as long as you didn't want to see record more than one show at night on a different channel. If you were lucky, all of your favorites aired back-to-back on CBS. And for not more than four hours.
And it was vitally important that you remember to click a special button or else nothing recorded.
In this day of digital DVRs, this gizmo sounds straight out of the Flintstones. Back then, I couldn't wait to get mine. And this was before the days of Best Buy and other big box stores. When I priced my own RCA Selectavision, I did so at a local appliance store on Gramatan Avenue in Mount Vernon.
Naturally, my purchase was met with the usual disdain. From my dad.
"What the hell is that thing? An x-ray machine?"
I explained the wonderment of this new electronic world. And tried to hedge when my father pressed me on the price tag.
"800 hundred bucks for that????!!!!"
It was, at this point in my life, the most I had paid for anything out of my own hard-earned money.
"Well, it's out of your pocket."
Yes, it is. And I was suddenly the high tech envy of my friends.
I mean, besides never missing your favorite TV show, you could actually go out and rent a movie. There was one such store that did that then. It was in Cross County Shopping Center five miles away in Yonkers. Hardly convenient. I'd invite friends over to watch.
"What time does the movie start?"
I don't know. What time can you get here? Wink, wink.
I was a marvel.
The VCR occupied the bottom shelf of our now-antiquated Zenith TV console. You didn't dare move it. Partly because you didn't want to mess up the wires. Mostly because the damn thing weighed a ton and a half.
Oh, sure, there were the life-altering snafus. I would forget to flip the switch to record. There were several late night calls from wherever I was socializing. I had forgotten to make the necessary button push. I'd call my dad to instruct him how to do so. He took down the instructions as if it was the second deployment of the landing at Normandy Beach.
"I have to do what when and which part of the machine is that?"
He managed somehow. Of course, there were those days when I was the one who fouled it all up.
What the hell happened? Where's my "One Day at a Time?"
The RCA Selectavision served me well for about four or five years. Soon, technology ramped up. You could record more than one time a day. You could program over seven days. Then fourteen. Then twenty-one days.
Even those VCRs are long gone. Today, in 2014, it is the DVR and you can record a whole season of "Homeland" and binge watch it over two days.
Me? I still like to adhere to a schedule. If I tape "The Big Bang Theory," I try to watch it sometime within the following day or two. I prefer to keep some sort of regimen going. As I look around amongst my friends, I may be the only one.
But, decades ago, I also was one of the only people with a VCR. And, in a strange and mystical way, I long for those days all over again.
Dinner last night: Sausage pizza at Fabiolus Cucina.
No comments:
Post a Comment