Slog Comments

You can't talk about social housing, Charles, unless you include the work of Delores Hayden, and if you don't, no one will take you seriously.

The TV set in that picture looks remarkably like the Admiral b&w set that sat in our den which was our family's only set for my entire childhood, through high school. After the first few years, it would fail regularly, as the various tubes burned out. When times were tough and my parents couldn't afford to call the tv serviceman, I opened up the back, took out all the tubes, put them in a paper bag and bicycled out to the drugstore on my little bike, where they had a testing machine. I spent my saved allowance money on the needed replacement. Years later, when I could drive, having become the default serviceman of our tv, and having replaced almost everything at least once over the years, I took on my biggest repair project. I drove to an electronics parts distributor and bought a new picture tube and somehow installed and aligned that.

I'm not sure my parents exactly ever appreciated it, either. My mother was always worried I would break something that couldn't be fixed. Every time I fixed it, I think the reaction was more like, "Whew. Thank God the kid didn't ruin it." Meanwhile, I got zapped a few times. Thanks to being young and resilient, I didn't die. Don't think that would work today. I never told anyone for fear of getting scolded.

Ah, memories.