Just a typical scene from a typical middle class, midwestern family.
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It all started with the TV.
That day I decided to stand up to Bruce, we were all watching TV. Not Mom and Dad, but all us kids. It was a pretty typical scene for our family at that time.
As soon as the afternoon bus got us home from school, we would race to the living room and turn it on. We didn’t have much time during the week. We had to watch as much as we could before Dad got home and chased us out of the living room. Mom never seemed to be involved then. She would be in the kitchen cooking or in another room cleaning.
“Get outside!” Dad would shout… or “Don’t you have homework to do?” “Turn that thing off and do something useful!”
We could get to see maybe one or two programs before he did get home (or a parts of them). It was always a fight between me and my sister as to what we were going to watch. After Dad got home it would then become a negotiation with him about how much and what we could watch after dinner.
My family didn’t get a TV until 1973. When we were living in the house on the cul-de-sac, all we had for entertainment was a cheap stereo record player and the radio. We only got to watch TV at friends houses. But once we were living in the walk out basement on Steiger road, our life became a little more brand new and modern. Still… even though color TVs were very common by then, our first TV was a B&W thing. Dad was anti-TV on principal, I think. It probably conflicted with his strong protestant work ethic. But as a brand new and modern parent and educator, I’m sure he also recognized that TV was already a foundational element of the the culture in which he was raising his family.
This must have been quite an internal struggle for him but I will have to pick that part of the story and continue when this too will have to be…
To Be continued…
