"I Am Always Remembering..."

Yep, I'm "before we had color TV" years old...

I distinctly remember the excitement in our home when the first color television came through the door. Of course, I knew color television existed, but you only saw it when you'd visit a store with your parents. I remember being mesmerized by the vibrant colors of 15 to 20 televisions on the wall display at Sears showing clips from "The Wonderful World of Disney." Of course that was clever marketing by Sears to put children to work pestering their parents for color televisions. It didn't work on my dad though, he'd always let us stop and look, and he'd admire them too, but when he'd look at the prices he'd always say, "Not yet, too dear." So in our house, it didn't work until 1974 when finally a 19 inch Panasonic import sold by Sears took up residence in our breakfast room. That so called "portable television" was huge and heavy, but it had a great color picture. Saturday morning cartoons were never better! 

Three years later, all our dreams came true when my Mother who was accompanying my oldest sister on a shopping trip to buy her own color TV (she'd moved out and was living on her own some years before) asked the salesman at Highland Appliance, what discount will we get for two? The next day, we came home from school to find a 25 inch Quasar console had taken the place in our den of the old Sears Silvertone 20 inch B&W that was bought a few years before I was born.

This old magazine advert reminded me of my dad. He was born before radio became a thing and he marveled like everyone else when it morphed into television after he returned from WWII. Dad was not a big television watcher, but he loved Star Trek TOS. Some of my fondest memories of dad are of just us two sitting at the breakfast room table together on a rare Saturday evening when he didn't have to work and us watching Captain Kirk and crew "go where no man has gone before" and surprisingly always finding someone there.

I am always remembering...