Tubin’ it

My Dad and Mom had a small, oval screen (19″ diagonal if I remember right), black and white TV. My father had always wanted to buy one of those new, color TVs. It would be a 25″ diagonal set, heck, you had to have one so you could watch the Rose Bowl Parade in color. They came in a cabinet the size of a sofa. Every time he was ready to pull the trigger on that new TV “set”, something would happen that would divert those saved TV set funds to a more immediate need. So we made the black and white box work. Rabbit ears antenna on top, two black dials on the front. One was for the volume of that little, tiny speaker behind the gold mesh fabric and the other was the tuner knob; 13 channels to be exact. About once every six months you would make a trip to the grocery store or local Rexall drugstore to check the vacuum tubes because the “TV set” wasn’t working properly so it had to be one of those tubes. You would take all the tubes out of the TV, take them to be tested, one at a time, replace the ones that were blown and hope everything worked again. Heaven forbid the problem was the “picture tube.” Families actually dissolved over failed picture tubes. Having your picture tube go out was a disaster of Biblical proportions.

I got a little off track there but it is important for you to have a visual idea of what technology in the 60s was like and how families would gather around their TV set in the evenings. Everyone had their favorite shows. Sunday night of course was The Ed Sullivan show, direct from the Ed Sullivan theater in New York City. It was an hour long variety show featuring the best of the entertainment world from that era. Comedians like Shecky Greene and Buddy Hackett, singers such as Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole and Gisele MacKenzie, musicians like Al Hurt and Buddy Rich. Hey, I know you aren’t old enough to remember those names but look them up, they were the entertainment icons of that era. The Ed Sullivan show also featured the introduction of The Fab Four, aka The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Paul Revere and The Raiders and The Mommas and The Papas among numerous other musical groups that went on to world wide fame. The other staple in our house was Wide World of Sports. Saturday afternoons were all about listening to the likes of Jim McKay, Howard Cosell, Keith Jackson, Chris Schenkel and Frank Gifford talk about “spanning the globe to bring you the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

The “tube” was one of two ways we got the news. First was through newspapers but as technology improved more people relied on television. Families would gather around the TV in the evenings, after supper, after homework was completed, after any daily chores were finished up and approved, then it was ok to watch a little TV. From time to time there might be a little stress over who’s favorite program everyone had to watch because for us, there was only one television in the house. Looking back on it, that was a good thing. Families actually spent time together, gathered around that “tube.” There were times when that family time around the TV was spent watching tense, historical events. I can remember the hours we spent in the evenings watching as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded in front of us. Also in the 60s we witnessed the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Fortunately the 60s finished off on a positive note when Neil Armstrong uttered the famous words, “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” as he was the first human to step foot on the moon. Yes, technology had advanced enough to allow video to be beamed back from the moon and we watched in black and white as the lunar lander blasted off to begin the journey back to earth.

Oh, and one more thing about video technology of yesteryear. We had 5 channels to chose from. 3 were the major networks, ABC, NBC and CBS. Then there was one local station and PBS which we knew as the education channel so we didn’t watch it! The channel dial on the tv set had 13 positions on it – that was it. In the late 60s and early 70s TVs started coming out with UHF channel dials. The problem was, most cities had no UHF stations and if there was one you needed a separate antenna to capture the signal. Cable TV was a rumor until the mid 70s and because the infrastructure didn’t exist only new neighborhoods were getting it.

So I’m sure you are wondering why I am dragging you through all this yesteryear stuff. Things have changed, aren’t we lucky. Our phones and iPads serve as mini televisions, we can watch them any time we want. No negotiating over what shows to watch needed. We get news every minute of every day. Heck, we can even chose our source of news making sure it aligns with our ideology. Televisions themselves are wafer thin, have no tubes and rarely break down. Rabbit ear antennas? Believe it or not you can still buy them on Amazon but today’s versions collect HD signals.

Let me see if I can tie all this together. When I was growing up, video technology was a limited resource that for most American families was a central rallying point. TV time by yourself was controlled and pretty limited. If the school grades weren’t up to expectations, the TV was off limits. If home chores weren’t done on time and satisfactorily, no TV time for you. If my sister and I got into an argument, TV time might be used to encourage a truce. Things are so different today. I don’t believe it is all bad but our methods of consuming video entertainment have change dramatically. Families rarely sit down and have a meal together, let alone scheduling designated time together around the television. News, weather, social content and financial news are all available at our finger tips, 24hours a day, seven days a week. The real danger, as I see it, is parents don’t know what their kids are watching which means they also do not have the opportunity to talk about the information they are absorbing. I am not advocating total censorship but I do believe parents should use their personal life experience to help their children discern what is true and what is garbage. Children need their parents to help shape their moral compass and more importantly to open their minds to the truth about the one living God. So much of the information they get from the media, social and traditional, is built on agendas that support untruths and are designed to draw their attention away from the saving grace of Jesus.

My encouragement to you – if you aren’t already doing it, start having at least one family night a week. It really doesn’t matter what you do, just be intentional about making it a complete family event. Make it routine so everyone knows to schedule around it. Use the time to find out what is going on in your kids lives – away from home. Let them ask you the same sort of questions. Use your life experience to influence what they are listening to, who they are paying attention to, what is shaping their view of life in general. Whatever you do, don’t leave Jesus out of the dialogue. So much of our moral decay and the problems we see in our society today can be tied directly to abandoning God and our reluctance to share our faith, not only with our family but also with our friends. So much of what we see on “the tube” these days is structured to take our focus off of him.

My parents were great at guiding me and my sister through the information we consumed. Granted, the family TV set was the primary source but the time we spent around it as a family was invaluable and so important to our growth and development into the adults we are today. You get only one chance – each passing year is either time lost or will result in real gains that will last a lifetime and hopefully for generations. Don’t tube it when it comes to your kids.