In today's world we are surrounded by gadgets of all types, computers, cell phones and plasma TVs. There is cable and satellite Television, Microwave ovens, on and on. When I was a child we had none of these things, yet somehow we survived. We had one telephone and it was on a "party line", with I believe, four other family's. We had one black and white television with three channels. Life was simpler and I believe in many ways better.
My grandparents small ranch was my home for most of my childhood. Our neighbor was a cattle rancher who raised champion Herford cattle. He and my Grandfather seemed to have been embroiled in a kind of minor feud, or so it seemed to me at the time. If this was so, maybe it was a result of my Grandfather raising sheep and Melvin (our neighbor) raising cattle. I really am not sure. I considered myself neutral. I really liked Melvin and would often go down and watch him feed his Bulls hay. I also knew my Grandpa well enough to know that he was not the easiest of people to get along with all the time.
An example of why I thought there was a feud was when Melvin placed a mobile home directly across from my Grandparents house for his hired hand to reside in. My Grandparents were sure that this was done to aggravate them as it now partially obscured our view of the mountains from our dinner table. I on the other hand, thought it was neat, because we had in my opinion, a terrible shortage of neighbors. I was especially happy when the hired hand that moved into it was the older brother of my best friend.
Having Terry move in next door seemed to lesson the irritation that my Grandparents felt about the situation, as they liked him and his whole family. One day my often absent father was visiting and asked me if I would like to go next door and visit Terry and watch color TV! I'll never forget the excitement I felt because I had never seen color TV before. My only knowledge of the medium was when TV shows would show a little side bar ad that said "This program is presented in living color." Of course I would then watch the program in black and white. Terry had just purchased a brand new color television, we were invited over to watch the Television premier of " Your Cheatin Heart" the 1964 film staring George Hamilton as Hank Williams .http://www.hankwilliams.com/
Well the big moment came and bursting with anticipation, I crossed the road with my Dad and we made ourselves at home on Terry's couch. Terry's Brother Monty was also present. The show began and I braced my self for what I was sure to be a stunning display of "living color." The title shot and opening scenes began but with one problem. It was in not so living, Black and White. We all looked at one another perplexed and baffled by this turn of events. Then Monty sprang into action, and began turning knobs and making fine tuning adjustments, the TV rolled, changed contrasts, went completely green and completely red, but still no color. Not to be discouraged Monty rolled the TV away from the wall and began fooling around with the controls hidden in the back of TVs in those days. Allot of weird stuff happened on the screen thanks to Monty's efforts but no color. Terry and Monty then became engaged in a active debate about what could be wrong and how to fix it, all to no avail. At some point we gave up and enjoyed a good show about a great country music legend.
Years later I found out the movie was actually shot in black and white. There was nothing wrong with Terry's TV after all. I also learned The movie featured 14 year old Hank Williams Jr doing the singing and sounding just like his father. http://www.hankjr.com/
I do not remember when I finally saw color TV for the first time, but I still remember my first attempt at it.
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