The Scarvelis Dump

One of my earliest childhood memories has to do with a very special and mysterious occasion in the house where I grew up. I suppose this took place around 37 or so years ago—I believe I was around four years old.

Back then we had one color TV—the larger, other TV, a Zenith black and white model, sat in our “gameroom” and served our daily dose of television magic—three network channels, PBS when you turned the dial to 13, and a very small host of strange, unstable and fuzzy UHF channels on the lower dial (that dial didn’t click loudly and decisively like the main VHF one above it—one turned the inside knob of the UHF dial smoothly and silently to locate the desired double-digit frequency, then used the outside perimeter of the dial to gingerly “fine tune” the station reception—UHF tuning had a distinctively covert aura about it back then). All incoming broadcast information was received via a set of rabbit ear antennas (for VHF signals) and a simple loop antenna attached directly to the back of the set (for UHF signals). Same deal with our color TV, which sat on a shelving unit built by my dad in my parents’ bedroom. The color set was a General Electric 10-inch model—my parents won it in a raffle at a neighborhood Couples Club event (Couples Club took place on the first Saturday of each month at the volunteer fire hall down the street, except during the summer months when the social hub of the neighborhood moved to the neighborhood swimming pool). “That TV is the only thing we’ve ever won,” my mom would always say. One activated this set by turning a small, tapered knob on the upper right front of the unit clockwise with a “click.” Thus commenced a high pitched whine followed by a flurry of crackling noises and, ultimately, living-color TV on the cathode ray picture tube. (After a few minutes all the vacuum tubes in the back of the set would really get cooking and emit an eerie orange glow and the kind of radiant heat you could roast marshmallows over)

Back to the special occasion. One day after dinner my dad moved the little color set into the living room of our house (the TV was a GE “Porta-Color” [click here for a photo of the exact set] with a handle on top of its faux wood grain casing so that one could easily haul it from place to place using both hands as it weighed a mere 55 lbs., give or take a few). It was placed on a table in front of the sofa and that evening we watched the 6:00 news on it, me not really knowing why the TV had been moved into the living room in the first place. I also wondered why my mother seemed really excited about something. Finally, I resigned myself to simply being excited about watching our color TV in the usually (at least for lounging around) off-limits living room of our house. At that age this much sufficed as a truly special occasion and if nothing of note had followed, I would probably still have the vivid memory of it.

But this was really different. As soon as the news ended and a couple of commercials ran (most likely a Hai Karate spot followed by Betty Grable pitching the many virtues of Geritol), the little TV informed us that we were in for a “Special Presentation” (accompanied by lots of psychedelic, living-color swirls of animation on the little 10-inch screen). This perked me up even more, reminding me of the Christmas “Special Presentations” a few months earlier—especially A Charlie Brown Christmas and Frosty the Snowman, which we also watched on the little GE color set, only not in the living room. I quickly put two and two together and realized we were in for a super-deluxe “Special Presentation”—after all, it must be really, really something if my dad went to all the trouble of moving the TV and everything.

And then, bitter disappointment. Lots of music and a big, black and white lion roaring. My mom, who was beaming, announced with unbridled glee, “It’s The Wizard of Oz!” Not knowing what The Wizard of Oz was, I was left completely confused. Why did my dad go to all that trouble to move the little color set into the living room when we could be watching the same black and white movie on the big 20-inch Zenith downstairs? And on it went, in un-glorious black and white—some singing from some girl (at one point my mom said, “She died from taking too many pills a few years ago”), some wind and more drama, an ugly little dog and more turgid music. I couldn’t have cared less.

My parents, however, made sure I was especially alert and attentive during the part of the movie where the little house got caught up in the tornado and a few cows and a witch floated past the big bedroom window. The house then landed with a thump, then silence. Dorothy got up, adjusted her dress and opened the door to a world of glorious, living color. And there I was, with my mouth agape, suddenly entranced and fascinated. This was one of the most affecting moments of completely unanticipated surprise in my life so far.

This marks the first entry into my new blog.

You may be asking yourself (or, better yet, a virtual me) what the above has to do with anything even remotely relevant to anything of value at all. More so, why would I think that you would even begin to care about my rumination of a 37 year old childhood story?

Let me offer you a hint, and, hopefully, shed some light on things to come. You see, when I began thinking about this inaugural blog entry, I fully intended to utilize it in order to set-up and convey my thoughts on the concept of “anticipation.” How in this fast moving world, it’s getting harder and harder to anticipate anything, be it positive, negative or neutral as we are all constantly under assault by exponentially expanding…yakitty, yak. Blah, blah, blah.

But then something happened. As I sit behind my laptop writing, all the while controlling iTunes by remote through my wi-fi with my newly 2.0 upgraded iPod Touch (instead of choosing to watch, on my flat screen TV, one of the 500+ television stations offered by my digital cable, or catching up on the many programs I’ve recorded with the DVR these past weeks). In between bouts of mad writing and the occasional block (hold on, I think I hear my mobile phone ringing…never mind I’ll just check the caller ID and voicemail later), I simply hit save, minimize this document and proceed to surf the worldwide internet to catch up on some real-time data regarding every corner of this globe and even some brain food of my choosing pertaining to things not of this world. What was that Roosevelt said on May 3, 1937 at 2:12 p.m. in Elmira, New York? I’ll Google it. Done. (Great quote) Maybe I’ll download some music, or, better yet, a movie—Star Wars or Citizen Kane?

Who would have thought? Who could have thought? So this too is one of the most affecting moments of completely unanticipated surprise in my life so far.