A few weeks before Easter 1967, my grandparents in Indiana bought a color television — the first people we knew to get one. They called the day it was delivered, and we passed the phone around our kitchen. No one could wait to talk. Our arms reached out over our heads, hands waving wildly, like we were bridesmaids under a bouquet toss.
"What colors does it have?" asked my sister, Molly. "How’s the reception?" my dad asked. "Does it have UHF?" The only question that really mattered to 10-year-old me was: "When do we get to see it?" Easter week/files/storyimages/was the answer.
I rushed through our backyard egg hunt that year. The sooner the search was over, the sooner we could get on the road to Indiana.
A couple of hours later we were motoring up I-65. Clarksville, Cementville, Seymour. I stared out the car window, smoked gray by my father’s Viceroys. The farther north we climbed the more the early-spring colors receded. By the time we hit the Columbus exit the countryside was in low-contrast black and white. Free from the car once we arrived, we darted past my grandparents at the front door, sprinted through the fragrant kitchen and rounded the corner to the den.
The console television was long and woody. Heavy-looking, like an expensive casket with a glass window on its flank. Polished and gleaming like a casket, too. The Zenith splayed itself across most of an entire wall. "Take a seat," it said.
Even the sound of "Zenith" conjured up white-bearded Greek gods flying through thunder clouds, heaving bolts of lightening toward earth to be captured by the hay-wired antenna Paw Paw installed on his roof.
The set came with a remote control. A remote control! As it turned out, rattling door keys also changed the channel, as did their blender and, sometimes, the phone ringing. But for the moment we gazed at the remote Paw Paw had in his hand like it was a moon rock.
In perhaps the most selfless act of her entire life, Molly allowed me to take the remote, as big as a tackle box, into my own hands and aim it at the receiver. "Here goes," I said.
Disappointment is an emotional burglar. And Molly and I were robbed. "That’s not color," we said, blinking at a car ad. It was a clear signal out of Indianapolis’ ironically named WISH-TV. Clear, but no more colorful than the crappy set we left back home.
"Be patient," said Paw Paw. "Not everything’s in color. Only some stuff. You’ll see tonight."
We sat and stared at the TV all afternoon as time passed in half-hour increments of black and white.
Finally. Prime time. "Hey, quick!" we yelled. "Bonanza! In color!" It was worth the wait: the opening music with the cow brand burning copper fire through a map of the Ponderosa; the multi-hued scarves around the Cartwright boys’ necks; Hop Sing’s blue satin Chinese tunic.
Now Mawmo joined us from the kitchen, trailed by delicious smells, wiping her hands on a towel. "The ham will be ready by the time the show’s over!" she said, plopping down on the sofa.
And she was right. At first I thought Paw Paw’s Cadillac had blown up out in the garage. The blast shook the walls and rippled the den curtains. The television blinked off as if to hide. For a moment our entire family hovered a foot above wherever they were sitting.
The smoke billowed behind the explosion, and it streamed out from the kitchen. We all scrambled toward the commotion, turning the corner, peering through flying ash to the site of the oven door swinging back and forth from a single hinge.
"What was in the oven?" yelled Paw Paw. "The sweet potatoes?"
"No. They’re done," said Mawmo. "It was the canned ham — a big one, the first canned ham I ever baked."
"Did you take the ham out of the can?" my dad asked her. "Well, no," she said sheepishly. "I don’t believe I did."
We threw open the windows and let the cool April air in. Looking around, we discovered ham-can shrapnel lodged in the plaster walls. One shiny sliver cleaved itself into the thick Indianapolis White Pages on the counter.
"It’s a good thing we were watching Bonanza," Paw Paw said.
The crisis passed nearly as fast as it came. No one seemed especially upset. "Everything else is ready!" chirped Mawmo.
"And it looks so good!" chimed my mother as only a Southerner can do in the face of catastrophe. "Even the ham is perfect," laughed my dad as he plucked pink meat off the refrigerator door.
