I love technology. I really do. I mean who doesn’t? When I was a kid, I was excited when I received a tape recorder for my tenth birthday. I had a 13-inch Sony Trinitron, complete with rabbit ears and six channels, that is unless you include channel 13, but I wasn’t much for Sesame Street so as I said six channels. That was it for technology.
But then along came 1981 and the world as I would know it on Hungry Harbor Road changed. I was twenty and received a phone call from someone named Cablevision asking if we wanted him in our house.
Little did I know this was the phone call from heaven that my father had been dreaming about. Cable. His TV was about to be transformed into an entertainment center. Sports. Movies. No more commercials. All coming to our house where my father would run command central from his easy chair.
“What time did they call?” he asked walking in the door after work removing his jacket. “And why didn’t you call me at the office? You know how important this is. Now we’ll have to wait. What’s wrong with you?”
My brother and I watched him call the toll-free number as my mother cleaned up his drool which was all over the phone as he listened to the various packages offered.
We looked at each other in amazement. We had never seen this look of ecstasy on his face. He was off in another world. It was as if the divine was real. It was rushing through him like sap rushing up a tree, like an iridescent fountain showering over him, like a river coming up the center of the planet and driving through him. An active live knowing of vast truth. Cable was coming to him.
My mother tapped him. “Warren. Warren. Hello. Earth to Warren.”
“Yes. All of it. I want it all on the set in the den and the one in my bedroom. Can you come today? Oh, not until tomorrow? Okay. Between noon and five? Yes. That’s fine. We’ll be home. Thank you.”
“How are you going to be home between noon and five?” my mother foolishly asked.
He was still in the Cablevision universe.
My brother turned to me. “I bet you could punch him in the arm right now and he wouldn’t feel it. Better yet, ask him for ten bucks. He will totally give it to you.”
He descended back to earth with a knowing look that this would be his last day as a mere mortal. “I’m going to work. You’ll be here. Just do whatever you need to in the morning. My office is fifteen minutes from here. Just call me when they arrive, and I’ll see if I can be home when they’re finishing up so they can show me how to work the system.”
She exhaled. “What if I have things to do in the afternoon?”
“I just told you. Do it in the morning.”
“I meant, what if I have something scheduled? You never asked if I would mind. You just volunteered me assuming I would be available.”
“Okay. Go look at your calendar and tell me if you have something planned for Wednesday afternoon. If your mother does have something I need one of you two guys to take care of it for her.”
“I don’t live here,” my brother blurted out.
My father shook his head. “You’d never know it by my food bill.”
“That’s not the point. You take me for granted. That’s all. I’ll do it. But you could have asked. I frankly could care less if we get this metziah thing. I mean what if I just wanted to go shpatziring around. Fine. I’ll stay home and wait for your box thing to show up.”
“Are you done? It’s one afternoon. What if they come at exactly noon? You’re then free. Keep in mind, this is life-altering technology, not just some box thing. Thirty-six channels. Movies. Islander home games. Channels we’ve never seen before with a clear picture. We may never have to go out again. Everyone we know will be here”
“That’s the problem. I like going out. As for movies, I like going to a theater. And just who’s supposed to clean up when everybody leaves? What if he doesn’t show up until you get home from work? I will have wasted an entire afternoon?”
“Fine. Whenever he shows up, remind me not to let you watch.”
She exited the room with the same lack of enthusiasm she had expressed prior to this life-altering phone call. “That’s fine with me.”
As of four o’clock Wednesday afternoon, we were the proud owners of cable tv. My brother and I were checking out all the channels until Captain Kirk from the Enterprise opened the garage door.
His eyes linked to the box on my brother’s lap as he sat in my father’s La-Z-Boy recliner, soon to become known as command central. “Okay. Okay Just what do you think you two are doing? Put it down now. This is not a toy and needs to be used by someone with a gentle touch.”
I looked up at my father. “Yeah, but Mom just went to the supermarket. The guy showed her what to do and she said she’d show us when she got back.”
“I was talking about me, wise guy,” my father said, now sitting in his recliner, feet up, and large brown box on his lap. “Remember, nobody is to use this unless I am here to supervise. It’s a sophisticated piece of equipment.”
I looked at my brother and whispered, “it’s an ugly brown box with buttons and a cable running from the tv to Dad’s chair. How hard can it be?”
“And remember you must never stand on the wire. Be careful around this thing.”
“Hey, it says here that you get this music channel,” my brother said. “All you do is turn this knob and press this button.”
“Can you stop fooling around? I must study this book which explains what to do before you two break it. You are not to touch anything. When I am done, I will teach all of you how it works. Until then, either sit over there or go to your rooms.”
“Let’s go to their bedroom and watch,” my brother whispered as my father was studying page one of his new bible.
The box could not have been easier to use, and we watched music videos wondering if this was the end of radio. We laughed as my mother returned and my father told her to invite all their friends to the house to show off this new technology.
He was reading from his new cable tv weekly guide. “The islanders are on tonight and there are several great movies on tomorrow night and wait, yes, the Knicks are on Friday.”
Dropping the keys into her pocketbook, she removed her coat. “I am not entertaining three nights in a row.”
“What are you talking about? The box is the entertainment. All you need to do is sit and watch.”
“And when they get hungry or trudge in shmootz from the driveway? I don’t understand you?”
They worked out a compromise which included me helping to serve and clean, but I could invite a friend over as long as he was quiet.
“If this is what technology is, I’m all for it,” I thought. “It’s just exhausting.”