“Free TV”

c. 2018 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(7-18)

Simple living.

There are many benefits yielded by being a resident in my rural neighborhood. Summer months offer a bountiful blessing of natural beauty, with the camaraderie of a vacation campground. Winter months deliver the quiet comfort of a quilt by the fireplace, as snow slows the pace of life. Both are friendly from the vantage point of one who has reached retirement.

When I first moved to my isolated park, cable television was included at no extra cost. I barely noticed this benefit, with career demands dominating most of my waking hours. Eventually, a nominal fee was added to cover cost increases. My first bill for the service totaled only $18.00. I paid the increase without much attention. But each year produced fee hikes that soon had me questioning the household budget. When the cost neared five times its original amount, I joined the ranks of a growing group in America – the ‘Cord Cutters.’

I purchased a Roku device at our local discount store, and discovered that literally thousands of channels were available. Many of these carried free shows and movies I remembered from bygone days. Others offered the sort of unique programming I craved as an oddball viewer. Some, like ‘Cult Radio A Go-Go’ were full of original content and archived recordings with famous guests from many genres.

My other discovery after dropping cable service was less thrilling in nature, however. I realized that my spot on the map was literally terrible for over-the-air TV reception. A problem during football season.

My first attempt at buying a digital converter and a set-top antenna, for local broadcasts, failed miserably. I could not receive even one channel. Later, after buying a new television, I tried using a Mohu Leaf to bring in signals with its extended range. The result was a group of stations that were few in number and located to the south. Though my home sat only a few miles east of Cleveland, I could not receive any of their popular channels. Internet sites like ChannelPear and USTVNow helped me survive.

Geography was my enemy. A hill blocked signals from the northwest. But being busy lessened the pain.

Still, poor TV reception was little more than an irritant in the household, until I had to retire because of health reasons at age 55. Suddenly, I had time to pause in front of my flat-screen friend. Though the old Roku endured, useful as ever, I began to suffer from a nagging sense of being disconnected. Weather patterns slimmed the number of local stations I could find on a regular basis. Then, I reached the point where they had declined to zero.

I was reminded of Robert Schuller’s famous admonition: “Don’t just sit there. Do something!”

Simmering in frustration, I pondered the idea employed by my neighbor in a blue home, to the west. He had bought an outdoor antenna off of eBay and mounted it by his back door. This simple installation afforded him viewing capability for stations from Erie, Pennsylvania. Informally, I discussed this with my friend BA, a maintenance technician from the company where I had worked in Geneva. He remembered having metal poles leftover from a remodel that could be used as a makeshift tower. A quick search for digital antennas yielded lots of results.

All it took was the lure of a cold brew to bring him over. We built the mast, with improvised anchor straps, and had my new antenna in the air without much difficulty. The unit came with a controller and wireless remote. Rotating the assembly required nothing more than thumbing a pair of buttons. Pointing it northeast brought in Erie, as my neighbor had chosen. Directed southwest, I found several stations from Youngstown. Plus, the public broadcasting outlet in Cleveland.

I wanted to compose a victory song called “Retired guys can survive!”

While flipping through the channels, I began to hear echoes of visits with my aunt and uncle in Parkersburg, West Virginia, during my childhood. They had something of a rarity in our family during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s – an actual color television.

It was made by RCA as I remember.

My uncle was a professional baker by trade and a handyman at home. He had constructed a sturdy, metal tower for his own TV antenna. There was of course no cable service or satellite provider for help in those days. His intention was to provide first-rate reception for the family. The analog array stood many feet in the air, with a rotor assembly in place. It was controlled by a box that sat on top of his set in the living room. A twist of the dial produced distant mechanical groans and a ponderous change in direction. We learned as children not to fiddle with the controls. 

The rendered images were normally a bit out of focus and made of murky hues. But each visit to Parkersburg had us in awe of this technology. Our lunches usually consisted of bologna sandwiches, RC Cola, and Mr. Bee Potato chips, a regional favorite. We would watch wrestling on Saturday afternoons, while my uncle provided his own assessment of each match.

At home, my family had nothing more sophisticated than a pair of ‘Rabbit Ears’ and some bits of aluminum foil. We only saw the video world in black-and-white, on a set purchased from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

These memories lingered as I fiddled with my new home system, last week. Though almost fifty years had passed, the sense of wonder continued. I turned my rooftop signal-grabber back and forth, to tune in the best roster of channels. And, took comfort in the notion that my late aunt and uncle might be looking down from heaven, with a smile.

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