Whatever led TV, internet and cell phone service to go belly-up for several hours a week ago Friday in Humboldt was of minuscule importance compared to the tragic damage and suffering that began to unfold at the same time in Houston and nearby environs.
The local inconvenience did, though, remind of long ago, say about 1950, when TV was new and the Internet and cell phones were, if at all mentioned, products of science fiction.
Wife Beverly and I didn’t miss a beat. With Angus, whom we’ve elevated to near-human status, we curled up on the couch and immersed ourselves in books. Angus caught up on his sleep, with an occasional plea for attention.
Sometime during the evening I thought about my days as a kid when reading was second only to romps outdoors, often with Tony Edwards and Sarajane Clements.
Picnics were a frequent feature. We’d fix up a table from a couple or three buckets and an old plank. Mom would furnish sandwiches and pop, often my favorite, Grapette. Lena Clements, Sarajane’s mother, tossed in candy bars, or something else just as sweet.
Picnics were a brief break from outdoor activities, mainly “playing in the ditch.”
The ditch was, and is, an open storm-water channel that runs along the north side of Mulberry Street on Humboldt’s east side. Then, for whatever reason, it held water longer than it does nowadays, perhaps because it has lost its personification with today’s kids ignoring the waterway, leaving it to dry up like the old warrior it is.
We’d make dams — fortified by rocks and covered with mud — and then seek out crawdads, of which there were many. A prize was to find a mother with a new hatch of tiny crawlers hanging to the underside of her tail.
On Fourth of July, with cherry bombs and bulldogs capable of underwater explosion in our inventory, we’d drop them, covered in mud for weight, into the ditch’s deeper holes, and dance with glee when they sent showers into the air.
As dusk arrived, it was time to tune in favorites on the radio, including “Sky King” and “The Shadow.” When my folks and grandparents took control of the big General Electric cabinet model, it was my cue to devour books — and, if I begged just a little, a dollop of sugar cookie dough grandma Meme would whip up in short order.
Adventure stories with jungle settings were among my favorites, and eventually I seized on science fiction, with “Forbidden Planet,” later made into a movie, being the first I ever read.
Along about 1955 Dad bought a TV, and erected an antenna next to the house with a rotor that enabled us to get — if conditions were right — as many as three channels.
That was a cultural change, but, to my great pleasure now, I never put books aside.
Hollywood has yet to make a movie that can create as compelling an adventure as I — as anyone — can find in reading.
That Friday night without interruption was pleasant, so much so that Beverly and I are talking about eliminating the expense of cable TV — although I don’t want to be without the Internet, nor does she. She has an iPad addiction that’s as strong as my fondness for reading.
There are limits to what we’re willing to forego.
At Week’s End: Living (just fine) without television
