Introduction to TV

 

Aunt Nina and her TV in 1965. Now at age 96, Aunt Nina still has a wonderful infectious laugh and at times I’ve ended up laughing along when I didn’t even know what the joke was. 

Photo courtesy of

  
Nina Hawkins  

 

Written by 
LeRoy Walls 
CEO 

It was December 31st, 1956 and we were headed to Aunt Nina’s to celebrate the coming of the New Year. Dad, Mom, Keith, Carolyn, Donna, Glen (he was nine months old) and I were packed into our 1950 Plymouth.

This would be my first time to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve...or any other eve! It was a brisk winter evening so when we arrived I wasted little time with the welcoming from Aunt Nina and Uncle Virgil. I quickly got next to their big brown wood-heating stove. I lost little time in toasting my front side and backside as Aunt Nina got us settled in.

Recently we had made several of these trips to Aunt Nina’s. Nina and Virgil were recent new owners of a TELEVISION! At that time there were no other TV’s in the Walls family or in our farm community. I, however, wasn’t a total newcomer to television as I had watched it on Saturday night through the front glass window at Carroll’s Radio & TV on Main Street in Cabool!

Our family liked Father Knows Best, The Great Guildersleeve and many others we had listened to on the radio. I liked Dragnet and The Lone Ranger - but Uncle Virgil and I really came to life at 8:00 PM on Friday nights when the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports presented Friday Night Boxing.

On that New Year’s Eve, our "Early to bed-early to rise" farm family watched with "great excitement" at 7:00 and 8:00 PM; "great interest" at 9:00 PM; and "some interest" to the news at 10:00 PM. At 11:00 PM we "merely watched" as New York celebrated New Year’s arrival. At mid-night we "half dozed or watched through red eyes" as the New Year arrived in Missouri.

I’m sure Aunt Nina has had more exciting New Year Eves than this one I remember, yet, I’m grateful that she brought me into the enlightened age of television and shared the New Year’s eve of 1957 with us.

 

12/31/1999