• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 738 0

for several of the colonial assemblies, he had made the case for a peaceful reconciliation between England and her colonies, and he had raised the world’s consciousness about the not-yet-born country. More than anything, Franklin wanted America (or what would become America) to remain part of the British Empire, but not at any cost. Eventually, it became apparent to Franklin that matters had come to a head, and in March 1775 he finally saw the end of any hope and left for home. It must have been a desperate trip. He was going back to an uncertain future, he had failed in his role in England, and his wife had died the year before in his absence. So what did Franklin do on the journey home?

He discovered the Gulf Stream (well, sort of ).

Instead of moping or pouting or despairing, Franklin took the temperature of the water as he crossed the Atlantic. He had already developed a chart of the Gulf Stream in 1769 with his cousin Timothy Folger, but he used this most depressing of trips to confirm and explain his earlier work. In a word, he was industrious.

Were that I was so.

When I think of Industry, I remember the day we got cable television.

Like Gabriel announcing the Virgin birth, it was a revelation. There may even have been an angelic hallelujah chorus (at least in my mind).

The details are burned into my memory. A small box was installed atop our bulky television, its digital readout like something from the space program. I can see my father fiddling with the remote control searching for the right channel (this was predictive—he’s been playing with television remotes constantly since that moment). And then there it was: my first cable television program. Feel the heart thumping faster, cue the chorus, rise and join in the call. Hallelujah!

It was The Jetsons.

Up to that point The Jetsons was like kissing a girl: something I had heard about at school but never experienced. Yet with the twist of a coaxial wire and the click of a remote, my universe went from two fuzzy, rabbit-ear-captured stations to a multichannel bonanza (well, I think we were hauling in a maximum of ten, maybe twelve, signals with out first cable feed, but that seemed like a viewing smorgasbord at the time). And unlike perhaps any media intervention before or since, my introduction to the joys of cable television changed my world.

Before cable I was a rugged, self-entertaining, athletic child (at least that’s my memory). After a cable signal broadcast from WLBZ Channel 2 in Bangor, Maine, however, I was lost in the exotic world of afternoon soap operas, television sitcoms, and Eddie Driscoll and The Great Money Movie. From the moment I came home from school until supper, my world was consumed by television.

I even became a momentary star myself as an audience member on a show called Dick Stacey’s Country Jamboree, a gloriously bad musical variety show filmed in the basement of Dick’s motel. Anyone could get up, without audition, and have a go. Viewers all over New England and Eastern Canada were entranced (or aghast) as an eclectic group of performers took the stage. Dick sponsored the show as an advertisement for his gas stations. His famous tag line from the commercials interspersed throughout the show was: “See these hands? These hands pump gas and they stink.” This was quality fare.

Somehow, during the run of Dick’s musical showcase, my parents and I found ourselves as both visitors to Bangor and guests at Dick’s motel. After supper that night, Mom and Dad decided that we’d take in a live performance of the Country Jamboree. Things progressed as one might expect until, to my thirteen-year-old amazement and horror, the host stopped beside me during his meanderings. I’m not sure what he asked me—probably where I was from—nor am I sure how I replied. All I knew, and I was keenly aware of it even as I was being interviewed, was that I had officially been on television. Cable television. Cable television that was seen in my hometown. The only long-term effect is a mild phobia about being interviewed on camera (which has lasted to this day).