The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [189]
Gradually he regained his interest in eating, if in nothing else, and one evening at supper when Sonora served some heated-up beans out of a can he actually grumbled. “It’s all we can afford,” Sonora retorted. “We’ve used up all our savings building this house and moving our things here and living for weeks and weeks without any income. Do you want me to look for a job? Will you stay home and take care of the baby while I’m working? I intend to start a garden patch next spring, and get some chickens, but what will we do until then?”
“Aw, heck,” Hank replied, and the next day he painted out the letters “Anaheim, Calif.” on the side of his van, and painted in the letters “Jasper, Ark.” and drove into Jasper and rented one of the vacant buildings on the square, the little brick-painted-white store whose illustration heads this chapter. It is the only building illustrated in this book which is not in Stay More, but there would be no more buildings in Stay More, except one, and that is our last chapter.
Although Jasper had been wired for electricity it had no television sets, and it dawned on Hank that before he could service television sets there would first have to be television sets, and not only that but they would also have to be around long enough, a week at least, for something to go wrong with them. So he got out his paintbrush again and added “and Sales” after “Service” on the sides of his van and the front of his shop. General Electric generously shipped him a dozen sets on credit, and he put these in his show windows, and waited for customers. Everybody who came into Jasper, especially on Saturdays, would wander around the square to Hank’s shop and look in the windows at his television sets, but no body came into the store.
It occurred to Hank that if he turned the sets on, the people could see how an actual picture appears. So he plugged the sets in and turned them on, but the reception was terrible. He realized he would need not only a high antenna atop his shop, but also a “booster.” He sent off to Little Rock for these items. When they arrived, Hank was finally in business. Crowds gathered at his windows, and stayed for hours to watch whole games of Base Ball coming from St. Louis and Chicago and Kansas City and everywhere else. The sheriff complained that the crowds were blocking traffic on the street, and requested that Hank bring some of the sets out into the square, but Hank explained that television requires dim light for the picture to be seen clearly. He suggested to the sheriff that the sheriff could help matters by ordering the crowd to go inside and buy one of the damn things so they could watch it in the comfort of their own living room.
The sheriff went up in front of the crowd and hollered, “OKAY, FOLKS! YOU’RE BLOCKING TRAFFIC! WHY DON’T YOU GO INSIDE AND BUY ONE OF THE DAMN THINGS SO YOU CAN WATCH ’EM IN THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN LIVING ROOM?” The crowd surged through the door, and Hank was sold out within five minutes, and booked up for a month to install the antennas and boosters at their homes. When he arrived at some of their homes to install the antennas and boosters, he discovered that these homes were so far out in the wilds that they didn’t have electricity; he was instrumental in getting power lines erected in the remotest recesses of Newton County. The desire for television brought with it the means