Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

The Times They Are A Changin’
 
As far as I know, my sister Jean got the first TV in our family. She always got new electronics before any of the rest of us. She lived in a small building next to Glenda and Tom Cook’s house at one time. That building is said to have been a bakery in times past. It is now torn down.
 
I can’t reconcile the date unless she lived there with Harry around 1950. Betty and I went to watch TV there for the first time. The screen was five inches wide. The first show we saw was Howdy Doody. Jean’s favorite program was Soupy Sales. It is hard for me to imagine such a small TV screen even three feet away from it. Then I looked down at my smart phone and realized that is what we do today.
 
I have always thought that we got our first TV in 1948 but have come to believe it may have been around 1950-51 instead. After my brother Bob went to the Army, my parents decided that we needed a TV to see the Korean war news.  My brother was sent to MP School in Chicago in 1950 and remarked in one of his letters that TVs were everywhere.  
 
Besides, my Dad said, everyone else had a TV so we should have one too. We got about a twelve-inch screen Philco TV, probably from Dunlap’s store. My family never bought anything outright but had to pay for it a little at a time. Betty and I always had to turn the dials and know what was on and when. When the dials got stripped from use, we had to fiddle with that too.
 
Oh, and by the way, Betty and I loved to watch wrestling on TV on Saturdays. We sat in the floor in front of the TV and cheered our favorite wrestlers on. We knew all of the holds and wrestlers. My Dad just sat in his chair and laughed because he had two daughters that loved wrestling. And in recent years, I have been known to watch wrestling with my grandson Ray. My favorite wrestler was John “Bradshaw” Layfield. Ray’s was “The Undertaker”.  
 
I guess the times change but some things don’t. : )

©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck