The Television
Antenna Bet
by Don Drewniak
Two weeks to
the day following the four-game sweep of the
Cleveland Indians by the New Yotk Giants in the
1954 World Series, my parents and I made the move
to our new Birch Street home in Fall River,
Massachusetts.
Working evenings and weekends, my father did
everything by himself except for the pouring of
cement for the foundation. This included the
illegal electrical wiring and plumbing. City
inspectors were paid off with a bottle of whiskey
each. Times were different back then.
I was halfway from age eleven to age twelve, and
big enough to help the Old Man move the heavy
stuff. The only two pieces presenting problems
were the sofa and the refrigerator. We had to
negotiate two right-hand turns to get them out of
the soon to be deserted Tuttle Street tenement.
He uttered a few choice Polish curses as we
lugged them out. I believe he was somewhat
surprised when I laughed as he probably was
unaware of my mastery of Polish swear words. He
would have been even more surprised if he knew
the extent of my knowledge of such words and
phrases in three other languages: English,
Portuguese and Ukrainian.
Getting the sofa into the new home was a breeze
as it was a straight, one-door shot into the
living room. Equally easy was the refrigerator.
It was relatively small and although we had to
pass through two doorways, that proved to be no
problem. The first door brought us into a large
breezeway. The second led directly into the
kitchen. Using his company truck, we were
finished by noon. My mother was left with the
task of packing, unpacking and putting away the
small stuff.
The one downside to the new home was its size. At
that time, there were only five usable rooms, two
bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and bathroom. A
sixth, a sunroom, jutted out from the Mount Hope
Bay side of the house and included a homemade
fireplace. It was finished on the outside, but
not on the inside, and was therefore temporarily
used for storage.
My bedroom had one window facing Mount Hope Bay
and a second facing the backyard, as well as a
wooded area beyond it. The furniture included a
twin bed, three-drawer dresser, nightstand and
roll-top desk. There was also an alien piece, my
parents' desk.
The old apartment included a dining room.
Everything from it went into storage in the
sunroom. My Tuttle Street bedroom did not have a
closet. Not only did I now have my own closet, it
was big enough for everything I owned except for
my bike and sled.
There was also a ladder tacked to one of the
closet walls that led to a four-foot-square
opening to the attic. The crest of the attic was
barely high enough to allow me to stand without
having to stoop. That ended with an eighth-grade
growth spurt. Once the dust settled, the Old Man
built a storage shed in the backyard.
Three weeks into our Birch Street stay, I
filibustered for an outdoor television antenna to
replace the ancient rabbit ears. This was to
bring in the Boston stations, channels four and
seven. An educational station, WGBH (channel two),
was added to the Boston mix the following May.
WHDH (channel five), also from Boston, hit the
airways in 1957. Bringing in the Boston stations
would have necessitated the purchasing of a rotor
to switch the direction of the antenna from
Providence to Boston and back.
I'll build one in the shop and it won't need a
rotor, declared the Old Man.
While I knew he could build and fix just about
everything in the universe, I doubted that he
could make a working antenna. And even if he did,
it would still need a rotor. That I knew he
couldn't make.
Wanna bet? I asked.
How much?
Ten dollars, and it has to bring in all four
channels. Ten dollars back then was the
equivalent of $114 as of this writing. I had to
mow twenty lawns to make that amount of money.
Bottom line, it was a big deal to me.
We shook hands.
I got him.
He came home two Saturday afternoons later and
told me to come out to the truck. What I saw is
next to impossible to describe. Resting in the
bed of the pickup were two objects like nothing
anyone on Earth had ever seen. Made out of
aluminum (the Old Man was an excellent aluminum
welder), each was four-feet in height and had one-inch
wide shafts. Welded to each shaft was an ungodly-looking
collection of three-eights inch rods of different
sizes ranging from one-to-two feet in length.
They stuck out in what looked like random
directions from the top of the shafts to the
bottom.
I stared at them for the better part of a minute.
What are those things?
Antennas.
I laughed.
Want to make it twenty dollars?
I stopped laughing. The thought entered my mind
that he might have been tricky enough to have
tested them at the shop. I looked for poles on
which they could have been mounted on the roof.
There weren't any. I looked at the roof and back
at whatever those things were.
Twenty dollars. Twenty dollars.
What else have you got?
He pulled a paper bag out of the cab. Inside was
a roll of antenna wire, a toggle switch, two eye
hooks, some screws, nuts and bolts.
That's it?
The Old Man had his I know something you don't
know look.
Then it hit me. He was planning to hang them in
the attic. One for Boston, one for Providence.
No!
I turned down the twenty-dollar offer.
He grabbed one of the antennas, while I wrestled
with the other one. Sure enough, into the house
and into my bedroom he went. Once in the attic,
he screwed the eyehooks into two support beams,
each a foot or so from the top of the attic. I
noticed that he didn't fully tighten the hooks.
He suspended one of the antennas from a hook and
in rapid order cut a length of the antenna wire,
connected it to the bottom of the antenna using
two small bolts and then dropped the antenna wire
down the outside of the living room wall above
where the TV was located. He also dropped down a
second wire alongside the first one. Before doing
that, he put a small piece of black tape around
the bottom of it.
Since he did all of the electrical wiring in the
house, he knew exactly where to drop the wire. It
was down to the living room. Like a possessed
demon he quickly drilled a hole just above an
electrical outlet located behind our Zenith. He
pulled apart a coat hanger, put it through the
hole and fished for the wires. It took him a few
minutes before he was able to pull them through
the opening.
Next he attached the toggle to the upper-right
corner of the back of the TV and used a short
piece of antenna wire to connect the toggle to
the television antenna-wire receptor. He then
connected the wire that wasn't taped to the
toggle.
Turn on the TV and check channels ten and twelve.
Doggone it!.
Both stations were clear. I felt a little queasy
and began to feel I had been snookered.
Trying to look confident, I said, Those two
stations are so close that we could get them
using tin foil.
Make it twenty?
That shut me up once more.
Back in the attic, he carefully removed the first
antenna from the hook, tightened the hook and put
the antenna back on it. The second antenna was
hooked up in less than two minutes.
Down the ladder we went. After attaching the
second wire to the toggle, he flipped the switch
and said, Check your channels.
There was a glimmer of hope as channel four (WBZ
- NBC) was visible behind a light amount of snow.
Seven (WNAC CBS) was blanketed with a moderate
amount of snow and was viewable, but barely.
Go into the cellar and get a flashlight from my
workbench.
A flashlight?
There wasn't an indoor stairway to the cellar. I
walked through the kitchen, passed through the
rear breezeway door and ambled down into the
cellar via an outdoor doorway and poured-by-the-Old-Man
cement steps.
The workbench was littered with most of the
equipment and tools he used in the construction
of the house. I grabbed one of the three
flashlights on the bench, tested it and brought
it with me back to the living room.
I'm going to adjust the antenna. Watch four. Go
to the closet when I tell you to. Turn on the
flashlight once if it's not clear, twice if it's
clear. This was done because of a hearing problem
that happened in World War II. In order for him
to understand what anyone was saying, they had to
speak in a loud voice and be looking directly at
him.
Five closet trips later, four was clear. He came
back to the living room and turned the channel
knob to seven. There was a small amount of snow,
but it was quite viewable, especially from a
distance. He held out his right hand, palm up. I
begrudgingly pulled my wallet out of a pocket and
handed him two five's.
He stuffed them into his wallet. And then came
the ultimate put-down. He grabbed the rabbit ears
and passed them to me. Here, maybe you can sell
them and get some of your money back.
What I was thinking at the moment cannot be put
into print. In retrospect, however, the Old Man
taught me a valuable lesson.
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