It was an ordinary day. Sunday, and I had just opened the front door and gathered my Sunday News and bought it into the house to begin an hour or so of interesting reading. My Sunday News has a variety of sections that run the gamut from Perspective to Food to Local to Sports to..... One of my favorite sections is the "Living Section" that carries the "Lancaster That Was" and the "I Know A Story" articles. Today's "I Know A Story" article, which I just know you will love, was titled "Memories of WGAL in the 1950s." Began with..."Seeing a modern flatscreen television on display reminded me of our family's first TV set. Daddy bought a secondhand GE table model, with a 10 inch screen in 1951. What a marvel of modern electronic technology. The cathode ray picture tube produced a stark black and white image that would occasionally dissolve for no reason into a pattern of squiggly diagonal lines. That required tweaking the hold controls to return the picture to normal. It was like using an Etch-a-sketch, and your picture might look like a funhouse mirror until you got it just right. The Indian-head test pattern, which was the first image broadcast every morning, helped you adjust your set correctly for the new day. I don't recall how many vacuum tubes our little gem had, but it tuned them out quite often, and always during my favorite shows. Thank heaven the set was a table model...light enough to carry to Kranch's TV Shop, so we didn't have to pay for a house call. All electronics used vacuum tubes then; there were no transistors or pricey circuits. Tubes had a short life span and they failed at the most infuriating times. The TV station and network had backup systems to restore power usually in a few minutes, but if your set blew a tube you were out of luck. WGAL would lose the feed from NBC occasionally, and they would fill in the dead air with a "musical interlude." I will always remember John Raitt singing "On the Road to Mandalay" and the Firehouse Five Plus Two playing "Tiger Rag." There was no way to record what was broadcast; you saw it live. We had to constantly adjust the "rabbit ears" on top of the set to get WGAL and two of the Philly stations. WGAL's antenna was only a mile away on South Queen Street, so that had a good strong signal, but channels 6 and 10 would vary in quality with the weather. I remember Channel 4's local programs from the early days (WGAL was on VHF channel 4). The early morning farm reports were read by Bob Malik. Those livestock and commodities reports were as vital to the local farmer as the Dow Jones stock quotes were to the bankers. "From the Kitchen Door" had Kay Kuskie giving recipes and homemaking advice to housewives. Lancaster's own quiz show, "Stump your Neighbor," had professor Richard Stonesifer from Franklin & Marshall College as quizmaster. "Doorway to Life" was on Sunday evenings. Local churches would give a religious program or service, the synagogues would celebrate their holy days and the bishop from Harrisburg once performed a Catholic High Mass. And, of course, there was "Covered Wagon Theater." Chuck Sink played an old codger named Uncle Josh, and he recycled old '30s and '40s Republic Westerns on Saturday mornings. I watched a lot of TV as a kid, and I was fortunate to see many famous performers from vaudeville and the theatre at the end of their careers. I saw Ed Wynn, Sophie Tucker, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor and so many others that today's viewers couldn't appreciate. Yes, we only got three channels, but those channels had good, wholesome entertainment. Joe Friday and Martin Kane always caught the bad guys, Dr. Kildare operated without getting blood on his gown, Perry Mason won every case and Father always knew best. There were no wild car crashes, gory corpses or screwing profanity. When was the last time you heard a piece of classical music on network television? I still miss "The Voice of Firestone." In those early days, TV showed us life as we wanted it to be. Only three channels on a 10-inch screen, and it wasn't even on 24 hours a day, but it made me laugh, it made me smarter and I didn't have to pay 60 bucks a month for it, either. The author of the article you just read, Robert A. Martin, lives in nearby Willow Street. The memories that are told in the article are from a time when WGAL-TV was part of Steinman Stations run by Lancaster newspapermen James Hale Steinman and John Frederick Steinman. Oh, how I also miss those times when TV was in black and white and the good guy always won! But, time moves on...which is not always in the best interest of all of us! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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