Color TV

[susandennis]

gfrancie's latest entry whipped me back to my little girl days.

In the 50's, my dad sold Hanes underwear to wholesalers (who, then, in turn, sold it to stores).  As my mother would say, he traveled 8 days out of 7.  In 1955, he got promoted to a job at HQ which was in Winston-Salem, NC and we moved there.  I was 6, my sister was 5 and my brother was 2.

His customers - those wholesalers - passed around the hat and took up a collection to buy Daddy a congratulations present.  They bought him a color TV for his family.  (When I think about this now, it blows me away. His customers did this.  He was a consummate salesman always but still, I think this is amazing.  It was not a new wrist watch and an atta boy, that's for sure.)

Anyway, that's how we ended up with the first color TV in the neighborhood.  We were very popular.  We were never ever allowed to watch TV on a school night.  Sundays, by the way did not count as a school night which was excellent because... the only two TV programs that were in color were on Sunday nights!  Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and Bonanza.

We were allowed to invite one friend over on Sunday nights. It was a BFD.

The TV was one of those very tiny ones in a huge box.  Children sat on the floor and adults got the couch and chair. There were rules.

And having a color TV was worth any and all rules they wanted to impose.  Thanks, grancie for that fun little trip down memory lane.

Comments

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

It's funny that you mention Bonanza. My Mom said that when they bought a color tv, the first show she saw in color was Bonanza.

[susandennis]

It was a good show and, really, you had to watch it because what Hoss and Little Joe were up to was all anyone talked about on Monday. So your mother just didn't want to be left out of the conversation!! (And/or like the rest of us, she had a crush on Little Joe.)

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

I think my mother loved the show because there were horses. (she's been a fiend for horses since she was a tiny girl.) I should ask her if she had a crush on Little Joe.

[susandennis]

Yes, you should!

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I remember watching both programs every Sunday night with my folks. It was appointment programming. Saturday night was Gunsmoke and later on Carol Burnett ....

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Was it an RCA? They were some of the first color sets to be built.

That first RCA, BTW, was the CT-100, and maybe yours was too.

I remember reading they weighed in at some 300Lbs, and were priced at over $5K in today's dollars ($1000 when first introduced in 1954.