A Tale of a Trail of TVs

January 26, 2008
Article and Illustration by Jim Burger

Share:

When you get to be my age, new experiences become increasingly rare. Still, this past weekend I did something I’ve never done before — I bought a brand-new television set. For me televisions were always something that just sort of showed up. I hadn’t given any thought as to where they actually came from. I mean like from a store or something. I got mine from my parents. They would buy a new TV and I’d get the old one — simple economics. It wasn’t exactly supply and demand. It was more like supply and I really don’t need another one of these things.

From the time I moved to Baltimore, here is how the system worked. I was living alone in an apartment and a couple of times a year my mother and father would drive down from western Pennsylvania to visit me. My mother would carry in a Styrofoam cooler full of fried chicken. My father wouldn’t carry anything.

“Go out to the car. There’s a TV for you in the backseat.”

I’d point to the unplugged set they’d given me a few months earlier sitting on the floor. “I don’t need it. This one’s fine.”

“Naw,” my father would say, “this one’s much better. Good picture quality. It’s the one from our bedroom.”

That was another thing. Their televisions moved around: The new TV went into the den. The old one went to the bedroom. The one from the bedroom went to the kitchen. It was a real hierarchy. Very complicated.

So I’d go out to the car and haul in the TV and put it next to the other one I didn’t watch. After they’d leave I’d put the old one out in the hall and eventually it would disappear. I think the guy who cleaned the building took them. For all I know he refurbished the sets and sold them back to my father.

It’s hard for me to get excited about television equipment because I don’t care much about what’s on it once I get it. My father, on the other hand, loved TV. My earliest recollections are of him stretched out on the couch watching one professional football game after

another every Sunday. And that was after doing the same thing the day before with college games. It seemed like a colossal waste of time to me. I’d sit and watch for a few minutes, and then something else would grab my attention and I’d run outside. I think secretly he always wanted me to stay.

I didn’t inherit his passion for watching television, or it skips a generation. Either way, I don’t have it. And God knows I’ve tried to get it. Mrs. Burger enjoys certain shows and I know that the key to a successful marriage is to have common interests. So I try to watch something with her whenever possible. It’s always a disaster.

Last winter she rented the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD and was excited to view them in order. I think she finds the combination of a strong female lead character coupled with horrific bloodshed soothing. Somewhere during the marathon I dropped in to watch five or six episodes. Unfortunately our television is kept in a clubroom in our basement. A gas fireplace makes everything cozy so I have a tendency to doze off. After a few hours of viewing I broke the silence. “So, are those guys like vampires or something?” Mrs. Burger hit the pause button and rubbed her temples. “Yes Jim. Those are vampires. This is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Those things she is slaying are vampires.” Shortly thereafter I left and could practically hear her teeth unclenching as I ascended the stairs.

It’s that clubroom that caused my recent shopping trip. A small renovation project suddenly made the last of my parents’ television sets aesthetically unacceptable — at least in the eyes of my bride. So off I went to one of those big stores outside of town where they have walls of televisions all playing the same thing at the same time so it feels like you just dropped acid. As soon as I walked in a kid in a tie pounced on me. He sized me up in about 10 seconds as a total rube. This was our conversation:

Kid in tie: “I’d recommend a 40″ LCD HDTV at 1080p. If you go with 720p it’s your funeral. Either way you’re going to need 8 ft of HDMI.”

Me: “What?”

After about an hour of that I was driving home with a TV that cost more than all the money I had saved over the years never buying television sets.

Now the entire design of the room has been called into question. I was recently at a party at a friend’s house where the television room put mine to shame. It was finished-basement heaven, with a bar, pool table and, most important, huge chairs in which to watch football. My father died a few years ago. I wish he could have seen that room. I would have loved to see his face when I introduced him to the homeowner and said, “Pop, here’s the son you always wanted — her name is Lori.”

Filed Under: View From Mars

Smart Woman Online

Navigation