During
football season of 1971, when I was in 1st grade, the TV repair
man came to the house and declared the black and white television “Unfixable.” Mama
and Daddy had just finished building a house and had no money
for expensive extras. So, we did without. The only memories I have from
this Unfortunate Experience is that occasionally my friend Becky Byrd would
say, "Did you see that on TV last night? . . . Oh, I forgot." I
played outside until dark. I guess my family actually had conversations in the
evenings. Maybe Mama played piano. I know I read a lot as a kid. Back in
the day, people saved for what they wanted. So, we saved. By springtime we had
enough money for a new television.
Good
Baptists give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and the Annie Armstrong
Easter Offering. We post in the weekly bulletin how much our church's goal is
and how much we have collected. In GAs (currently Girls in Action, formerly Girls' Auxiliary--for my non-Baptist
friends), we learn about who Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong were and why we
give money to missions in their names.
Angie,
the middle King Girl, has always been a Goody Two-Shoes. She cried in
2nd grade when the entire class had to stand in the hall for misbehavior, and
she "didn't do anything." She never once got "talks too
much" on her report card. When the church started pushing the Easter
offering, Angie told Daddy, "I think we need to give the TV money to Annie
Armstrong."
What
was he supposed to do? How could he set an example for his daughters by picking
"The Idiot Box" (as HE called it) over Jesus? We cried a little
on the inside as Daddy put the money in the offering plate.
September
came around again. Example or no, Daddy was not going through another
football season without television. We went to Sears and got a deluxe color
console that took up the whole corner of the den.
Auburn
beat Alabama 17-16 that season. It's a shame the game wasn't televised.
No comments:
Post a Comment