The Good Old Days

When I was a child, my family would sit on the porch at night with neighbors and listen to my grandfather and Preacher Roy tell tales of their lives.  A frequent start to one of their stories would be “Back in the good old days…..” and I always thought how sad that the past is better than the present.  I mean life is supposed to get better as you get older, right?  Wrong!

I miss the good old days.  Especially the good old days of analog TV.  Life was nice back then.  I had a set of rabbit ears on top of my TV and I could chose between 5 different stations that came in with relative clarity.  You have to understand that this was the extent of my choices.  Cable TV was not available in my area and back then satellite TV was too expensive.  When satellite became affordable we weren’t home enough to justify the expense and we were happy with what we had.

After we moved back to civilization – where cable was available – we didn’t sign up for it because it was a temporary move and we decided to wait until our house was finished.  It’s now been 4 years, the house still isn’t finished and we still don’t have cable.   But now we have digital – or at least we are supposed to. 

We bought the “box” and we bought a new antenna, but we have lost CBS, FOX, and KET. (I am heartbroken over the loss of KET) and the official changeover date hasn’t even occurred yet.   Yes, I could subscribe to cable, but now it’s a matter of principle – it was free before and it should be free now!  I know I can buy another antenna – but I want a coupon for that!  As a matter of fact, I will give back my digital box coupon if they will give me 90% off the cost of an antenna!!  And tell me which one to buy. 

There is a web site that will guide you to what antenna you need – if you are smart enough to answer the questions – and it gives you a nice color-coded tag to look for when you go to purchase your antenna.  However, they forgot to tell the antenna stores to put the tag on their product.  So, you’re back to eny meany miny mo….

Most stores seem to have a good return policy on these antennas, but who wants to assemble all those parts, put it on the roof or a tower and then have to take it down, take it apart, and try again. 

Maybe for entertainment, I’ll put my kids on the porch and bring my dad over to tell stories about his good old days.   That is if I can pry him away from his big screen that’s hooked up to satellite.