Color TV

Of all the pictures I've put on my Flickr account this one has gotten the most hits. I'm not sure if people think this photo of my late sister Linda is cute or they're looking at it because they are pervs.


I'm old enough to have lived through the time in this country when people had two choices when they went to buy a new television, you could either get a black and white TV or a color TV. Back then black and white TV's were way less expensive than color TV's so during my early years we had a black and white TV in our house in the projects in Detroit because we were pretty much dirt poor. We were one of many families who were on welfare and who got food stamps and got Medicaid. The only times I saw color TV was when we went to our Grandparents house or to my Aunt Carol's house for a visit. I remember watching color TV and vowing to myself that one day my family would have one of those neat ass things in our house in the projects.



For many years it was just a pipe dream for us to have a color TV, just like it was a pipe dream that I'd play second base for the Detroit Tigers or be a big time movie star. But as fate would have it we actually did get a color TV and this is the sad story of how that came to be. I'm going to warn you that this is a sad tale and you may want to stop reading it now.


One hot muggy summer day in 1970 we kids were allowed to go to the store. The store we were going to was a little neighborhood store that was run by a nice older guy named Dave who stocked his shelves with things like candy, I had a monster sweet tooth even as a little boy, sodas, I loved Faygo brand Rock & Rye flavor (I know it sounds like a alcoholic drink but I swear it was a real soda flavor, it tasted like Dr. Pepper.), and cheap toys. To get to the store we had to cross a busy four lane street and then we had to run a few more blocks and we'd be at the store. If we went a few more blocks from the store we'd be at the home of the Marilyn Cleek my Mom's best friend and the mother of my sister Sandy's best friend Debbie.


So it's not like we hadn't made that little journey about a million times with our parents, mostly with our Mom because my Dad was in and out of mental hospitals all the time, he had acute schizophrenia and he also suffered from clinical depression. That hot muggy day though we were allowed to go by ourselves. I remember that all of us kids decided to go except for my sister Sandy. Off we traipsed with my oldest brother Charlie leading the pack.


When we had walked down the block and had gotten to the busy four lane my brother Charlie darted across without looking and he made it across just fine. Then as me and my brother Karl stood there waiting for cars to go by my sister Linda, she was a year older than me but it always felt like she and I were the same age because we were the babies of the family, she was the youngest girl and I was the youngest boy, darted out into the middle of the busy four lane after my brother Charlie. She made it about half way across before the guy in the Corvette hit her. I'll spare you my description of what happened next but I will tell you this, I can still see what happened that afternoon very clearly and I can hear the screeching of the brakes and all the other sounds as well. I remember screaming and turning around and running home to tell my Mom what had happened. Everything after my turn and run home is a blur to me now and I don't remember much until Linda's funeral.

Linda was a great sister. She was patient, loving, and fun to play with. She was smart as whip and she loved going to school and reading as much as I did. She used to tell everyone that when she grew up she was going to be a nun and of course all the nuns at St. Monica's loved her and they fussed over her because she was going to be one of them in the future. I remember feeling so sad that she would not be around anymore, but however sad I was it was nothing to compared with the pain and sadness my mother felt. She was never the same after Linda died, I think she blamed herself for not going with us that day and she felt like that if she had then her little girl would not have been killed. She had been a pretty tough woman before, hell she had to be tough what with raising five kids in the projects where we were the only white family and with a husband who was in and out of the mental hospital all the time, but after Linda left us it was like the light had gone out of her eyes. Since I was the youngest she clung to me a little tighter than the rest of siblings after that. It felt like she was going to do whatever she could to make sure that I didn't go as well.


My maternal Grandparents had taken out an insurance policy, at least I think so anyway, on us kids so we got a settlement not too long after Linda died. My Mom bought us all some much needed clothes, got us hair cuts, and bought us a color TV. I remember thinking that I'd rather have my sister than that damn color TV but we told ourselves that Linda would have wanted us to buy it so we did. When we got it home and out of the box we turned it on. The picture came on all right but for some reason everything was in black and white. We all messed with the knobs and controls but none of us could coax the slightest bit of color out of that TV. That was on a Friday and my Mom said that she'd call a repair man on Monday, so we watched the Beatles Yellow Submarine that weekend in glorious black and white on our new color TV. The repair man came that next Monday and he took the back off the TV and he fixed it quickly. So there I was with color TV but no big sister who I adored.

For years after her death I dreaded the day when I was expected to learn to start driving. I lived in fear of hitting someone like Linda had been hit. So when it came time for me to get behind the wheel I did everything I could to delay it or put it off. I eventually got my learners permit but not my license. I went without getting it for years and years. I'd get one of my cousins or my sister Sandy to drive me places in high school and when I got to college I'd bum rides from my friends or ride my bike around Bristol. I finally got tired of having to depend on others to take me places and I broke down and got a motorcycle license in my mid twenties. I drove a Honda Elite for a few years, year round. If you've never rode a motorcycle in the dead of winter then good for you. I eventually got my regular license a few years after that.

I used to be a big time comic book geek in the late 80's and one day I read a New Mutants (I was a big time X-Men and X-Men spin off fan.) annual and the story was about how the New Mutants somehow got sent to Asgard and one of the females, the Native American female New Mutant character if I am not mistaken, became a Valkyrie while she was there. A Valkyrie for those of you who do not know your Norse mythology, is a handmaiden of Odin who rides a winged horse and swoops down during battles to whisk off the bravest fallen combatants to Asgard where they will eat, drink, and hang out in Valhalla with Odin until Ragnarok, which is the Norse version of the end of days. After I found out how cool Valkyries were and what they did I like to think that Linda didn't really die that day in 1970, instead she became a Valkyrie and she leads men and women who have fallen in the field of battle up to Valhalla. It gives me a good feeling to think that my sister helps the battle slain to a better life.

I hope this post did not bring you down too much and I also hope that you tell those close to you that you love them every time they leave you because you never know what might happen when.