fascination / struggle

U-H-F.
I wonder if anyone reads my blog (possibly, or not) -- and if any humans reading my blog posts remember "UHF" channels on TV.

Maybe it was cable, I'm not sure. But my family didn't have cable TV -- no, no our community didn't have it, there was no cable. Only a little bit, maybe in like New York or someplace.

Throughout my younger childhood years we had four channels: the three Networks, CBS, ABC, and NBC, and Public TV, which we used to call "educational" TV.

Then when I was in fourth grade or so, maybe a little older, my family lived close enough to Cleveland, to where we received UHF channels -- Channel 61 and Channel 43, I think. They were totally fuzzy -- it was like television signals coming in from Outer Space or something! Now we're so accustomed to watching things that are clear on our TV sets. There's never a time when the channel "isn't coming in too well."

We might wonder today why did we ever bother to watch something with such poor all-around quality -- picture, sound -- it all "sucked"! (hate using that word but once in a while it's the one you need...!) PLUS --
our TV was black-and-white. !!!!
(If anyone under the age of 39 read this post, they would probably think, "Man, that paleozoic era was rough!")
But -- that was what we had. It was pre- VCRs or DVDs.

And -- surprisingly, some of my pleasantest and strongest memories are of struggling to discern some classic "old movie" on one or the other of those UHF channels.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" -- because we read passages from it in 7th Grade English class and the teacher had alerted us that it was going to be on. Staring, squinting through the black-and-gray "snow" in the screen, to see the little group of people hiding out from the Nazis in the Secret Annex...

"Cheaper By The Dozen" (not Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, but Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy) -- had to hurry home after church one Sunday to catch that (not SEE it too well, but "catch" it -- at least be in front of the TV when the show was on...!) because my mother had read it aloud to me when I was younger and then I read it to myself when old enough. And my dad was all, "Clifton Webb is in that! I remember that!"

"Some Like It Hot" -- Marilyn Monroe -- singing, some, with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis -- in drag, hiding out from Mobsters. I noted that in TV Guide when in eighth grade I got consumed writing a "report" for history class. "The History Of The Film-Making Industry." (Think our reports "had to be" 10 pages, maybe. Mine was 85 pages, typed. I had the impression the history teacher didn't read it all -- he did give me an "A".
Like -- "All right, all right, 'A' already!")

Had read about Marilyn Monroe, and that movie, in my exhaustive research, and when the movie was actually going to be on one of those murky UHF channels, I had to plan a strategy because it was scheduled at 2 a.m. or so. Had to set an alarm clock to wake up for it, and sleep first.

There's a school of thought that says we appreciate things more when we struggle for them.
Maybe.

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