TV, Truman & Taking It Easy in the Oval Office

TV, Truman & Taking It Easy in the Oval Office

BOOM! Pop Culture Chronicles
By Mike Olszewski

The Great Depression was 90+ years ago, way before we were born, but it had a lasting effect on our parents and grandparents. It taught people to hang on to things, and there was good reason to.  

There was a time when stuff was built to last, and if something broke, there were plenty of skilled people to repair it. TVs and radio used to be like that. Now it’s cheaper to toss something that’s outdated or malfunctions and pick up a newer model with a limited lifespan. There are still a few craftsmen who do that type of work, and I lucked out when I walked into Top TV & Appliance near Collinwood. I wasn’t there for repairs. I was there for the stories.

Repairs & Stories
Top TV can fix just about anything, and when you step into the corner storefront, you make your way past electronics stacked to the ceiling, just like in the old days. Co-owner Bob Hirsh greets you at the counter. He’s a Boomer and can hold his own in any conversation about his generation. Over in the corner, usually hunched over under a lamp with magnifying glasses and a soldering gun, you could find his dad, Ernie. 

Ernie saw television before it was in our homes. “It was 1936 and I was 12 years old,” he said. “My father founded the National Radio School in Cleveland a few years before and he brought us down to see the experiments WJAY radio was doing with this new thing called television. The broadcast was a woman singing under bright lights, but they were so hot they had to keep shutting them down so she could cool off.  My dad was across the street with a primitive revolving wheel set up that had a one-inch picture. Small audience: my mother, his students and me. Not much of a program either, but it was one of the first TV broadcasts. Some years later the May Company downtown did similar demonstrations.”

Ernie’s interest in TV didn’t stop there. “When I got out of the Army, all the colleges filled up with guys from World War II going on the G.I. Bill. There was a place in Washington D.C. that was teaching television. I went there, graduated and got a job with a company called Dawber’s that serviced all the appliances at the White House. It was 1947, TV broadcasts were being aired and they sent me over to put one in. A guy from the signal corps greeted me at the door and said, ‘Follow me.’ They never checked my toolbox. I could have had a bomb in it… and I’m just kidding. I installed Harry Truman’s TV in the Oval Office. They were remodeling the place, so he was living at the time across the street. Harry wasn’t there… but his desk was.” 

I’m so happy I heard those stories from Ernie. He left us in October of last year.  

Taps for Local Newspapers. One of the highlights of my young life was waiting for the morning and afternoon newspapers. Screens and cell phones eventually took hold, and newspapers have cut publication dates, the final transition to what will likely be digital-only access. How will we house train dogs? They’re not getting near my tablet. I can’t wait for this internet fad to be over.

Boomer Trivia: Last issue, I asked you to name the Rock Hall act that not only performed at a local amusement park but also included it in a song. So many readers emailed me about this question. True, Gene Pitney, Neil Diamond and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles are all Hall of Fame inductees and played the WIXY Appreciation Day shows at Geauga Lake, but they never mentioned the park in a song. However, in August 1964, The Beach Boys played Euclid Beach and the next year mentioned the park and one of its premier rides, the Flying Turns, in a song titled “Amusement Parks U.S.A.”                  

One more with a musical theme: What do The Marvelettes, Wilson Pickett and Tommy Tutone have in common?  I’ll have the answer in the next issue.

About the author

The author of Boomer's pop culture column, "Boom!" Mike Olszewski is a veteran radio and television personality who teaches college-level classes in media and pop culture. He can be reached at [email protected].

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