It was just this weekend, in one of the local businesses in town that I was discussing the “Party Line” story with someone when they ask me “Do you remember when we went out to the antennae pole to change the channel?”, then the next comment was “I bet you are too young”. Well, I thought to myself, no I’m not too young and wouldn’t that make a good story.

I remember having a black and white television and sometimes PBS was the only channel we got and the rest was loud fuzz. But, yes, I have been out to the clothes line, because that is where the antenna pole was, attached to the clothes line pole.

For those of you who don’t know what a clothes line is, it’s the dryer where we hung our clothes to dry.

You had to have a spotter in the house to tell you when the channel came in. When they yelled “Whoa”, you were in the right place.

We watched the Dukes of Hazard on Friday night and sometimes “The Wizard of Oz” came on in their place and that was an even better treat.

We went from there to color TV and those giant satellite dishes, where you also had to go out and crank it to the channel you wanted. Again it took two people because you had to have the spotter to let you know when you were at the right channel.

I still see those old satellite dishes recycled into a child’s space ship or over the dog pen for shelter, I love to see people recycling.

Now we live in a hand held society, remote controls to change the channel. That used to be my job, I was the remote control and everyone had the huge floor model televisions and we all sat in the living room and watched TV. We didn’t have TVs in every room.

Now some people have cable (not me, too far out), Dish Network, Direct TV, DVR, DVD, Redbox, and Blue Ray. There may be other acronyms I didn’t list but nothing is as simple as turning on the power and the channel being on.

Now you turn on the TV, the cable, the satellite, and on and on. I watch “my” shows in my room and the rest of the family watch in their own room, and who would have thought cartoons any day of the week, 24/7. No more Saturday morning cartoons! What have children got to look forward to? Saturday was a special day, the only day cartoons came on.

Now they have their own channels, and so does food, and DIY, and home and garden, sports, and the list goes on. When the President was on you had to watch him because he was on all the channels. Maybe we were more in tuned with what was going on.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about all these modern conveniences, it’s always nice to reminisce about how things used to be and it brings up good stories we can share with our friends and family.

Tammy Waid McClellan