Set Me Down on a Television Floor.

I guess this has been what the young kids with their blogs and their face books and their my spaces call a "light blogging" week. I traveled for a few days, had a million things to do over the weekend, and now seem to be having trouble thinking of anything to post about. (Did you notice how I just ended a sentence with a preposition? I've always been a rebel.) Is this writer's block?

Let me tell you what I just did. I lugged an old television set out to the curb. It's out there now, sadly awaiting its fate. Does it have regrets? Is it sorry for having sucked me into hours of mesmerizing trash, when I could have been doing better things, like surfing for porn? I have a feeling it will be rescued by a kindly, if misguided, TV addict who will soon be disappointed to realize that he needs to smack the side of it every three minutes to keep the picture from vanishing. Good luck to you, my trash-picking neighbor friend!

My wife bought the TV twenty years ago; it was black and clutter free and at the time, it seemed quite high-tech. As I hauled it outside, though, it felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, a big, crappy antique.

The first TV set I remember was my parents', way back in the middle of the last century, when I was a little kid. It only received three channels -- it didn't even have UHF. I know what you're thinking: Why didn't the child welfare people intervene? All I can say in response is that things were different in those days.

I would get home from school at about 3:00 and watch Dark Shadows, a vampire soap opera. That's right, you heard me -- a vampire soap opera. Barnabas Collins was the main vampire's name, and I'm sure there were all kinds of not-so-subtle sexual references, what with the biting of the necks and all, but I just wanted to see the guy turn into a bat. Now, as I look at a photo of him, I realize why I thought he was so cool -- he was played by George Harrison, badly in need of a gig as his band disintegrated. You go, Quiet Beatle!

Once or twice a week, I'd walk down the street to a friend's house, a rich kid who had a TV that pulled in five channels. Five! That was living! One of the extra stations was channel 19, WXIX, the home of Larry Smith's Puppets. Larry and his gang would cut up between cartoons. His cast included Snarfy the Dog and, I think, something called Nasty Old Thing who, as far as I can recall, did not wear a stained trench coat and reveal himself to unsuspecting passersby. I could be wrong about that.

The puppet I recollect most vividly was Hattie the Witch, aka Batty Hattie from Cincinnati (not to be confused with the Cool Ghoul). That's Hattie on the far right in the picture below. I remember her being wartier. In retrospect, she reminds me of my old boss, only less ill-tempered.

Funny I'd think of all this now, when it hasn't crossed my mind in years. It makes me wonder a little if this the kind of thing I'll obsess over when I'm eighty-five. I guess there are worse things to remember.