By: Keith Joyce
VP / Operations
I grew up in Mayodan, NC… a small textile-mill town about 30 miles from Winston-Salem. We lived in a small frame house – formerly a “mill” house (owned by the mill and rented to an employee) – that we rented from my mom’s father. About a mile away in the heart of town was my father’s family home… right across the street from the ball park. The front porch was high enough off the ground that you could sit on the porch and watch the game from your rocking chair – for free – quite a benefit in the mid-1950’s when every town and/or cotton mill had a baseball team and the rivalries were intense. My dad “moonlighted” from his day job by playing baseball for the grand sum of $15 per game, pretty good money in an era where many mill hands were lucky to make $40-$50 per week.
Baseball didn’t, of course, provide year-round entertainment – but technology was about to step in and cure that situation. In 1956, my aunt and uncle bought my grandmother a television set. I can remember it so well…a tall wooden cabinet with a beautiful finish…and a twelve-inch screen. With a massive outdoor antenna that looked like something off a battleship, you could get THREE channels…one fairly clear, one so-so, and one that looked pretty much like the North Pole in a blizzard all the time –all three in stunning black- and -white. If the guy next door was using his ham (shortwave) radio, you could forget seeing ANYTHING.
Grandma’s TV was the talk of the town… there wouldn’t have been much more curiosity if the Martians had landed. Always one to enjoy company, my grandmother didn’t mind- at first -when “company” began to pile into the living room on Saturday night. They hadn’t come to visit – they were there to sit with mouths agape and stare at Ed Sullivan or Jack Benny on that tiny, snowy screen. Grandma soon grumbled that she might start selling tickets… it wasn’t unusual for “visitors” to pull the porch rockers in front of the windows and watch from outside if the living room was full… Imagine it – the living room walls lined with people and faces peering voyeur-like through the front windows. Eventually the blinds were drawn and admittance to the living room was by invitation only – Grandma had had enough.
Quite a contrast with today, isn’t it? Many of us don’t even KNOW our neighbors – much less allow them to invade our privacy every weekend night for months and months. And, of course, we don’t stare at tiny, fuzzy black-and- white images…we watch our shows in vivid color on giant screens with pictures so lifelike it sometimes feels like we’re IN the picture. That big, heavy TV cabinet is gone as well – but you still have to put that brand-new LCD or plasma on something, and Bowen Town & Country Furniturehas just the thing. We’re the specialists for home entertainment furniture in Winston-Salem – from simple cabinets for small televisions to complete wall systems that will house the biggest screen you can buy and amazingly comfortable home theater seating – we’re the guys
Come see us today at Bowen Town & Country Furniture. We are located at 1910 Mooney Street, off Stratdford Road…near Hanes Mall.
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