June 2009 Archives

  I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE who waited until beyond the last minute to do anything about switching my old fashioned TV over to digital. It's not that I didn't believe what they said would happen on Friday would actually happen. I guess I just wanted to know what it felt like to turn on the TV and find nothing on as opposed to, say, the day before, when I turned on the TV and found nothing worth watching. It's kind of a post-Apocalypse feeling, actually. I'm reminded of a Twilight Zone episode featuring Burgess Meridith as the last man on earth who survived a nuclear war by stepping into a bank vault to read on his lunch hour. Rather than despair, Meridith's character was delighted that now he'd have all the time in the world to read books, which he stacks up beside him before accidently breaking his only pair of eyeglasses. Now I flip though the channels and see and hear nothing but the hiss of empty static where once I could see and hear Maury Povich declaring, "Darnell, you are NOT the father." for the 900th time.

They say that cockroaches will be the only survivors of a nuclear winter, so it is only fitting that Channel 7 apparently survived the digital purge. There's Channel 7still loud and clear on my analog TV with its Slim n Lift, AloeCure or AbCircle infomercials and locally produced showbiz talk shows like "Celebrities In The Basement," which is a lot like "Wayne's World" only without the tongue in cheek. Channel 7 always came in louder and clearer than any other station on the non-cable TV I watch in my third floor office at home. Channel 7 was usually good for one of those Carol Burnett or Dean Martin show CD offers, long form commercials which demonstrate how good network TV variety shows were in the golden era of television, back when Ed Ames was throwing tomahawks at some wooden cowboy's crotch on the Johnny Carson show.

When the Great Switchover took place Friday, by that evening the only other channel on my TV still airing its regular programming was Spanish-language Channel 65, Univision or Telemundo. I felt briefly comforted that I may have lost daily access to Jerry Springer and Ellen, but at least I'd have Sabado Gigente and Latin soccer league broadcasts with that Spanish-language Harry Kalas futbol broadcaster dragging out the word "GOOOOOOAAAALLLLL!!!!!!! for 30 seconds or more, but by Saturday Channel 65 had joined all the other channels in the white noise of oblivion. All that's left now are Channel 7 and Channel 3, which tells you 24/7 that your analog TV doesn't work anymore. It makes me feel sad for all those extraterrestrials who have been monitoring our TV broadcasts for decades. Suddenly, poof, no more earth sitcoms. They'll probably think something awful happened. A meteor maybe. Or digital TV.

THE STUPIDEST QUESTION I ever asked in my life was to a man named Tommy Hackett. The question wasn't as stupid as it sounds, but my intentions were. I wanted to show Tommy Hackett up. I wanted to test his knowledge of Philadelphia. Tommy Hackett not only knew everything about Philadelphia, including the names of 1920's-1930's Italian mob brothers named after popes -- Leo, Pius, Ignatius. . . there wasn't an Innocent among the Lanzetti brothers --but he also told me that the difference between a street and an avenue is that avenues bend. You could look it up. Every avenue in Philadelphia has a bend in it somewhere.

Tommy Hackett spoke a shorthand so powerful, so efficient and sincere, I must summon the moment and the man to do each of them justice. He was a champion dart shooter and I once asked his advice about how to shoot. "Hit the target," he said in that impossibly gruff voice of his. Tommy Hackett was not a short man by Irish standards. In a white shirt, tartan plaid vest and knotted dark tie while sitting on a barstool in the middle of the afternoon, Tommy Hackett sometimes seemed too tall by half. He knew everything. And he liked to let you know it. So I devised a question that only a Philadelphian of his generation would be able to answer. What many Philadelphians alive at the time remember about Dec. 7, 1941 was the news of Pearl Harbor followed by the glow in the sky of a huge lumberyard fire in West Philadelphia. So I say to Tommy Hackett, all ready to show him up for his not knowing about the local fire decades ago, "Tommy, where were you on Pearl Harbor day?"

And Tommy Hackett answers, as God as my witness, "Pearl Harbor." Like who don't know that? He was 18 years old in the Navy. And if I hadn't asked the question he never would have told me. Where were you on Pearl Harbor Day? "Pearl Harbor." I didn't know until eight years after my father died that when we dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki my dad was on a ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the invasion. He was 36 years old. He'd been away three years. He was my father and I never knew that. Or never thought to ask. Fathers need the questions, so who does the asking? If your father needs a name, tell him Clark wants to know. Because after all these years he still wants to hear his father answer the question, "What was the stupidest thing you ever asked in your life?"