Welcome to 1975! Christmas 1975 as evidenced by the nativity set on top of the tv.
Note the dark wood paneling, the orange & brown carpet, the orange kiddie chairs, the brown curtains and of course the tv. We’d had this tv for about 4 years at this point.
They would remodel this basement in 1988, just around the time 1970s décor was coming back into fashion. It like the rest of the house would end up all blue & white.
You can, if you squint, see a mark in the middle of the tv screen. That is not dust on the negative. That mark is actually where the tv screen was cracked one Saturday morning when my brother took a swing at me with a glass soda bottle, missed, and hit the tv instead.
We were regularly left alone in the basement family room for hours on Saturday mornings. My parents left out bowls and a box of cereal & put small Tupperware bottles of milk for us in the fridge so we could get our own breakfast & they could sleep in.
I’m not sure what my brother was doing with a soda bottle. I know he got it from the garage, since that’s where they was kept, but we had no way to open one so he couldn’t have been drinking it. I also don’t know why he swung it at me, probably we were arguing over whether to watch Scooby Doo or the Banana Splits.
My parents FREAKED when they saw it. And not just because we would spend the next 6 years watching tv on a chipped screen but also because had the tv screen been less sturdy, or my brother been older than 4 & stronger, he could have shattered the glass & possibly caused the tv to explode & catch fire & burn the whole house down & we all would have died “including your hamsters too”.
I don’t recall much specific of my mom’s freak out, but I do remember the bit about the hamsters. Weird what sticks in your head.
So great an impression did she make on me, that I am, to this day, freaked out when my kids get too close to the tv while holding something.
And by too close I mean 10 feet away.
But it has not stopped me from setting out bowls, cereal & putting milk in easy to pour containers on the weekend so we can sleep in.
I have my priorities.
And soda comes in plastic bottles now.
5 comments:
that look is so familiar!
Great memory. Funny what a lasting impression our parents' reactions made on us :)
Thanks for the morning giggle - "and that includes your hamsters"- classic!
And, yeah, we had that same Nativity set.
Rinda
Ahh! My parents had a tv like that!! It was a hand me down from my grandmother! My brother use to climbon top of it and leap off superman style!
Delurking to say you just took me right back to my childhood with that photo and your mention of the Banana Splits. I loved that show.
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