And so we bought a TV set. From Niš, a dark wooden box in fine glossy veneer, a nice piece of furniture. Screen, I'd say 51cm, though the box was all 70cm wide. It had a seriously screwy channel picker, which could be turned in only one direction, from about 3 to 12 (first two channels didn't exist), allegedly because something would break if you turn it backwards, and even forwards wasn't too easy. It had four buttons in front - the on-off and three purpose of which I don't remember and which we never used. To the left and right of them were three ribbed dials, one lighter two darker, for brightness, contrast, strength of sound* and some adjustments of vertical synchronization, for which there were two more buttons in the back, which we did have to use sometimes.
The channel dial didn't see much use, because it's so unwieldy and then there was only one channel. That one channel was broadcast over the existing network of repeaters, of which two were near enough - the one on Avala and the one on Crveni Čot (a peak of Fruška). Unfortunately, the antenna needed to be aimed, south or west, which wasn't easy. Climbing the roof was done only once, when the carrying pole was fastened against the beams, and the positions to Čot was marked by a drip of wax down the tube, over the brace. So if Čot went out of commission for a while, someone (usually dad) would go up to the attic, turn the pole one right angle left, then when it was up and running again, turn it back until the wax mark matched.
It was a generally accepted truth that the TV set should be positioned high, what for the radiation and whatnot, and because a set set high was what everyone saw. Saw it in community centers, culture homes and other places where twenty people would sit and watch, and also the neighbors who were two-three years ahead of us with this appliance also had to put it high so everybody who came to watch (and a dozen people wasn't a rare thing) would all see it well. So our set also ended up atop a vitrine, and stayed there for a year, maybe two, until we realized how it's ridiculous to keep it there, and made room for it on the small table from the rex armchair set, in the corner behind my couch. The antenna cable was in that corner already, there was a bergman tube in the wall connecting the attic, added a couple of years ago, some forward thinking occurred, so less of it would drag on the floor.
The television sets were somewhat sensitive to voltage, which was prone to varying, so stabilizers (of just voltage or frequency too?) were purchased. These were some boxes sized like half of car's battery, hand's breadth wide, two tall, and a pedalj long. They had just one ordinary switch, as if for the lights, a cable to plug into the mains, and a socket to plug the TV into. We didn't think we'd need one, being the first on the wire from the street transformer. And really, the television set rarely broke. When the majstor would come, of course I peeked at what he was doing, and he, being a neighbor from backstreet, would show me tricks, like how it's not recommended to have your fingers near some places, and he'd bring a screwdriver close to the cannon end of the cathode tube, and a standing spark would appear there... Said, there's capacitors in there which take days to discharge, so it's got some power even when unplugged.
I don't remember much of the programme, except the daily [news], movies and humorist** series by Radivoje Lola Đukić, with Mija and Čkalja, whom we already knew from Veselo veče („merry evening“) on the radio, which we listened to regularly. I also was eager to finally see them at ease, without having to crane my neck around someone's shoulder and aiming my ears to hear the dialog. But the excitement passed really fast, at least with that humorist stuff. Most of the gags were quite transparent, you'd guess the point two sentences in advance, and the effort invested in circumventing the juicier expressions and replace them with sterilized ones was just blatant. On top of that went the depressing feeling that the main hero is always a meek little man, some sniveling lower clerk of Gogolj's type (okay, I didn't have the vocabulary to say it so then, just can't remember how did I say it, so just the gist), and never someone who'd be nimble, a prankster, always landing on his feet. They always had a guy to laugh at, not with. So I got weaned off that within a year or two.
Amazingly, the best remembered part was the school programme, which went in the mornings. When I was [in the] second shift, I'd often drop everything else, stay in bed and watch it. There I met some croatian speak (which we then called the zagrebian), learned the parallel names, kiseonik-kisik (oxygen), azot-dušik (nitrogen), vodonik-vodik (hydrogen) etc. I did get into panic mode when I'd realize that I have not just skipped breakfast, but have less than an hour to do homework, warm up the lunch, eat it and rush to school. That's where I understood that being home alone is not enough for this kind of idle waste of time, there are other prerequisites to satisfy first.
I remember that I was having the hots for the younger daughter of the „Lost in space“ family (in 1967, I think) and, at this time, first and above all Staša Pešić, the beauty above beauties then. I may have been only ten at the time, but I had a keen eye for beuty. And, umm, yes, blondes both.
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* some time in the future I'll hear that that's called 'volume' in english, which is ridiculous. So what, you dial it up and it goes from 20 liters to 40?
** for some reasons these were never called comedies, which they actually tried to be. When the same gang made feature movies, these were classified as „film comedies“. On TV and radio, they preferred to be marked as proponents of humorism.
28-XI-2023 - 25-III-2026