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Saturday, October 8, 2011

Memories of Fall

I love this time of year! Fall is when that nasty, sticky humid air finally gives way to sweet, cool breezes and crisp nights. It's a time when the landscape takes on a whole new color palette, giving us something beautiful to look at as our flowers begin to fade. Hearing the crunch of fallen leaves as they are raked or walked through almost makes me giddy. It's simple things like this that I enjoy so much and try not to take for granted. Is there nothing better than raking up a huge pile of leaves, then teaching a young child how to dive into them? Leaf fight! It's the best!

I always remember at this time of year, one of my favorite cartoons; "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!". As a kid, we always looked forward to all of the Peanuts specials, as they were truly different from other programs and were an opportunity for the entire family to sit and enjoy watching something together. Mind you, this didn't happen that often, as we only had like 4 local stations and one UHF on our old rabbit-eared television. There was no cable, no satellite, no VCR to watch rented programs on. What we had was what there was. Our TV kind of looked like this:
It was a big, ugly box. A console TV. Oh, and did I mention that it was only black and white? No color, no HD, just that grainy black and white that we'd sit so close to that our mom would tell us we were going to ruin our eyes. It was our link to the world though and we were amazed at what we could watch on it. A few years down the road, my parents bought a "portable" TV. It still weighed a ton but had wheels. I guess that justified the portable part. It was still black and white however, but we didn't know the difference. We'd never seen a color TV. Until, oh this was exciting, until the neighbors bought one! A color TV? We had no idea what that meant. I remember the whole family trooping down the street to see this new invention of technological genius. The neighbors were so proud to show it off (they loved to play "can you top this"). A hush fell over the room as they turned it on (no remote of course) and all of us kids lined up on the floor about 6 inches away from the screen. There it was, it all its glory - a color picture! A very muted, watered-down color picture, but none-the-less, it wasn't black and white any more! How could this be? Our little brains went wild trying to figure out this magical marvel. From then on, we were always invited to watch all of the Peanuts specials, including the Dolly Madison Cakes commercials, at the neighbors' house so we could have the benefit of color TV. (I don't think that they really felt sorry for us, they just liked showing off LOL)


Being the sentimental person that I am, I went out and purchased all of my favorite holiday cartoons on VHS tapes as soon as my kids were old enough to watch them and made a big deal out of the first showing. I'm not sure if they got as big a kick out of it as I did, but that's OK. Now, we have our two little grand babies to share them with. I think it's time to have a special showing! 

Have a happy day! xo, Leena

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