Save on your heating bills

Buffalo winters could destroy your budget, because as the temperature goes down, it becomes more costly to heat your home. The good news is that you can reduce the monetary effect of cold weather by making a number of comparatively trouble-free changes. Some small suggestions follow that could result insubstantial savings.

Turn your thermostat down if you can tolerate a lower temperature. Quite possibly this is the most important thing you can do. By reducing the difference between the inside and the outside temperature you decrease the load you place on your furnace. If you add a layer of clothing, this could help you be comfortable when you turn down your thermostat.

I don’t mean you have to wear your winter coat in the house, but wearing a sweater indoors in the winter is reasonable and a lot less expensive. I wear a fleece lined sweat shirt in the house during the winter. You should also close off unused rooms. There is absolutely no reason to waste money heating an empty room.

Install a smart thermostat. Thermostat technology has improved significantly lately.Many of the newest models are programmable and very easy to install. You can program it to turn the temperature down when you’re at work and turn it up before you return. There’s no point in heating your house when no one’s home,as long as you don’t turn it down so low that your pipes freeze. You could also lower the temperature while you are sleeping. Heating contractors I’ve spoken to recommend that you don’t turn up the temperature in your home more than three degrees at a time to avoid stressing your furnace heat exchanger. I burned out a heat exchanger by turning it up too much all at once each day.There are even thermostat models you can control with a smartphone. They can even “learn” your habits and adjust to them automatically.

Use the sun. Open up your curtains or blinds during the day to allow the sunlight to give you free heat. Cats know all about this and it is why they will chase sunbeams all day when they sleep. Don’t forget to close them when the sun goes down. This will provide a little extra insulation.

Maintain your furnace. If you have forced air heat, making sure your filters are regularly changed reduces the work your furnace blower has to do. Not only is this better for the furnace and your wallet but it will help keep the air cleaner so you won’t have to dust as much. A dirty filter allows the dirt and dust to recirculate throughout your house. Your furnace should be checked every year to ensure it is functioning at peak efficiency and not spewing out unburned fuel and carbon monoxide which is a colorless and odorless killer.

Seal up cracks. The collective heat loss caused by small cracks and misalignments along your windows and doors can add up to a massive heat loss. If you have a number of small leaks, it is like leaving your front door open with just your screen door closed to keep out the weather. If you can feel any type of draft,you should plug the gap. Use weather stripping, or caulk, to plug the leaks,depending on what is appropriate for the location.

If you have a crawl space under your house, make sure the outside vents are closed. They seldom seal completely, so adding a layer of plastic sheeting or more solid material is advised. This will keep your floors warmer.

Vent fans are necessary for bathrooms and kitchen areas, but be sure they are notleft on. Timers can be utilized to shut off bathroom vents so they don’t run too long.

Keep furniture and other obstacles away from vents so you don’t block the flow of warm air. If you have a ceiling fan, you can use it in reverse to keep warm air from rising and collecting on the ceiling.If you have a fireplace, close the damper after the fire is completely out. Most fireplace flues measure 8X8 and leaving it open is like having an 8X8 hole in the wall.

Consider turning your water heater temperature down, and make sure the hot water pipes are insulated.

Check your duct work. If a single vent is not creating enough air flow in comparison to other vents that could be a sign of a leaky pipe. Also check your duct work that runs through your crawl space or attic and make sure there are no slightly disconnected pipes. Seal any cracks with foil-backed duct tape. Consider insulating the ducts in these areas as well. Be careful though, in extremely cold temperatures, when you have insulated duct work, ensure the pipes are insulated also. Frequently heat that you lose into those unheated spaces from the duct work may be giving just enough heat to keep your pipes from freezing.

Winterize your windows, particularly if they are older windows. Storm windows help but they fail to keep out all the drafts, particularly during a windy day.Installing a layer of clear plastic film can assist in decreasing the heat lost through your windows while allowing sunlight to come through giving you free heat.

Call your utility company or government agencies. They frequently provide energy audits for free and give you conservation advice.

These small changes may seem like they are not worth the effort, but you’ll be amazed at the positive effect they will have on your heating costs. After you see the changes in your fuel bill, feel free to throw another log in the fireplace and bask in the glow of your savings.

Note: this has appeared in Buffalo Rising

Mohegan Market

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One of my memories from growing up in Buffalo was walking with my mother to the Mohegan Market on Bailey Avenue at East Amherst Street. Most people went shopping daily or every other day back then. There were no big box, wholesale stores where you could buy a package of toilet paper that would last six months. This is the present site of The Buffalo Promise Neighborhood Children’s Academy.

Mohegan was a small independent grocer based in the Buffalo area. They had four stores, one at 2228 Seneca at Buffum, one at 95 Grant at Breckenridge, another at 2643 Main at Fillmore and this one at 3149 Bailey. You would enter thru the front door and there would be fresh produce on the right side and a register and the meat cases on the left. There was always a friendly butcher wearing a blood stained white apron leaning on the case ready to cut your meat to order. This was a true “old school” meat market with sawdust sprinkled on the floor.

I recently found an advertisement from December 20, 1954 listing some of their prices. They had whole Chickens for $.29 a pound, cooked hams, Pork roast for $.29 a pound, Chuck roast for $.49 a pound and something they called Hamburg steak at 2 lbs. for $.69.

If you went past the meat cases to the back of the store and took a left, you were in the area where they had the dairy case, canned foods, pasta, paper goods and bread. There was no aisle after aisle of frozen food cases but instead they had just one reach in frozen food case with a clear sliding top. You could get some “Birds Eye” frozen vegetables that came in a rectangular box (no bags) or maybe a frozen “TV” dinner from this section of the store. Your home refrigerator freezer wasn’t much larger than a cubic foot so you didn’t have a lot of room to stock up on frozen foods. Frequently you would leave out the ice cube tray to gain more room.

The fish monger used to deliver their order in an ice filled wooden box. Mohegan used to put the box out behind the store to allow the ice to melt. If my friends and I would find this, we would have a snowball fight in the middle of summer. This ice, although smelly, gave us a cooling diversion. One day I “copped” one of these boxes and loaded it on my radio flyer wagon. I then dragged it home. I made a fairly respectable “soap box racer” out of it using some old wagon wheels that kept us entertained one entire summer.

My mother would give me fifty cents to go and get a loaf of Wonder bread and a quart of Sealtest milk. I could keep the change and I frequently spent the change on penny candy like Hot Tamales, Atomic Fire Balls, Turkish Taffy, Boston Baked Beans or a Chuckles Jelly Candy. Back then, candy bars cost a nickel. They also had a few glass gum ball machines at the door filled with gum balls and Ike and Mikes to entice the last few pennies out of you. I would throw the groceries in my bike basket and pedal my way home fueled by sugar and the desire to get home so I could play with my friends.

I remember one day when I found a dollar bill on the floor. In the fifties, a dollar was a small fortune to a preteen boy. This prompted a trip to the corner store to buy my friends and me penny candy (which actually cost a penny) and comic books.

Most of the small neighborhood grocers are gone where the clerks all knew you by name, you would bump into your friends and the butcher would custom cut your order for you and I miss them.

Milkbone, Buffalo

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For 10 years of my life I worked at Milkbone in Buffalo where I was a maintenance man on the packing floor. A large part of my day was spent sitting around waiting for a break down. I didn’t have a lot to do most of the time and as they say “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” The guys I worked with and I would come up with creative ways to prank the rest of the employees.

One day I super glued a quarter to the floor in front of the coffee machine. We all then sat at “our” table and watched. People would see it and look around to see if anyone was watching them. They would then try to pick it up. One guy even tried to kick it with his heel. They knew they had been had when they would hear us all laughing. This was good for a full day of laughs for only a quarter.

Another time I caught a bull frog on my way home. The following day I brought it to work in an old lunch box. At dinner time the plant nurse was fixing her meal in the lunch room. Right next to her was a microwave oven. I took the lunch box to the counter and purchased a buttered bulky roll from a vending machine. I opened the roll and slapped the frog inside.

The frog wasn’t very pleased about this and was kicking like mad. I turned to the nurse and asked if she knew how to operate the microwave and she said she did. I said great and pulled out the roll with the frog in it and asked her what you did with the legs. I don’t think she ate dinner that night.

Speaking of legs, another prank we pulled involved a false pair of legs that I built, complete with pants and shoes. We would put this sticking out from under a pallet of product and watch people’s expression as they came around the corner and saw the legs hanging out. The results were hilarious. This pair of legs would disappear and reappear periodically.

I don’t know who was doing this but I suspect multiple people. One of the next times “the legs” appeared was during a health inspection. They were stashed behind a shelving unit in my shop when the health inspector and the plant manager spotted them. The manager yelled at the legs, kicked them and finally grabbed them and pulled them out. We were called to the office where we all denied any knowledge of the legs.

The legs were confiscated but they were easy to duplicate and I made another pair that week. We placed them around until the bottom of a flour silo fell open. It dumped the entire contents on the floor, something like 50,000 pounds of flour. A buddy of mine took the legs and buried them deep in the pile of flour. Several days later while they were shoveling up the mess the legs popped out. The person doing the shoveling took one look, walked out the door and went home without punching out.

I had the ability to lock the men’s room door that had an inside bolt from the outside using a bit of string. People could smoke in the men’s room at the time. A man was leaning on the window sill enjoying a cigarette when I locked the door. We then ran upstairs and got a piece of conduit to tap on the window above his head. This is where the story went south.

My buddy Jerry hit the glass too hard causing two small holes in it. The smoker hit the ground and crawled over to the door to find it locked. Quite some time later he told us he thought he was being set up because he was fooling around with a married woman and he thought her husband had locked the door and was at him.

When I was building my tool cart, we got a call that a packaging machine was malfunctioning. My buddy Joe, picked up his tool pouch, got into my cart and I locked the doors. I wheeled it over to the broken down machine and listened to the operator explain the problem. At that point I unlocked my tool cart and let Joe out. He then repaired the problem. When he was done, he climbed back into my cart and I closed and locked the door. Then I proceeded to wheel him back into the shop.

I think the best prank I perpetrated was on my last day working there. Over the 10 years working there I managed to figure out how to get into every room and office in the place including all the front offices. I also knew the security guard’s routine and where he would be at any given time. This allowed me to dodge the guard.

They had this newfangled electronic phone system just installed and I managed to get ahold of an operating manual. This system had the capability of forwarding calls from one phone to another by punching in a three digit code. I programmed the phones to forward all calls to the plant manager’s office. I never heard anything about this but I can imagine the havoc this caused because every phone had to be reprogrammed. I can’t remember all the practical jokes I pulled while I was there this is just a few of them.

Like Luca Fortunato an electrician at Nabisco used to say, “At least we laugh.”

Halloween

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One of my favorite times growing up in Buffalo during the 60’s occurred in late October every year. It was the Halloween season. I always enjoyed the cooler days and nights around this time of the year. Fall represented to me a warm cup of fresh pressed apple cider with a cinnamon stick, homemade pumpkin pie, carving jack o lanterns, caramel apples and the smell of burning leaves.

But best of all was the night we would go trick or treating. Growing up in Buffalo, we went trick-or-treating on October 30th, what we called Beggar’s Night. There was a very good reason they called it “Beggar’s Night.” I would go out knocking on doors and ringing doorbells collecting sweets along the way.

I would hastily eat my dinner that evening and get into my costume that I would have laid out on my bed in anticipation of the night to come. We didn’t have the readily available costumes or a fancy dancy Halloween store in those days so I had to improvise. I had a total of two different costumes back then. The first costume was a ghost. All this outfit took was an old bed sheet that I would cut eye holes in with a pair of scissors.

My other costume was a hobo. This took a bit more effort. I would get one of my father’s old work shirts and roll up the sleeves. I would also wear my worst, worn out pair of jeans. Ones that were frayed on the bottom and had a few holes in them. Sometimes they would have to be rescued from the rag bag. I would bunch up a ball of newspaper, tie it in a bandana and would carry this on a stick thrown over one shoulder. To complete the look, I would char a cork and draw a three day shadow on my chin and face. I thought I looked good.

While my parents were busy partying with their friends, I would go out on my night time candy raids. My treasure collection bag consisted of either an old pillow case or a paper shopping bag with handles that my mother had gotten when she shopped at an upscale store. I didn’t have one of those ornate, preprinted bags designed just for trick or treat or the plastic “T shirt” bags that we all know, the ones you see blowing around on a windy day.

I would return to my house several times during the night when my “loot” bag was getting heavy, pour it out on a newspaper on the dining room floor and head out in a different direction to gather even more swag. It was not uncommon to go five blocks in any direction and collect at least one large shopping bag full of candy and goodies that night.

One night two teenagers (gods to a pre-teen) approached me and said they were participating in a scavenger hunt and asked if I knew where they could find some of the items on their list. The one thing that sticks out in my mind was a burned out light bulb. They came to the right person because I had just acquired one I was going to experiment with.

They followed me to my home on Berkshire Avenue where I helped them fill their list as much as I could. They thanked me, gave me their address and told me to tell the lady who answered the door that I had helped them out and that she should “take care” of me.

It was getting late when I got there as it was about 4 blocks away. I think she gave me all the candy she had left because she turned off her porch light as I was leaving. She was probably happy to get rid of all the extra candy she had.

When I was done collecting my yearly booty, I would start the job of sorting out my loot. My parents would have me throw out all unwrapped candy, the small bags of homemade popcorn and the apples I had collected lest they were tampered with by the insertion of pins, needles or razor blades. Why someone would do this to a kid is beyond me. I was only permitted to keep the factory sealed items.

I would then start trading things with my brother and sister, swapping what I didn’t want for something I wanted from them.

Ah, those were the good old days, a period of better times. A time that I believe was better, simpler and more wholesome than the current period. But then I think my memory of them is a bit rosier than it actually was.

Times have changed, gone are the days you could let your children run around the neighborhood, unsupervised, late at night. Gone are the days that we used to have a hundred or more children visiting our front door. We now have maybe thirty five or forty kids that come on our porch, dressed in store bought costumes carrying store bought bags gathering their annual spoils. But I still enjoy watching the kids come on my porch and hearing the gleeful sounds of “Trick or Treat”.

Norb is a writer and blogger from Lockport, New York. You can write him at nrug@juno.com or follow his blog at whywny.home.blog

Words of love, so soft and tender, won’t win a girls heart anymore: The Mamas And The Papas (1966)

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When I was in the service, I would try to write my wife as often as I could, relating where I was and what I was doing. These usually contained expressions of my love for her but the envelope, oh the envelope, I would adorn it with the number 143. That was my code for the number of letters in the words I love you. One cruise she was pregnant with my daughter and I wrote the 143 vertically and put a smaller 143 inside the 4. This represented my wife carrying my child.

As a family we have many ways of expressing our love for each other. If we happen to be holding hands, 3 gentle squeezes mean I love you. This will be followed by 4 gentle squeezes in response meaning I love you too. Another way we express our love for each other is by flashing the ILY a sign from American Sign Language which means I love you. The sign originated among deaf schoolchildren using American Sign Language to create a sign from a combination of the signs for the letters I, L and Y and is our personal “gang” hand sign.

Another way we say I love you is by saying “Owie”. This developed from a daughter who as a very young child and was just learning to talk responding “owie” every time we said I love you to her. Again this is a family specific way to let each other know how we feel about each other without yelling I love you in a crowded room.

One time I used a label maker to put I love you on the lid of the wash machine so every time my wife did laundry she would see it. This had a very humorous side effect one day when my furniture was in storage at my parent’s house after I got out of the Navy. A repairman showed up to fix the damage the moving company caused to the washer and when he opened the lid he said “I love you”. My mother was aghast until the repairman explained he was just reading the lid.

When I worked, I used to call my wife in the middle of the day to chat and tell her I loved her. There are many ways to say I love you and we say it to each other frequently. I tell my wife I love you several times a day and she says it to me but I also try to have fresh flowers in the house because she likes them and it is my way of saying I love you. She on the other hand, always ensures I have clean clothes. I frequently remark on my magic underwear drawer that seems to fill itself up whenever it gets low. She always makes me delicious meals and desserts. This is part of the reason I have gained 90 pounds since we married 48 years ago. That’s 90 pounds of love she gave me.

When my wife had a minivan I found some red rubbery hearts that I stuck on her rear view mirror. Every time she looked at it, it was like I was telling her I love you. When I bought her the new minivan this was one of the first things I transferred.

The love we show has spilled over to our grandchildren and they will frequently end a text to either Nana or me with a 143. We have several paper hearts that our granddaughter made sprinkled throughout our house. She stuck them on the bathroom mirror, the television in our bed room and many other places. Every time we see them we know we are loved.

We recently watched an 11 year old for a month this summer. We watched her from the time she was 7 weeks old until her family moved to North Carolina. One day she left me a note saying”Love Ya” on my end table. This is now taped inside my laptop where it reminds me of her every day.

It is easy to let someone know you love them. Write on the bathroom mirror with a small amount of hand soap on your finger and when the mirror steams up you will leave a little love message! On your way out in the morning, draw a heart in the snow. Telling someone you love them doesn’t have to be a grandiose gesture. It can be as small as a squeeze, a word, or just doing something nice for a person.

The Mamas And The Papas got it all wrong. Words of love will win a girls heart.

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Blogging

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Someone asked me why I have a blog. I do it because writing a blog helps me to express my thoughts in front of the world. Blogging helps me to stay up to date on current events about because I have to do research for my articles. It also helps me to learn new things. I have always liked learning and in fact I have attended 2 on-line colleges and the University of Buffalo on Main Street, Buffalo in the 60s.

I think writing a blog helps me to think clearly and deeply about my life, world events, society etc. Blogging helps make me confident about writing and helps me express myself and my opinions. It helps me become unafraid of making a mistake. Any time I get a date wrong or a fact wrong, people let me know. I now understand the adage “Cite a number or a date but not both.”

Having a blog where I can document and share my life adventures, ideas and struggles is a great way to stay connected with my family and friends some of who are hundreds of miles away.

I blog to write about the people and places that have made me happy throughout my life-like growing up in Buffalo. When I write, it is to share, with anyone that is interested, my thoughts and knowledge about a particular subject. I have so many wonderful fans that write to me about how much they like my articles. It is a great feeling to know that the articles I write can have a beneficial effect on someone’s life.

I don’t make any money out of writing my blog yet. This is not why I blog at this point. I also post articles as a guest on other online newspapers and websites like Art Voice. I do this to both garner new eyes for my blog and to help them out with content. Plus I also enjoy seeing my byline on articles I write. Some of these people make a living from this and I am glad to help out.

The more I write, the easier it gets and the better I think I become at it. Most professional bloggers write on a regular basis. I run my articles thru a spell checker, grammar checker and two plagiarism checkers. I even get feedback from readers, some good some bad. This helps me become a better writer.

Being a good writer is not required to a successful blogger. In fact many very high-profile bloggers are self-proclaimed lousy writers. Part of their success might be credited to their message of “If I can do it, anyone can”.

Most people start out with just one blog but as they gain experience and they sooner or later come up with other ideas for blogs. I am now on my third blog. What I have learned from my previous blogs will assist me in growing the readership of my current blog and blogs I may yet write.

Meanwhile, by cultivating my own online network of readers has created its own benefits, like gaining access to seminars, product unveilings, and other events. I wrote an article on being color blind that appeared in Buffalo Rising and was read by someone in California.

They contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying out their glasses that help people like me with a color perception problem. They ended up sending me $700 worth of glasses to try out for free. In fact I am wearing them now. Not too bad for writing a 900 word article on the difficulties I have being colorblind.

I also received a call from the owner of a restaurant I had reviewed. I had cited a few problems and the owner said he couldn’t have paid to get such an honest assessment of his restaurant. He sent me a $25.00 gift card even though I told him I wasn’t going to change the review.

Blogging is a great way for me to build up my writing portfolio. I get published a few times a week in local newspapers but blogging has enabled me to get readers from Maine to California. I have notebooks with my articles that have been published in local newspapers but by showcasing my writing skills on a blog, I can grow my exposure and possibly find a way to start getting paid for writing.

As the internet and technology become more ingrained in our day-to-day lives, the benefits of blogging become impossible to ignore. Gone are the days that I needed to program in HTML like I did when I wrote my first website, ten years ago. Websites such as WordPress.org or Blogger.com have made it relatively easy to set up a blog in 15 minutes or less.

Blogging makes me think about newsworthy topics and the world around me. A blog keeps my mind focused and sharper. I believe in the adage “use it or lose it” and at seventy I am still able to write two or three fairly lucid articles a week.

Apart from all the benefits of blogging I mentioned above, my blog might someday become a source of income for me when it achieves enough subscribers. I have not yet made any money off any of my blogs so far, but I just might.

“In the Navy. Yes you can sail the seven seas.” (Village People)

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The U. S. Navy says 13 October, is the anniversary of its official founding. The Second Continental Congress passed a resolution that formed the Continental Navy under President George Washington. Dangers to American merchant shipping by Barbary pirates from four North African States, in the Mediterranean, led to the Naval Act, which created a permanent standing U.S. Navy.

I celebrate the Navy’s anniversary and recognize all the brave men and women who have served, now serve and will serve our country. Today it’s the largest and most capable navy in the world, with the highest combined battle fleet tonnage. The Navy also boasts the world’s largest aircraft carrier fleet, over 300,000 active personnel, and nearly 100,000 in the Reserve.

I enlisted in Buffalo in 1967 and spent 4 years of my life in the Navy during the Vietnam War.

One of my greatest pleasures during that time was messing with the career Navy personnel by not using Navy speak. I will give you an example. I would say something like “I was walking from the round end of the boat to the pointed end of the boat by going down the hallway and due to the floor being recently mopped, it was slippery. Someone suddenly opened the door to the bath room causing me to run into the wall. As I continued walking, I noticed a light out on the ceiling. I went down a set of stairs, into the cafeteria and had a drink of Kool-Aid. I then exited thru a door to the outside. I went to the front of the boat and threw a rope into the water to measure the depth of the water. When I got a measurement I called up to the driver in the front seat and told him the water was 100 feet deep. The driver then turned left and I went back into the boat, went to my bedroom and lay down in my bed. “

I will now convert the above paragraph to Navy speak. I was walking from the “stern” of the “ship” to the “bow” of the “ship” down the “passageway” and due to the “deck” being recently “swabbed”, it was slippery. Someone suddenly opened the “hatch” to the “head” causing me to run into the “bulkhead”. As I continued walking, I noticed a light out on the “overhead”. I went down a “ladder”, across the “mess deck” and had a drink of “bug juice” I then exited thru a “hatch” to the “main deck”. I went to the “bow” of the “ship” and threw a ‘line” into the water to “take a depth sounding”. When I got a measurement I called the “pilot” on the “bridge” and told him the water was “600 fathoms” deep. The “pilot” then turned to the “port” and I went back into the “ship”, went to my “quarters” and lay down in my “rack”……. There was no rule that said you had to use Navy talk.

I also loved to paint my shop and the things in it. I painted murals on the walls and drawers. One locker I painted a black light “rising sun” on it and a set of drawers had a black light Jesus Christ Super Star on it. I also had a wooden chair with vertical slats in my shop. I painted the horizontal piece of the back rest blue with white stars and the vertical slats I painted red and white. I did the same with the metal trash can I had. The top was painted blue with white stars and the bottom was striped red and white. This was not a problem for the people on my ship as they understood me. It was a problem one day though when we were the second ship out from the pier and I had to carry the garbage across this ship. The “lifer” (career Navy person) on the quarter deck took offense to the garbage can and called my commanding officer demanding I repaint it.

He said I was being disrespectful towards the flag. Not wanting to cause a fuss (yeah right). I did repaint the trash can. We had 2 shades of grey a light grey called “haze grey” that the hull was painted with and a “deck grey” that we painted the …well…decks with. The trash can now had a dark grey band on top with light grey stars and the ribs of the can alternated between light and dark grey. No more disrespect to the flag now, just a nice pattern.

I ended up moving my “rack” (bed) into my shop suspended by ropes that I could use to pull it up to the “overhead” (ceiling) when I was not sleeping. Suffice to say Navy life and I didn’t get along too well together. I don’t know who was happier when I got out, me or them.

The Navy did do a few things for me though, despite my best efforts. I got to travel the world, they gave me a level of maturity that I think would have taken me several more years for me to achieve if I wasn’t in the service and both of my daughters were born during my enlistment for only $25.00 each. As I look back on those years now, I realize they taught me how to be independent which is probably one of the best life lessons I could have learned.

Please Won’t You Be My Neighbor

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Won’t you please, won’t you please, please won’t you be my neighbor?

It’s a beautiful day to talk about Mister Rogers. Fifteen years after the legendary host of a children’s TV program passed away, the entertainment world is being swept up in Fred Rogers revivalism. I know Mister Rodgers’ Neighborhood was written for preschoolers but I liked this much more than any of the children’s shows airing now days that are frequently just thinly veiled sales pitches. I actually enjoyed watching Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood with my grandchildren.

First, there was director Morgan Neville’s filmed documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Those who have watched it feel obligated to caution people who haven’t seen it to bring a box of tissues because there will be tears. Neville wasn’t trying to keep viewers crying from start to finish, blame the documentary’s subject, who’s so kind that his very presence effects even the most cynical viewers.

But the documentary isn’t the only tribute to Fred Rogers making the rounds. Not long after “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” debuted at the Sundance film festival, TriStar Pictures declared plans to film a biopic, with Tom Hanks playing Rogers that is based on Tom Junod’s classic 1998 Esquire article about his friendship with the TV host.

PBS, home of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from 1968 until 2000, aired the 50th anniversary tribute to Fred Rogers, hosted by Michael Keaton, “It’s You I Like” On March 20 which was Rogers’ 90th birthday. Twitch, a live streaming video platform owned by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon, teamed with PBS to launch a marathon of 90 of the most well-liked episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. This was followed by a complete run of the series. For those still into cds, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: It’s A Beautiful Day” collection collects over 900 minutes of classic episodes and moments. It arrived in stores on March 27.

I think that vintage Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is as relevant now as it once was. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was created for preschoolers. There are obvious differences concerning what toddlers and older children need to see on TV.

When Fred Rogers felt a calling to work in television instead of as an ordained Presbyterian minister. His goal was to make something more tranquil than what young children were watching when their parents set them down to watch TV. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood doesn’t over stimulate children. He speaks slowly and softly in simple sentences and even during the times that the show goes to the palace of King Friday XIII, populated by puppets, the stories are muted in tone, without violence, and deliver lessons about proper behavior. This is a far cry from “The Roadrunner” cartoons that I used to watch as a child.

So why is everybody so in love with Mister Rogers? It’s partly nostalgia. I’ve long felt that our desire to return to the shows we grew up with has to do with the belief that those were the good old days. Our memories of the past are so imprecise sometimes. Revisiting popular culture of the past can help clarify memories that we’ve forgotten.

What stands out about Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is the general calmness and simplicity. Rogers understood that occasionally adults assume too much about what kids comprehend, or that they are too rushed to talk to children about the basics of life. So he would explain everything from the functioning of the human body to the reason some real-world events upset grown-ups. His primary message was that everyone feels helpless, overwhelmed, ignorant, or even angry sometimes. That emotions are part of being alive and that being alive is great.

Rogers’ persona and ideals were under attack just before he died. Right-wing talk radio hosts, columnists, and TV commentators accused the “softness” and “entitlement” of Generation X on the immorality of Mister Rogers, who told kids they were special, no matter what. Their disagreement with Fred Rogers’ life’s work is that it persuaded children they didn’t need to achieve anything.

That criticism isn’t totally wrong. But it’s more than a little wrong. It’s usually coming from commentators who identify themselves as conservative Christians. Rogers’ view of the world was connected to his theology, and to the Christian theory of “grace.” This idea is that we are all broken, but that we are loved and matter to God. That’s a fundamental belief held by many Christians.

It’s not a position or perspective we see coming from a TV personality very often. That is also a part of the charm of Fred Rogers. To try and make Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood political is just wrong. Fred Rogers used this show to promote inclusion for people of all backgrounds, races, and capabilities.

I read an unverified story once about Mr. Rogers. It is alleged that one day his car was stolen while parked on a street in Pittsburgh. The evening news reported that Mr. Rogers’ car had been stolen that night. The next day, it was back in the same spot with a note that said, “Sorry, we didn’t know it was yours.” Whether the story is true or not, that is part of the way Fred Rodgers made us feel. He gave us the impression that we were part of his family.

Tagged with Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred Rogers

image from snappynewday.com

The evolution of television in Buffalo

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I’ve seen numerous changes in television. My Father worked in the model shop at Sylvania, a prominent radio tube manufacturer and he brought home our first television set which was a converted 5 inch oscilloscope. To imagine the size of this television screen, visualize trying to watch a program on a screen a little larger than the top of a cottage cheese container.

We had a variety of different experimental television sets in our house. One of the first sets was a set with “Halo Vision” which had a softly lit border around the screen. This was supposed to make it easier on your eyes when you watched it. Another one I remember was in a cabinet. To watch this one, you propped open the hinged top of the cabinet and watched the image in a mirror. Everything on the CRT screen was reversed so it was the right way in the mirror when you watched it. The problem with this one was you had to sit directly in front of it to see the picture.

I remember watching television with my family and you didn’t dare say a word. We watched “You Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx, an American quiz show. Groucho would say, “Say the secret word and split a hundred dollars,” as each contest began, and a mangy stuffed duck named Julius (Groucho’s real name) would drop from the ceiling to disclose the secret word if they said it. There was I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball, Have Gun Will Travel with “Paladin” as a hired gun, Dragnet with “Sgt. Joe Friday” and the tag line “only the names have been changed to protect the innocent”, The Cisco Kid, and The Howdy Doody Show (my favorite).

Television first made it to Buffalo in 1948 when WBEN-TV started broadcasting. The Buffalo Evening News owned this station. They played early local shows like “The Clue”. The Clue starred Buffalo Evening News Radio and TV writer Jim Tranter who played the Private Eye, Steve Malice. This was the first weekly dramatic program ever seen on U.S. television. They also televised “Meet the Millers” which offered a mix of cooking tips and interviews along with cornball humor, “The Santa Claus Show”, and “Uncle Jerry’s Club”, a children’s talent show. Announcer John Corbett also offered local viewers one of television’s first talk shows, “Speaker of the House” which aired during weekday afternoons. My parents told me one of the first things I said was Bee Bee Bubba York. They finally figured out I wanted to watch WBEN, Buffalo, New York.

In 1954, WGR-TV (Channel 2) started broadcasting, with a stable of talent that included Bill Mazer, an American television and radio personality who earned the nickname “The A-Maz-In” for his deep knowledge of sports trivia. Billy Keaton from the Mr. and Mrs. Show an adapted Vaudeville routine, Helen Neville, hostess of “Two for Breakfast “, Roy Kerns, News Anchor, and Jack Mahl, “Your Atlantic weatherman”.

Buffalo’s TV stations increased to three in 1958 when WKBW-TV (Channel 7) signed on. Programming included daily doses of “Rocketship 7” with Dave Thomas as “Commander Tom”, “Dialing for Dollars”, a show where random phone calls were made trying to give away money and had syndicated features from “The Galloping Gourmet”, Graham Kerr. Starting in 1965, the Channel 7 anchor trio of newsman Irv Weinstein, sportscaster Rick Azar and weatherman Tom Jolls started, they became the longest-running news team in the history of television, broadcasting a sensational 24 years together on the early and late newscasts.

WBUF-TV (Channel 17) went on the air in 1953 and was a short-lived undertaking, then it returned in 1956 as an NBC-owned outlet before shutting down in 1958. In 1959, a revamped Channel 17, renamed WNED-TV, became New York State’s very first noncommercial, public TV station.

WUTV-TV (Channel 29), which started broadcasting in 1970. This was owned by Ultravision Broadcasting Company. Ultravision was owned by Stan Jasinski, radio’s polka king. During the 1980s, two additional Buffalo stations began transmitting, WNYB-TV (Channel 49, now WNYO-TV) and public, noncommercial WNEQ (Channel 23).

Many channels would sign off in the early hours and would broadcast a “test pattern” over the airwaves until regular morning programming would commence.

Although all-electronic color television was introduced in the U.S. during 1953, prohibitive prices and the shortage of programs being broadcast in color slowed its acceptance greatly in the marketplace. The very first national color broadcast was the Tournament of Roses Parade which was aired on January 1, 1954, but for the next ten years few network broadcasts were in color with nearly all local programming continuing to be aired in black and white.

We now have 85 inch televisions and the size keeps growing and growing and you can control them from your phone. We have hundreds of stations broadcasting 24/7. You can now watch television programs on demand from your computer, laptop, tablet and smart phone. I can only imagine where television will take us in the future.