Dear Eliana and Gehrig,
Good morning, my sweethearts. Well, your Mom is full of stories about you
guys these days. Seems, Miss Eliana, you
have your first tooth coming in and, Master Gehrig, you have figured out how to
race your sister to the bathroom for your evening bath. Fun and exciting new adventures await you
everyday as you approach the end of your 9th month. Soon you will have spent as much time in the
world as you did in the womb. How
amazing is that?
I love all the great pictures your Mom has sent us of you
two. My favorite shot is of you, Gehrig,
as you lay on the floor face down and naked, while your mischievous sister grabs
your butt and laughs. Naked time is so
important, but, Gehrig, you are going to have to stop pooping on the floor and
then rolling in it. Not good. Poop is to be deposited in the diaper and
later in the potty. Now a lot of babies
play with their poop. Won’t cause serious harm, but if you keep it up your Mom
might not let you cruise around in the buff anymore and that would be really
sad.
Of course, I am sure this won’t be the last time you two do
something that shocks your Mom. She gets
excited when you run a temperature or have a sniffle. It doesn’t take much to set her off. So please go easy on her.
Back in 1950, when I was five years old, my Dad bought a
second-hand black and white television set.
It was our first television. Even
though CBS started broadcasting some shows in color in five East Coast stations
in June, 1951, there were about 10.5 million black and white TV’s in the USA (about half
of them RCA units) and very few color sets.
I loved that TV, but my bedtime was 8:00 PM and that is when “I Love
Lucy” came on. My Mom would tuck me into
bed and then she and my Dad would watch TV.
I used to sneak downstairs, ever so quietly, and hide behind my Dad’s
big chair and peek around to watch Lucy.
When the show was over I would sneak back upstairs and tuck myself back
in. I did that every week for a long
time then got busted when I fell asleep during one of the shows and they found me
behind my Dad’s chair.
Anyway, when I was about six and a half in 1951, our used TV
went on the fritz. It stopped working
and my Dad didn’t want to spend the money to have it fixed. He wanted to save up to buy a new one. We endured weeks of no TV. Like you, Eliana, I was an inquisitive
child. I was fascinated with things
mechanical and loved to play with my Lincoln
logs and Erector set, making things and figuring out how they worked. One day, I went to my Mom and told her I
thought I could fix the TV set. I have
no idea what in the world she was thinking, but she told me to go ahead and
try. She probably thought I was just
going to play with the knobs on the front of the TV (no remote controls back
then). She went back to her house
chores.
Well, I went into the basement and got my Dad’s tool
box. I pushed the TV away from the wall
and, with a screwdriver, took the back off the big TV cabinet. In no time I had every tube, capacitor, power
supply and bundles of wires spread out on the family room floor. I inspected everything and was starting to
put the whole mess back together when my sister, your Aunt Sandy, came into the
room and started yelling at me to stop.
My Mom rushed in and the look on her face was priceless as she saw
hundreds of parts strewn all over the carpet and me buried inside the TV
cabinet “fixing” the problem.
Obviously, she was shocked that I had gotten into the TV and
removed all of its components but I assured her I could get it all back
together and working and, again, she believed me. This kind of brings me to my thirteenth
pearl.
Thirteenth Pearl: Speak With Authority…If You Believe In
Yourself, People Will
Believe You
I had no idea how to fix a TV set. I never had even seen the inside of one
before. But I just knew if I could get
into it, I could figure it out. And that
confidence in myself spilled over into my communication with my Mom. She believed I could do it because I believed
I could do it. It was a lesson learned
early that has served me well all of my life and I developed a knack for always
speaking with authority, even in times of doubt. People that know me really well, like your
Granny and even your Mom from time-to-time, can tell when I actually know what
I am talking about and when I am not so sure, but most everyone else just
assumes I am correct.
Now, I am not saying you can go around espousing anything
you want and just because you say it with authority, people will always believe
you. You better know your stuff. But on that day in 1951, I had my Mom, a
grown woman of forty-six, believing a six-year old could repair a television
set. Ask me some day if you are curious
as to whether I actually got it working or not.
I love you guys, bunches and bunches, and I am saying that
not only with authority, but with all my heart!
Grandpa Jud
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