My father moved the rabbit ears back and forth on top of the TV. “Tell me when it looks good,” he said.
“OK,” I said, holding my little brother tight in a wrestling hold so he couldn’t squirm away from me.
“Now?” My dad, said.
“Worse.”
“Now?”
“No”
“Now?”
“Yeah, but now the picture’s jumping.” My dad said something but I was distracted by my brother’s wildly swinging arm punching me in the face.
“Quit it!” I howled.
“I need new tinfoil,” said my dad, and headed off to the kitchen.
It was October 4, 1965, and the Connors family was about to embark on another night of television-viewing. How do I remember it so well? I don’t really, but that’s how it went every night back then.
Today my 21-year-old son just shakes his head sadly when I tell him of the days before cable and DVDs and of the family’s one old black-and-white TV with the rabbit ears trying to pull in two stations some 40 miles away. I tell him about the ghostly visions, the fuzzy pictures and double images (when someone in a show held up their hand to a dazed person and said “How many fingers do you see?” we were never quite sure of the answer), the vertical hold problems when you’d see dancers on the Ed Sullivan show with their heads and torsos on the bottom half of the screen and their legs and feet at the top. I tell him how TV-watching was an aerobic activity back then—you were always getting up to adjust the dials or the rabbit ears or the crumpled-up aluminum foil that sometimes seemed to have magical TV-fixing abilities.
But October 4, 1965, was, of course, memorable for another reason. That evening Pope Paul VI said Mass at Yankee Stadium, and the picture we were struggling to get to come in clearly, the face we wanted to see, was his. It was OK with me that “12-O’Clock High” had been preempted. This was the pope. This was the first time a pope ever said Mass on American soil, and even as kids we knew this was a very big deal. (We even forgave His Holiness for presiding at Mass at Yankee Stadium, home of the nemesis of our beloved Red Sox; but that wasn’t all bad: The pope could use Yankee Stadium that day because, for only the third time in the last 17 Octobers, the Yankees weren’t using it for the World Series, which was good news to us!)
And so the Connors family watched and exercised that evening, jumping up and down to adjust the picture, and watching the sometimes clear, sometimes ghostly, image of the Vicar of Peter praying the Mass with some 80,000 people and so many of us at home.
The years go by, our country and our Church have both changed a bit, but a pope coming to the U.S. is still a big deal. Today, however, with all the changes in technology, it’s just so much easier to follow a papal visit. When Pope Benedict comes later this month, you won’t have to wait for those treasured moments when the screen clears and His Holiness finally comes into focus. The trip will receive widespread and high-tech TV coverage, and if you are away from your TV but near your computer, getting the whole trip is as easy as going to
catholicdigest.com.
We’ve worked hard to make our April print issue special, and the same with our Web site. Coverage of the trip has already begun on
catholicdigest.com with features and interviews and schedules and news reports, and as we get closer to April 15, our coverage will increase. We’ve lined up for you
• live streaming video from EWTN television coverage of the papal visit.
• interviews and announcements of preparations for the visit from Catholic Radio Weekly
• a free missal download for the Masses in Washington and New York, from
Living with Christ, Your Daily Companion for Praying and Living the Eucharist
• and the latest news reports on the visit from Catholic News Service.
So all the coverage you need of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit will be as close as your Web connection and
catholicdigest.comI don’t miss the old days of TV-watching, and neither does my dad. But I’m sure we’ll both be watching from April 15-20, and checking
catholicdigest.com too.
Enjoy the papal visit. May it be a powerful time for us all!
