When my computer is slowish, turning on in the morning; it reminds me of waiting for the the little white dot on the big black and white family TV with tapered legs, to warm up and grow to it’s full 20 something inch screen, in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

The first color TV I saw was at a very wealthy childhood friends home up the street. It was either the Flintstones or the Jetsons. I remember the subject of keeping Kosher came up. They were Catholic, we were Jewish, but didn’t keep Kosher, and road our bikes on Saturday. His mother commented in a moment of late 60’s culture share, that it was like eating fish on Friday for Catholics, some things some people just do, because.

They had a live in maid, I think she was European. I did go to the same pre school as his family before I went to public, and he went to St. Edwards. The school was down the hill on the lake. They taught us how to count to 10 in French and sing “Frere Jacques.”

We eventually got our first color tv on sale at the White Front. I don’t think that had any particular racial connotations, just a random attempt at something like Cosco or K Mart, when it was otherwise mostly Sears on Landers street, just passed Georgetown, in Seattle, the other side of Boeing field.

My father worked at Boeing, but at a different location, before he was laid off in the big layoff’s of the 70’s, something that changed the course of my childhood, and cultivated my early sensibility around economics, work, business and life.

Color TV’s were proportionately quite expensive at the time. I think I’m remembering it having been on sale for around 400 dollars. I’d seen the black and white print ad for it in the Seattle Times.

The newspaper had been my access to culture at 10, along with frequent outings for museum like strolling through Fred Meyer’s Marketime on Empire (now Martin Luther King), next to Wigwam, which I remember as being like Pick and Save. It apparently started in a tent as military surplus and was founded by an ex World War II fighter pilot. Those two stores were on oposite ends of the same parking lot next to the Holly Park “projects” where poorer people lived.

Reading that same publication I heard mom note “that’s so sad.” Judy Garland died. It was at the bottom of the front page, with a picture maybe an inch to an inch and a half in size noting her death. It seemed to me that it should have been a headline, and a full size picture.

I remember running down to the basement to watch Neil Armstrong land on the moon live. I just missed the moment, I did see the immediate replay, passed for the same, but wasn’t. I didn’t tell anyone I missed it live but I guess at this point I could kind of say I experienced it, within the context of the time.