I'm just off being on the phone with my mother... our weekly head-to-head, heart-to-heart session where I catch up with all of the news which is fit to know about, at least in Chillicothe, Ohio.
From time to time, there is depressing news from Allen Avenue, today's was one of those days when the big news was, if not depressing, at least a little sad for me personally. Tennant Hoey died. Tennant gave me my first "real" job some 39 years ago this fall. It was all because we were on the cutting edge, although we didn't know it at the time.
Tennant Hoey ran Channel 2.
For the benefit of those who read this blog who have not been to Chillicothe, Ohio, let me explain about Channel 2. Some years back it was noted that in order to get a decent television signal in Chillicothe, one had to either live on Carlisle Hill, or had to have had a decent television antenna on a fairly high part of one's house. The local telephone company (oddly enough named The Chillicothe Telephone Company) erected a tower on top of Mount Logan, captured televsion signals from Columbus, Dayton, Cincinatti and Huntington, West Virginia, and shipped the signals down to the television-starved townspeople on coaxial cable. There was one channel left over after the networks were covered, and that was Channel 2. So, instead of duplicating network coverage by importing Channel 2 from Dayton, it was decided that Chillicothe would have its own television station in the form of Channel 2 which was "broadcast" solely on cable.
Most of the day, Channel 2 consisted of a camera showing a mechanical bulletin board which changed every half minute or so. Integrated into the board was a digital clock and a thermometer showing the outside temperature. At about 5pm most weekdays, Channel 2 got busy with local programming and Tennant Hoey was in charge of that programming. There was news coverage in the form of a live newscast, there was coverage of Chillicothe High and Bishop Flaget High sports (Football and Basketball), as well as live coverage of Chillicothe City Council meetings. Yes, it was all in Black and White using cameras which weighed a ton, but at the same time, it was cutting edge television. It was only later, after cable television came into markets where a goodly number of households could just as easily content themselves with matter which was broadcast, that what was being done at Channel 2 back in the mid to late '60s was the predictor of Community Access Television.
This 17 year old went to Tennant Hoey in the fall of 1971 and pitched the idea of a television show highlighting the goings on at Chillicothe High School to be 'aired' once every two weeks. My boldness not only got me the televsion show, but it also landed me with a job as a camera operator.
I ended up with a few other jobs around Channel 2 as well, including mailman, lighting technician (okay, all I did was flip the occasional switch), booth announcer, floor director... I was a regular "Jack of All Trades". Of the other High School kids there at the time, I was perhaps the only one to have worked on both sides of the camera.
Three events became defining moments of my Senior year at CHS.
The first was having the gall to type out a letter (with a green ribbon no less) to Governor John Gilligan inviting him to appear on the TV show I was, I guess, producing. He accepted, he showed up, and a good time was had by all. 1972 Arrow, page 94, center picture. Governor Gilligan later ended up doing something for the Carter administration, Jane, Nancy and Jeff appear from time to time on my Facebook page, and I really have no idea what happened to Tim.
Second was the shilling I did as Dracula on behalf of our Senior Class Play. Somewhere on this blog I have told the story of Channel 2 newscaster Gene Minney greeting me with the phrase "Why, of corpse!" ever since, the last time being in July of 2009...
Finally, there was the telethon. "Rusty" Mundell had this idea that somehow or another an outdoor drama about an Indian named Tecumseh would be a good thing for the community. So did a few other people. So, a telethon was held to purchase seats to use as seed money to build an amphitheater on the back side of Sugarloaf Mountain... and I was there. "Rusty" was right... and it was Tennant Hoey who helped to pull the local media together to give "Tecumseh!" the boost it needed to get started.
Eventually, Channel 2 was sold, something about the FCC not wanting cross-ownership of a telephone company and a cable company in the same community, and Tennant moved over to the phone company along with a few other people who had worked at Channel 2 at the time I worked there. I like to think that some of my subtle sense of humor came from Tennant Hoey. I appreciated him. He never raised his voice, he was open to new ideas and all in all, he was, perhaps, one of the best people I have ever worked for. Some of my fellow workers called him "Whip". Other than being in charge of a neat little operation on East Water Street, there was no reason to equate him with anyone who would be a stern task master.
He was one of the nice guys. I am sorry to see him go. Rest well, Tennant.
Be Seeing You!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Catch Up Day
Today is "Catch Up" day.
It's my term and it refers to the day when my stepson, Warren, catches up with my son, Stuart chronologically.
If you care to, you can feel sorry for me now. There are two fifteen year old males in the house. It can be challenging.
There are similarities. For instance, as I write this, both of them are on computers attempting to see just what kind of finesse is required to kill as many electronic enemies in as short a time as possible. They go to the same school, they both live with their mothers, they have many of the same friends and they have been known to have lunch together once or twice a week.
My paranoid self says that they probably talk about me.
They are also quite different. For instance, Stuart is the social gadabout. Warren would just as soon not leave the house to be with people. I find a double inconsistancy with their selves because of their extracurricular activities. The social gadabout runs Cross Country, more of an individual sport, while he who shuns humanity plays in Band... and not just any band, the Allen High School Band is one of the biggest High School marching bands in Texas if not the United States (around 650 members... hell, that's more than half of the people attending Chillicothe High when I was there!).
Go figure.
"Catch Up Day" this year became a bit more special to me due to the fact that I got a Facebook friend request from the person who was my best friend when I was 15.
Greg lived just down the street from me next to the Funeral Home in another rambling old house which seemed to stretch out over half the lot. We had both moved to southern Ohio from the Cleveland area and as a result were not quite up to speed with the goings on of our various acquaintances who had grown up to that point in Chillicothe. We shared many of the same likes and dislikes and found quite a number of ways to get into trouble... not that our parents ever found out.
Come to think of it, I might be ahead to lock the boys up and throw away the keys for a few years. On the other hand, they would miss sneaking around the city at midnight on a supposed sleepover, or making home-made wine in the basement (oddly enough with Greg's dad's permission) and consuming it while running around the city at midnight.
(It's 41 years later, Greg... are we going to be sent to our rooms without supper or be grounded or something?)
Ah, to be fifteen again! I hope that Warren enjoys it.
---
Let's take a moment to remember Barbara Billingsly who passed earlier this weekend. To those of us in my generation, she was June Cleaver, Ward's wife and mother to Wally and the Beaver. Not only did she supposedly utter the unintentionally funny but dirtiest phrase on television in the 1950s (think about it...), but she was uproariously funny in AIRPLANE as the woman who volunteered to translate "Jive" for the stewardess.
Ah, that we could live forever!
Be Seeing You!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Receipt
While thumbing through the internet this morning, I came across something from NPR from a site called thirdwave.org. It was an itemized reciept for the taxes I've paid, presuming that I am an average Joe with an income of $34,140 paying $5,400 in federal income taxes and FICA. It was interesting to see what was costing us so much money that this tea party is so up in arms about.
To start off with were Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid with a combined take of $2051.49... a pretty big hunk of the money I put in every year. All of that is from the FICA side of the tax equation, meaning that of the $5,400 hunk, I pay $3348.51 in actual federal income tax. For now, let's just leave the Social Security stuff on its own. Let's just say that for a couple of grand, all of us feel at least a little more social and a bit more secure. At least the people I know who are the recipients of my largesse don't have to worry as much about paying the bills or where their next tin of cat food will be coming from.
Of the $3348.51 left over, $783.64 is being used for interest on the national debt, a war in Afghaniraq (which is being fought on money we borrowed and are paying interest on), military personnel and veteran's benefits. Now, to be fair, veteran's benefits only take out 10% of that chunk of change, and it would take a real Scrooge to say that the figure is too high. It probably isn't high enough. Still, $708.99 is not a bad deal to prevent us from being invaded by people from Afghaniraq whose primary problem at this point of the game is finding enough of them to be able to drive.
Look at it another way. We are paying $708.99 to help protect assets of people who make as much in an hour as we do in a year... assets like oil and a wealth of minerals which I read were found in the mountains of Peshwar which we'll never see, despite paying to protect them. If they were MY assets, I'd be more than happy to pay a huge premium on my income tax bill in order to protect those assets. Instead, the people with the assets are content to keep holding on to their assets while stirring us up to demand that the people with the assets not pay the premium that the protection deserves. There's the tea party in a nutshell.
Moving on down the list... Federal Highways cost us $63.89. In North Texas, we pay that and more per month in tolls, the profits from which benefit investors in... Spain. Foreign Aid, $46.08, presumably used for humanitarian aid. Right? Education funding K-12, $38.17. Pell grants for the older kids in truck driving school, $29.75. The Space Program (NASA) $28.09 so that we can send men to the moon to play golf and drink Tang. Wait a minute, that was 40 years ago.
We pay $14.35 for the FBI and the DEA combined. I would think that it would be better if we were to to tap the military's chunk of the dollars we spend to deal with the drug lords once and for all and help Mexico find decent work for the people who seem to seep over our borders illegally.
For National Parks, the Smithsonian and the Arts, we spend a mere $5.63, or a little more than 1% for that which is priceless to us.
We spend $2.23 for Amtrack. Perhaps we should spend more so that we can drive less.
Amazingly enough, the last item on the list are salaries and benefits for Members of Congress. A mere $0.19. A pittance, considering the millions of dollars spent by those with assets to protect in order to get our Congressman to listen to them, not us.
There are other items I left out, like $10.91 for Head Start (a program which has paid for itself many times over), $11.67 for environmental clean-up by the EPA and $10.50 for public housing - and given the way the economy seems to be heading, we all may be there sooner than later.
All in all, the average Joe gets pretty fair value for the money he spends in taxes. Where he (and I) are having a problem is with the other stuff we have to pay for ourselves - things like housing, food and medical expenses (I pay in the area of 12% of my income just in premiums, or, $4096.80 based on the $34,140 salary stated above). Granted that the insurance company paid out more for us this year than we paid in, but that isn't what usually happens. I'm being told that they are still making money hand over fist despite us.
I don't like to pay taxes any more than the next guy, and it really does make my blood boil when I get the occasional e-mail telling me about some crack whore or pimp taking undue advantage of that which we pay in taxes each year. But on the other hand, I'm just as mad about people with means taking advantage of my good nature and stealing correspondingly more, then setting up phoney baloney political movements to try to get me to feel sorry for them. Thirdway.org has at least given me, and others like me, a good idea as to where my taxes are going by providing a reciept for my purchase from the IRS ($17.69, a bargain at half the price).
Be Seeing You!
To start off with were Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid with a combined take of $2051.49... a pretty big hunk of the money I put in every year. All of that is from the FICA side of the tax equation, meaning that of the $5,400 hunk, I pay $3348.51 in actual federal income tax. For now, let's just leave the Social Security stuff on its own. Let's just say that for a couple of grand, all of us feel at least a little more social and a bit more secure. At least the people I know who are the recipients of my largesse don't have to worry as much about paying the bills or where their next tin of cat food will be coming from.
Of the $3348.51 left over, $783.64 is being used for interest on the national debt, a war in Afghaniraq (which is being fought on money we borrowed and are paying interest on), military personnel and veteran's benefits. Now, to be fair, veteran's benefits only take out 10% of that chunk of change, and it would take a real Scrooge to say that the figure is too high. It probably isn't high enough. Still, $708.99 is not a bad deal to prevent us from being invaded by people from Afghaniraq whose primary problem at this point of the game is finding enough of them to be able to drive.
Look at it another way. We are paying $708.99 to help protect assets of people who make as much in an hour as we do in a year... assets like oil and a wealth of minerals which I read were found in the mountains of Peshwar which we'll never see, despite paying to protect them. If they were MY assets, I'd be more than happy to pay a huge premium on my income tax bill in order to protect those assets. Instead, the people with the assets are content to keep holding on to their assets while stirring us up to demand that the people with the assets not pay the premium that the protection deserves. There's the tea party in a nutshell.
Moving on down the list... Federal Highways cost us $63.89. In North Texas, we pay that and more per month in tolls, the profits from which benefit investors in... Spain. Foreign Aid, $46.08, presumably used for humanitarian aid. Right? Education funding K-12, $38.17. Pell grants for the older kids in truck driving school, $29.75. The Space Program (NASA) $28.09 so that we can send men to the moon to play golf and drink Tang. Wait a minute, that was 40 years ago.
We pay $14.35 for the FBI and the DEA combined. I would think that it would be better if we were to to tap the military's chunk of the dollars we spend to deal with the drug lords once and for all and help Mexico find decent work for the people who seem to seep over our borders illegally.
For National Parks, the Smithsonian and the Arts, we spend a mere $5.63, or a little more than 1% for that which is priceless to us.
We spend $2.23 for Amtrack. Perhaps we should spend more so that we can drive less.
Amazingly enough, the last item on the list are salaries and benefits for Members of Congress. A mere $0.19. A pittance, considering the millions of dollars spent by those with assets to protect in order to get our Congressman to listen to them, not us.
There are other items I left out, like $10.91 for Head Start (a program which has paid for itself many times over), $11.67 for environmental clean-up by the EPA and $10.50 for public housing - and given the way the economy seems to be heading, we all may be there sooner than later.
All in all, the average Joe gets pretty fair value for the money he spends in taxes. Where he (and I) are having a problem is with the other stuff we have to pay for ourselves - things like housing, food and medical expenses (I pay in the area of 12% of my income just in premiums, or, $4096.80 based on the $34,140 salary stated above). Granted that the insurance company paid out more for us this year than we paid in, but that isn't what usually happens. I'm being told that they are still making money hand over fist despite us.
I don't like to pay taxes any more than the next guy, and it really does make my blood boil when I get the occasional e-mail telling me about some crack whore or pimp taking undue advantage of that which we pay in taxes each year. But on the other hand, I'm just as mad about people with means taking advantage of my good nature and stealing correspondingly more, then setting up phoney baloney political movements to try to get me to feel sorry for them. Thirdway.org has at least given me, and others like me, a good idea as to where my taxes are going by providing a reciept for my purchase from the IRS ($17.69, a bargain at half the price).
Be Seeing You!
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