Frost had already crept halfway up the living room windows by the time my father gave up on the aluminum...
The Night a Whole Country Crowded Around One Zenith |
When Hawkeye Pierce finally said goodbye to the 4077th, my entire family crowded around a heavy Zenith console like we were attending a wake. |
|
|
News for the America we remember |
Frost had already crept halfway up the living room windows by the time my father gave up on the aluminum foil. It was February 28, 1983, a Monday night, and the wind off Lake Erie was rattling the loose pane in our front door. Dad was standing behind the heavy Zenith console, twisting the twin metal antennas in a futile attempt to clear the snow from Channel 8. He finally muttered something under his breath, gave the side of the wooden cabinet a solid thump with the heel of his hand, and sat back down in his corduroy recliner. The static dissolved just enough. We were ready. |
My mother was sitting on the edge of the floral sofa with a cup of decaf coffee, blowing across the rim. I was nineteen, living at home while commuting to the community college, and I had claimed the floor. We had a large pizza from Donatos sitting on the coffee table, a rare weekday extravagance. When I picked it up an hour earlier, the guy behind the counter looked panicked. He told me they had burned through their entire weekend supply of pepperoni by five o'clock. Everyone in town, it seemed, was ordering in. |
We were all waiting for the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital to pack up its tents. The final episode of M*A*S*H, titled Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, was being broadcast as a two-and-a-half-hour movie event. It is difficult to explain to anyone who grew up with streaming video how a single television program could halt the normal rhythm of an entire nation. You did not record it for later. You did not wait for the DVD box set. If you were not in front of a television set at eight-thirty Eastern time, you were going to be completely lost at work or school the next morning. |
The show had been running for eleven years, longer than the actual Korean War it depicted. I had grown up with these characters. They were a constant background noise to my adolescence, their rapid-fire jokes and sudden tragedies bleeding through the floorboards while I did my algebra homework. But tonight felt different. There was a heavy, solemn atmosphere in the living room, like we had gathered to hear the reading of a will |
|
|
Silver Has Beaten Gold Before. It's Doing It Again. |
|
|
From 1974 to 1987, silver more than doubled gold's returns. After 2008, it beat gold five-fold in three years. Since March 2020, silver is up 402% against gold's 186%. Our research team's free playbook explains why, and how the team would position. |
Get the Free Playbook |
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 2026 Old Glory Report |
1001 Cathedral St
Baltimore, MD 21201, United States |
Unsubscribe |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment