WATCHING TV (From Magic Harbor by Don Berry)
I have a little TV aboard my boat. It's a 5" black-and-white of indeterminate vintage that was given to me last year by Ernest of BEAST when he got something decent. It had been given to him some years before under approximately the same circumstanc es.
The picture is virtually unwatchable. There are always a minimum of four simultaneous images, and without listening to the sound it is difficult to tell whether a program is about people or dogs, or perhaps the wonders of undersea life.
This unwatchability is one of my requirements for TV, because otherwise I get hooked and watch stupid things all the time. It is a kind of detoxification program for TV addiction: it's no fun, but it does the job. You have to want to watch TV pretty bad.
Although unwatchable, this TV appears to be immortal. What it lacks in excellence, it makes up in endurance. At my present age I feel somewhat the same about myself, so there is a certain commonality there. The TV goes through phases where it requi res a number of blows at the top and side before it will work at all, and then, after a while, it dies completely. Although I have not personally reached the point of dying completely, it is coming. In the meantime, a couple of sharp blows to the top an d sides will usually get me working, too.
So far, during my tenure, the TV has always been resurrected by the process I call Subtractive Maintenance. The basic principle of Subtractive Maintenance is simple: you find out what part isn't working and you throw it away. For personality diffic ulties it is by far the best system. It also works on cars, sometimes.
Dale of OBLIO, a former NASA electronics engineer, is my TV repairman, because he also practices Subtractive Maintenance. He has brought the TV back to life twice by snipping out the dead part and wiring around it. My conviction, supported by expe rience, is that there are few things you can't just wire around if you have to.
The last time was almost a religious experience. I had the TV apart when Dale came on board, with the circuit board hanging bare by the wires, and the bewildering web of solder joints pointing at the overhead. Dale looked at the board for a long tim e, from a distance of about three feet. Then, very slowly, he reached out one grimy finger and, like a fencer in slow motion, touched the board with a light, precise intention. Picture and sound both came cheerfully on. Awesome.
This TV is important mainly because of its role in a ritual conducted by Julia of LEGACY and me, called Hunting for Laughs. Julia likes her laughs. On Saturday nights when she is in the harbor, she comes over to the boat and we watch two hours of TV comedy together, starting with a local program called Almost Live and ending with Saturday Night Live.
Hunting for Laughs is a planned event, not a spontaneous one, for several reasons. First of all, it doesn't even start until 11:30, and there is no way in hell I can stay awake until 11:30. I always try to get a nap on Saturdays by way of preparing for Hunting for Laughs. Even then, nine times out of ten I'll be asleep when Julia arrives. Waking me up is a delicate, sometimes even hazardous, operation.
Secondly, Julia has often been out on the town before she comes aboard, and that can mean almost anything. When she parties strong, she's liable to end up drinking with bikers, urchin divers, and scurvy pirates of all varieties. And she can talk eve n the most landbound into getting into a dinghy and rowing off into the midnight darkness of the harbor.
Now, I'm definitely not up for being wakened to a bunch of wild characters coming aboard, so Julia and I have a fixed and iron-clad agreement. When she comes to wake me up for Hunting for Laughs, she has to come alone. She can't bring anybody else, even if I know them.
Last weekend we were on for Hunting for Laughs, and, as usual, I was asleep by 10:00. I'd turned on the TV without sound, just to be sure it was working, but the boat was otherwise dark.
Gradually there seeped into my almost inert consciousness the sound of a commotion at my aft deck, too much commotion for just Julia. As I drifted up from the depths, I could hear talking, and it seemed to go on for a long time. I could hear Julia's voice, and realized yes, it was time for Hunting for Laughs -- but she had somebody with her.
As I dimly returned to consciousness I was outraged. She knows perfectly well I can't handle that kind of stuff when I wake up, and yet, my ears were not playing tricks. She definitely had some guy with her.
I let this go on until I was sure it was actually happening, and then surrendered myself to the heat of Righteous Indignation. I stormed out of my berth and into the darkness of the aft deck. Two figures were there, silhouetted against the water re flections, one recognizably Julia and the other looking a little like Rod of OPTION, a water rat from Sitka.
"You're not welcome aboard!" I hollered at her. "You know you can't bring anybody!" Thus, having petulantly exhausted both my Righteous Indignation and what words seemed available, I stormed back off the deck and into my berth.
There was some more indistinguishable conversation, (by now I recognized Rod's voice,) and in a little bit they left, rowing over to the nearby LEGACY. I was pissed.
The next morning I rowed past LEGACY and Julia hailed me to come aboard for coffee.
"Well," she said, as the coffee brewed, "I couldn't've watched TV anyway."
"How come?" I said.
"I was soaking wet."
"From what?" I asked. "It didn't rain all day." But sure enough, there was a pair of jeans drying out behind the stove where the coffee water was heating.
Then she unfolded a story that absolutely horrified me. As she was approaching my boat, her tiny dinghy had somehow capsized, throwing her into the midnight-cold waters of the harbor.
In the darkness, with shoes on and fully clothed, she'd struggled to swim the remaining yards to the boat, crawling up on the swim step with great difficulty. Behind her, Rod had captured her drifting, capsized dinghy and towed it up to my stern.
She had just managed to drag herself up onto my aft deck when I came raging out of the darkness to kick her off the boat for violating The Rule.
As she recited these events while pouring coffee, my mind utterly resisted hearing them. But there was no way I could avoid understanding. I had actually refused sanctuary to a sailor in distress and near drowning. And not just any sailor, but Juli a, one of the best friends I have in the world.
This is such an unthinkable act of callousness I could scarcely grasp it at the time. I can scarcely grasp it now, in fact, but at least I've gotten used to the idea I actually did it.
As I was leaving LEGACY after coffee that next morning, Julia said, "Nobody at all, huh?"
"Nobody at all," I said.
"O.K." she said.
And that's how we watch TV in Eagle Harbor.
end
Watching TV
©1995 Don Berry