"ZAY(T) GEZUNT," RABBIT EARS
(GOOD-BY, RABBIT EARS)

by
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe

Syosset, New York

TV rabbit ears is a commonly used term for a TV antenna. TVs will no longer receive a signal unless users update their hardware to receive a digital signal.

No one really seems to understand what the words "digital" and "analog" mean.

Perhaps you've seen the parody which reveals a sweet elderly woman trying to set up her converter box. After wrestling with tangled cables she asks "di frage" (the question), "Will all of this make Jack Benny come back?" She then snips/cuts into pieces ("tseshnaydn") a cable with her scissors and sticks her remote control in the microwave in a desperate effort to capture the digital signal.

Do you recall one of the first programs on Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners"? There were only two sizes of TVs then, 17-inch and 21-inch, all in glorious "schvarts" (black) and "vays" (white), sometimes whiter than others in all the snow on the screen. The rabbit ears took a lot of turning/twisting those days; we marvelled at the clear picture when we got one.

If you're one of those "cable rejectors" who still have a TV with rabbit ears and still use a rotary "telefon" to make a call, you're in for a treat

The website, Jokes Incorporated, contained a "vunderlekh" poem titled, "Better in Black and White":

You could hardly see for all the snow Spread the RABBIT EARS as far as they go. Pull a chair up to the TV set, "Good night, David. Good night, Chet."

Depending on the channel you tuned, You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June. It felt so good. It felt so right. Life looked better in black and white.

I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys, Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane.

Father Knows Best, Patty Duke, Rin Tin Tin and Lassie, too, Donna Reed on Thursday night. Life looked better in black and white.

I wanna go back to black and white. Everything always turned out right. Simple people, simple lives... Good guys always won the fights.

Now nothing is the way it seems, in living color on the TV screen. Too many murders, too many fights, I wanna go back to black and white.

In God they trusted, alone in bed they slept. A promise made was a promise kept. They never cussed or broke their vows. They'd never make the network now.

But if I could, I'd rather be in a TV town in '53. It felt so good. It felt so right. Life looked better in black and white.

I'd trade all the channels on the satellite, If I could just turn back the clock tonight, To when everybody knew wrong from right. Life was better in black and white!

________________________________
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe, a retired business teacher, is convinced that "children who watch television every night will go down in history--not to mention math, social studies and science."

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___________________________________________
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe is the author of
two books:

"Yiddish for Dog & Cat Lovers" and
"Are Yentas, Kibitzers, & Tummlers Weapons of Mass Instruction?  Yiddish
Trivia."  To order a copy, go to her
website: MarjorieGottliebWolfe.com

NU, what are you waiting for?  Order the book!