When TV Came to Punkin River

FICTION When TV Came to Punkin River Bo Ball WE HAD SEEN TVs IN MAGAZINES. Workers came back from Ohi' to brag about Arthur Godfrey and Howdy Doody. In the summer of 1952, my sister and her husband took me to Haysi, Virginia, 18 long miles away, to watch a night of the Democratic National Convention on a relative's new Muntz. I remember Keefaufer's coonskin cap. Sparkman's drawl. The dulcet tones of Adalai Stevenson. He told us why we always had been, always would be, Democrats. Iboasted to mybuddies about the pictures. "Never got one to work on Punkin River," they said. "Too far down in the valley." "We got the juice," I argued. The new electricity had just come to those of us who lived in isolated hollers. "We'll have telephone someday," I said. "Wish'n in one hand," a peckerwood said. "And we'll pull in TV," I said. A man over in Harricane bought a set, but all he could get was snow. He took his purchase back to Haysi. Told them to keep their New York, their Hollywood. Those who live atop mountains could have gotten Huntington, West Virginia, or even Oak Hill. But folks atop mountains were generally paupers. Or hermits. I day-dreamt I would go to Ohi'. Get rich screwing doors on Frigidaires. Come back and buy the highest peak around. There my buddies and I would grow red-eyed watching Hopalong. Some shook their heads when Hubert Fletcher, furloughed from Dayton, bought a box. He lived in the lowest bottom on Punkin River—next to his daddy's store. "Won't draw a horse's tail," said the peckerwoods, who spat between their front teeth to show wisdom. But we wanted Hubert to succeed. He was the best man we knew. He had a smile that said we're all in this together. We knew we had a taxi and an ambulance when he and his truck were around. And now—we hoped for a theater. We watched him and his younger brother Otto assemble what looked like an aluminum hay rack, with fingers pointed in two directions. Hubert climbed to his roof. With a rope attached to the 58 rack, he lifted it, now on a locust pole, up to the chimney. Held it there while his wife Alma plugged in the Emerson. Nothing but snow. The next day he traveled to Grundy for a whole roll of the strange wire. "I'll go to the top of Big A Mountain if I have to," he said. (That was three miles away.) Peckerwoods had gathered in the store yard. Some in the lane— close enough to hear Alma yell out what she was pulling in. Others stayed on the river bridge. More up in the pasture. We relayed Alma's hollers, in stations, to the sweating Fletcher brothers. "Wonder will it show Gene Autry?" Billy Owens said. (Melody Ranch was our radio favorite.) "Shoot, I don't wont no sangin' cowboy," said Billy Compton who'd been to a "double future" at the theater in Haysi. "If I wont sangin' I'll tune in the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys." The Stanleys came to us on the radio. WCYB—Bristol. "Try it again, Alma," Hubert hollered. "Again!" yelled the boys on the mountain. "Again!" from the river. The lane. Alma had fiddled with a TV in Ohi', so she knew what to twirl, what to push. "Snow," she yelled from the front room. "Just snow." Peckerwoods from the lane yelled to the river. The river to the mountain. Hubert shouldered the rack and went higher. "Snow!" Alma yelled. "Mostly snow. Just the flicker of a horse." "Snow!" we yelled. "Mostly snow!" "Snow!" Road traipsers looked into ninety-degree heat and thought of winter. Poor Omie Tiller, home from the asylum, walked all the way to Harricane to tell of snow storms on Punkin River. Hubert and Otto had lugged the antenna and roll of wire to the very top of the mountain, when Alma came to the front porch and clapped her hands and yelled, "Picture! Picture!" We yelled the word to Hubert. "What of...