No TV at Couchwood: the ending and the beginning

by Pat Laster

          ENDING

         I have a telephone pole, but as of last week, no DirecTV. No TV of any kind.

         Back when the country went to digital (over analog) reception and when Charter Cable went offline for a long period, I changed to DirecTV, a modern dish-on-the-old-old-roof, two receivers--the works.
        Kid Billy wanted more than the basic package. He wanted wrestling. But lately, since he is in Arkadelphia most of the time, his TV wasn’t being used. And about three years ago, I quit watching TV altogether in favor of reading and/or writing. Soon, our monthly statement rose to $70—a gift, in essence, to the company.

BEGINNING
      Here is a description and conversation with the person who installed the DirecTV dish that I wrote at the time—March of 2009. Why not use it now?
       He was a youngish man with a salt and pepper beard, a cross on a chain around his neck and no nametag.
        When I told him this was a Depression-Era house, he one-upped me. He’d moved two houses from Edison Avenue in south Benton when Jones Air Conditioning company was set to demolish them for a warehouse. They sit now on the north end of Springhill Road at Sierra Place.
         One time, he said, the grandchildren in one of the families came to visit and told him of a desk that folded into the wall. They found interesting stuff within. No, he hasn’t listed it on the National Register of Historic Placecs.
        He placed the TV dish on the northwest corner of the Couch house and faced it 210° southwest. “Out of the line of the (hackberry) tree,” he said. Dad probably turned over in his grave. Mom, too.
        His brogue denoted a Midwesterner. After showing me how to operate the remote, he asked me to “sign-print-sign.” I said, “You must be from the Midwest.” 
        “No. Connecticut.”
         “How in the world did you get down here?”
         I came down about 20 years ago to work in the nuclear plant in Russellville. I worked a year. Met a girl, married, divorced, married, divorced, married, divorced…”
         “I see you wear a cross,” I said, and that got it going.
          His name is Chris B. and he goes to The Church at Rock Creek. Grew up a very spiritual Catholic. Folks expected him to be a priest. But he “saw through” the Catholic religion, he said, and became dispirited.
          They went to S_____ Baptist until the preacher made light of the Pope’s death.
          Chris heard that the Rock Creek preacher used sports allusions, and he liked sports, so they tried it out. The church has many, many ministries—backpacks full of food for the weekend for children in poverty, helping the homeless (bring a pair of socks next Sunday, for example).

And with that, my story ended. Who would have thought that some three years later, I would have occasion to share this tale that has sat long in my computer files.

Serendipity, I call it.

c 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press