From an email to my sons I sent in 2001; Fooling with the old style TV's...

 

The TV in the basement playroom had seen better days. It was purchased in 1984, and had a convoluted electronic tuning system made for pre-cable type watching. The tuner has been drifting and requiring too much care to get it to work, and since the kids use it mainly, it wasn’t worth keeping or fixing. So, yesterday I bought a 32” TV for the family room, and the exchanges had to be made.

 

The problem started with the fact that the new TV weighed 121 pounds in the box, and even out of the box the weight was 112 lbs. So, the guy at Costco helped me get it on to a cart, and another guy helped me get it in my car. My wife and I moved it to the garage, and then very slowly we made our way into the house and into the family room. Since I don’t have a stereo VCR, the only plugs I needed to do were a VCR regular plug and the electrical plug. Still, we had to stop, almost in mid-air to get the plugs plugged. This was a scream.

 

After that deal was done, I had to move the TV from the family room downstairs to replace the old one. Since this was a few lbs.lighter, I slowly moved it to the stairs and this morning got it downstairs. Next (later) I will move the old one upstairs and to the garage where my wife has assured me that we’ll sell this marvelous piece of equipment in our soon-to-be garage sale. Everything is hooked up and working again.

 

As I finished this morning with the second TV, the moving truck arrived with our inherited stuff from my wife’s cousin’s estate. This was a delivery of 6 items. It was sent as “shipped” rather then “moved”, as we found out yesterday at customs as we had to prove that it was an inheritance so that there would be no duty or taxes. “Shipped” as you can figure means no moving men, just a big truck (18-wheeler) with a driver. No ramps,no lowering bed. Just a guy looking for a loading dock. Thankfully the driver was a nice guy who helped me with the load. As “shipped”’ everything was boxed, labeled, put on a palate and strapped. We had to undo all this and carefully lower each box to the ground and put them in the garage to be dealt with over the weekend.

 

So after moving TV’s and furniture, I was bruised and immediately returned to work.

A good story from the 60's as told by me in April, 2009

The Citizens Arrest!

From September, 1963 until June, 1970 I was the art teacher at Waterloo Junior Hugh School in Howard County, Maryland. Somewhere in that time we became Waterloo Middle School, and sometime later, when I was long gone, the school was torn down to make way for a new road.

Many of the experiences, and the stories I was to use for the rest of my life, stemmed from my time there. It was a great place to experience life and to enjoy teaching. I owe most of the rest of my life to those times.

I was on a free period one spring day, probably in 1965, when I wandered into the front office to say hello to the school secretary and see what was going on.

I heard a commotion coming down the hall, and I want to the office door to see what was happening. Running toward me at full speed was Mike, an 8th grader with a great sense of humor and a wiseass for sure. I liked him and was able to easily deal with him in class. He saw me and started screaming, “Help! Mr. Greenblatt, help me!” I was startled,. “What’s wrong?”

He told me that a substitute teacher, a retired Army Colonel (I think) was after him. No sooner than I had gotten him into the front office to calm him down than the retired Army officer came running, at full speed yelling, “I’m making a citizen’s arrest!”, and he lunged for the student.

The student lunged for me to protect him; I fell backwards trying not to be killed by both of them and backed into the principals’ door.

The three of us crashed through the Principals door; first there was me, falling backwards, the student hugging me and the substitute, clinging onto the student.
We were a human sandwich, and the Principal was on the phone with the superintendent of schools!

I scrambled to my feet, smiled and mouthed quietly that it was not my issue and got out of there as quickly as possible.