[Esther Murer]

Following in the footsteps of my Pa,
at his little key machine I sit.
Perhaps someone in darkest Shangri-La
will understand the message I transmit:
"dit-dah, dit-dit-dit, dah-dit, dit-dit-dah" --
Or was that "dah-dah-dit"? To hell with it.

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Martin but I think you have won a lot more recently than I have. And I don't see why you shouldn't win again.

[Ann Drysdale]

Esther, if you could amend your last line to read

"Maybe dit-dit-dah-dit? To hell with it."

the message would consist of an anagram of the acronym SNAFU.

Just saying. From Shangri-La.

[Douglas G. Brown]

(Revised version)

When the Magnavox was ailing, or the Zenith blew a tube,
You couldn’t trust your TV set to any backwoods rube;
You’d load the thing into the car and drive a three mile hop
To William Henry Kitteridge’s television shop.

No Westinghouse or Admiral could baffle good old Bill;
He’d troubleshoot a chassis with the ultimate of skill.
Short-circuited transformers or a misadjusted yoke,
To Bill were just the TV god’s conception of a joke.

In a shop that smelled of ozone, Bill could make the solder flow
’Til a Motorola’s innards would assume a ruddy glow;
Then the picture tube would flicker, and the speaker come to life
With the voice of Henny Youngman telling jokes about his wife.

Today’s TV’s are pancake thin, and come from Asian lands,
With microchips too intricate for Billy’s calloused hands;
Don’t look for Billy in his shop, he’s permanently out,
And up there on some riverbank, a-casting for a trout.

(original version)

When the Magnavox was failing, or the Zenith blew a tube
One couldn’t trust his TV set to any backwoods rube;
You’d load the thing into the car and drive a three mile hop
To William Henry Kitteridge’s television shop.

No Westinghouse or Admiral could baffle good old Bill;
He’d troubleshoot a chassis with the very best of skill.
Short circuited transformers or a misadjusted yoke
To Bill were just the TV god’s conception of a joke.

In his shop that smelled of ozone, Bill could make the solder flow
’Til a Motorola’s innards would assume a ruddy glow;
Then the picture tube would flicker, and the speaker come to life
With the voice of Henny Youngman telling jokes about his wife.

Today’s TV’s are pancake thin, and come from Asian lands,
With microchips too intricate for Billy’s calloused hands;
Don’t look for Billy in his shop, he’s permanently out,
And up there on some riverbank, a - casting for a trout.


Thanks Ann, Jerome, and Brian, for your help. Adrain, a big wooden cabinet that seemed to weigh about a hundred pounds did make for a good sound quality. Modern flat screen sets often allow for plugging in external speakers, but only committed audiophiles seem to bother.

(This is based on an actual Billy in my town (with a different surname, for metrical reasons). He came from a prominent local family, and learned electronics from his service in the Army Signal Corps during the Korean War. He was a soft spoken man with a quick wit and a perfect Downeast drawl. I was one of many teenaged boys who learned the mysteries of applied science in his cavernous shop, which was always piled high with TV's and radios in various stages of repair. One of my best pals during those visits was inspired by Billy to pursue a career in electronics. He spent a year atop a remote mountain in Maine running a TV transmitter, then got a job at ABC in maintaining the video cameras for their news and sports divisions. He has been at that ever since, and has circled the globe many times.

Billy probably made more money from trading electronic shares than he ever did from the modest fees he charged his customers. He remarked in the early 1970s that the integrated circuit would eventually put all the shops like his out of business. A decade later, this was coming to pass; plus, he had contracted the same cancer that killed his mother when she was about 60. One day he hung his old hand-lettered “gone fishin” sign in his shop door’s window, went home, and hung himself. On my walk to his funeral, I paused for a long last look into his darkened shop.

Billy’s former shop in currently the local video rental store (itself now threatened by Netflix) All those old Motorolas and Zeniths that Billy kept running have gone to the scrap heap. His monument is the men who he had mentored in his shop “back in the day.”)

[Ann Drysdale]

That is brilliant, sings like an arrow in flight and is genuinely moving.

A few suggestions. In relation to the rest of it "the very best of skill" is a bit lame. Could you find a five-syllable adjective instead. Inimitable?

I think short-circuited has a hyphen and I long to swap "a-casting for" for a word related to the world he's left behind. "Connecting with..."?

Takes me back to a little girl winding copper coils for her wireless-mad Dad and asking him why they called it "wireless", when...

I can see glowing dials, seeking my favourite programme between the R and S of Hilversum and listening to a favourite song of those days - Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby "Gone Fishin'".

Dammit, Douglas - look what you've done...

[Jerome Betts]

Yes indeed, one of your best ever, Douglas.

I flickered a bit at the very AE combination of 'one' and 'his' in L2, with the brief suggestion of taking someone else's set rather than your own. However, the BE combination of 'One' and 'one's' might sound a bit stilted in the context, so how about plain 'You' and 'your'?

If you stay with 'a-casting' you'll need to close up the spaces round the hyphen.

Pancake thin they are, so the sound is terrible and it's not just the fashionable actor's mumble.

[Adrian Fry]

I know it's a little off topic but Jerome, you're so right about the terrible sound of modern televisions. What puzzles me is the way music and sound effects blast out from my telly at alarming volume while dialogue remains inaudible. I shouldn't complain; there's been nothing decent on British telly since 1997.

[John Whitworth]

What was good in 1997, Adrian. It's Wallander tonight. I never miss. And 'The Good Wife' on Thursdays. Of course they're not made here. That's all crap.

I think it's a lefty plot. But Wallander's quite lefty. I shall have to think again.

I'd forgotten about the cricket. That's great. Hail Rupert Murdoch.

Re sound on tellies. We're all getting older and deafer.

[Martin Parker]

John, we have a common problem. Not deafness, but that our wives have started to mumble and too often insist on speaking to us when we are quite obviously not listening to them. Nothing is more certain to annoy me than the birth of a promising hexameter blurred by the sound of an accusatory voiceover, "You haven't heard a word I've said."

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

A few suggestions. In relation to the rest of it "the very best of skill" is a bit lame. Could you find a five-syllable adjective instead. Inimitable?

Or perhaps 'indomitable'?

Excellent piece, Douglas.

I agree with Jerome that line 2 might be better as 'You couldn't trust your TV set ...'