The snow on the TV that I was talking about wasn't the stuff you got after the station signed off, it was the stuff you got right while you were watching a show. It usually didn't obscure the picture entirely, but it made it all fuzzy and difficult to watch. It might have had something to do with our antenna, at first we just had rabbit ears, and then my dad put a roof top antenna on our brick chimney. That gave us better reception, but it also made us vulnerable to the disruption caused by airplanes passing overhead.
I used to watch the late movies on weekends and in the summer, but not on school nights. I seldom watched TV during daylight hours except the year or so after we got our first set. I think my parents got it mostly for my benefit because I had been sick with rheumatic fever when I was three or four and, for several years after that, I wasn't allowed to play sports or otherwise exert myself. The doctor recommended that my parents hold me back from school for the first year, and I ended up skipping kindergarten and starting with the first grade at the age of six. I don't feel that I missed a thing. The way I remember it, the stations used to sign off about midnight, after the late movie and a brief news and weather report. After they announced that they were signing off, they would play the National Anthem and then go to their test pattern. Maybe it was as you said, the test pattern was on for only a few minutes and then just the snow. I don't think we ever left the set on long enough to find out. Sometimes we didn't even wait until the National Anthem was finished, which I felt kind of guilty about. I also thought that we should all stand at attention when the anthem was played, but my parents didn't want to, which is probably why they turned it off so soon. Years later, I read somewhere that you don't have to stand for the anthem in your own home, only in public places.
Most of what I have read about primitive tribal societies said that the male children went through some kind of rite or passage at the age of 10 or 12, and then they were considered to be adults. Actually, they became braves or warriors, which were sort of junior adults. Around 25 or 30, if they lived that long, they would be promoted to elders or chiefs and people began taking them seriously after that. The rite of passage for females usually involved having a baby, and girls that never had one were looked down upon, like it was their fault or something.
I worked part time in the store from an early age, and also did chores around the house, and I was paid for all of it. Other kids got an allowance, I got a salary, and I didn't mind that a bit. I have read that some experts say you shouldn't pay a kid for doing chores, they are supposed to do them out of the goodness of their heart, and you're supposed to give them an allowance out of the goodness of your heart. I couldn't disagree more. I think it's important for kids to know where money comes from, and it helps them to develop a healthy work ethic because they feel that their work is valued. It's not a bribe, it's what they deserve because they earned it. I knew some people at the paper mill who grew up on farms, worked their asses off, and never got a dime for it, and I felt sorry for them. At the other extreme, you have kids who grew up in homes where there just wasn't any useful work for them to do, and I feel sorry for them too.
I always considered being kid a temporary assignment with no real future in it, and I wanted to grow up as fast as I could. I knew that there would always be people in my life telling me what to do, so that wasn't it. I just wanted to be my own man, taking myself seriously and expecting others to do the same. That was one of the reasons I didn't go to college, it seemed to me to be just an extension of childhood dependency. Like with the army, I served my time honorably, but I didn't see any reason to re-enlist for another hitch. As Ann Landers used to say, "The sample was ample."
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