The Fall of '53 on Layton . . .

In the fall of '53 a technology revolution was sweeping the country ... technology that would change and reflect American culture forever: Television. Between September and November that fall over forty television channels began operation in cities across the United States.

Justus, our country village on a mountain in Pennsylvania, has never been on the cutting edge of technology ... or anything else for that matter, but here on Layton that fall of '53, our family was on the cusp of national communication development. We owned a television ...  probably one of the first families on Layton to move the over sized electronic device with a lilliputian screen into the corner of our living room.

With its black and white pictures, it housed a wild assortment of tubes in a marvelous array of shapes, sizes, and colors. And my Dad was tube and television savvy ... thanks to the US Army and anthracite.

After World War II and his discharge from the army in '45, Dad returned to his parents' home in Justus and took up the family occupation - coal mining. His father and Uncle Joe, trained in the mines of north Wales, brought their skills and manpower to our local valley mines. A relative found Dad a job at the breaker in Olyphant. From the war front in Italy to the coal mines in northeastern Pennsylvania, it was a bleak and black decade for Dad.

He knew before a year was up that coal would not be his future. To his credit, he took the coal car by its hitch and sought out a better way of life. The post World War II economy in the US was beginning to sing, and innovations and inventions were changing American life. Dad jumped off the breaker and took advantage of his army training in communications by pursuing a burgeoning career field that did not involve dodging enemies or groveling underground in mines ... television engineering. In the late forties and early fifties it was THE place to be for a young vet with Morse Code in his head and electricity in his blood ... even if he lived on a mountain in the country on a road called Layton.

Television had a bit of a rough start. Poor Philo Farnsworth produced the first electronic television picture in 1927 and, by rights, he should have been hailed as the inventor of television, but he was scooped by RCA in a patent battle. Because RCA's David Sarnoff successfully marketed the invention, he became known as the father of television. The old "squeaky wheel" got the credit and the attention. Philo died in obscurity although with a label like Philo he'd have to choose a power name to make it in modern TV. It wasn't until the 1939 World's Fair, when RCA unveiled their new NBC Studios at Rockefeller Plaza in New York, that network television was introduced.

But television's commercial success and growth languished when the US entered WW II as the work force was shipped overseas, and personnel were scarce.. But in 1947 with the war behind them and an army of young veterans back in the US, television exploded. Dad rode the wave.

He took his post-war bride, Annette, and enrolled in the American Television Institute of Technology (ATIT) in Chicago. They loaded up the Plymouth and began the grueling drive across route 6 in Pennsylvania, through Ohio and Indiana to Illinois and a one room walk-up apartment on the south side of the Windy City.

Founded by Dr. Lee DeForest, inventor of the vacuum tube, and U.A. Sanabria, developer of the first televison station, ATIT was home for the country's cutting edge training in television theory, manufacturing, operation, and development..

Dad studied all aspects of electronics and television technology while Mom put her nursing education to work at Woodlawn Hospital. We went back to Chicago many years later to locate the apartment, the school, and the hospital. The hospital had been leveled, and an empty plot marked its former location. Boarded and broken windows, metal gates on store fronts, and litter under the "EL" (elevated train) indicated that the apartment building had slipped into the slums. And the school ... well, televisions had come a long way from vacuum tubes.

During the four years they lived near Lake Michigan, Dad finished his education, and in 1949 the young couple had their first baby, a girl. Dad was able to leave Chicago with a Bachelor of Science degree in television engineering. One coal miner had made a significant move to better his life. The young family headed home to the hills of Pennsylvania. Dad would find a job with one of the first radio stations in Scranton, WGBI, and later with one of its first television stations, WDAU (later WYOU), owned by Madge Megargee.

The television engineer and the baby boomer in a Chicago park,
1949.

So the family took up residence on Layton with an elephant of a television in the living room and a job in radio. The baby girl, one of the vanguard of boomers born from 1946-49, began her early years under the tutelage of infant television broadcasting with shows like Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Howdy Doody. Television provided the illusion of Hollywood. It would take almost two decades before the magic of those early years would be shattered for the boomers and for one little girl in particular..

In the fall of '53, the Chicago-born, four-year-old boarded the school bus on Layton for the first time

1953 - the baby boomer begins the journey.

with other boomer children. Television and the boomers would come of age together. The bus's five mile journey over the hills to school each day was just a start. The longer journey was only beginning ...

 in the fall of '53.

Resource: The Archive of American Television, http://www.emmytvlegends.org/resources/tv-history, Accessed January 27, 2016.