Free Home In The Morning by Mary Glickman

clarity of the test pattern and sat around waiting for a program, any program, to appear. Eventually, they watched a wrestling match and ten minutes of news, then the test pattern reappeared with a printed message that The Kate Smith Hour would be on at seven p.m., followed by the inestimable Milton Berle. Though the attendant commotion of the day was at least distracting to the boy, Jackson couldn’t figure out why the grown-ups were so excited or why they kept telling him how lucky he was to have such a fabulous invention in his living room sitting right there next to Mama’s veneered credenza, formerly the prized item of furniture in the house. When he made their acquaintance, he found Miton Berle funny, and Kate Smith looked as warm and cushy as Mama herself. But he preferred the big color screen at the picture show to the one populated by tiny black-and-white figures at home. The Zenith, he decided, was a toy for grown-ups that had little to do with him. By the next day, he learned otherwise.
    Late Sunday morning, Mama dressed him up in his blue suit and slapped a cap on his head. She hooked up her girdle, put on her navy funeral dress, her spectators and best hose, then topped it all off with a flouncy blue hat stuck through by an enormous pearl knobbed hatpin. Mother and child went for a walk past St. John the Divine Episcopal Church just as the congregation got out of service. While the families of congregants lingered chatting to one another on the steps and front walk, Missy Fine Sassaport patted Jackson’s rear end and told him to skedaddle off and wish a pleasant Sabbath to this classmate and that. She remained behind to greet their mothers, taking the opportunity to bewail the dismal verbal habits her son had absorbed from unfortunate sources. She begged pardon of those he had so innocently offended, and assured everyone that all this amounted to a mischievous phase,now absolutely over. Then she dropped the confidence that by the way, the family had purchased a television.
    Fresh from communion with the Celestial, the ladies of St. John the Divine extended Christian charity to the Sassaport family and forgave Jackson his sins of prurience largely due to what they considered the persuasive charm of his mother, who was quite refined for a heathen. When they further informed their husbands over Sunday supper that the family of Jackson Sassaport had purchased one of the new televisions, the children of the household invariably overheard. In screeches or wheedles, they badgered their parents to buy a television too, as well as to acquire them an invitation to the Sassaport home immediately. Considering themselves scientific-minded, their daddies to a man were curious about televisions. Confronted by the pleas of whining children disturbing the Sabbath peace, they raised their eyes helplessly, perhaps a bit pleadingly, to their wives, who replied: Dr. Sassaport’s wife mentioned we are welcome to stop by any time at all to witness this electronic wonder.
    That night the Sassaport living room was packed with neighbors. Children three deep sat cross-legged around the television with Jackson as their suddenly popular center. They watched The Ed Sullivan Show, where to the delight of all Julius La Rosa sang, Nanette Fabray made jokes, and a man juggled one hundred dinner plates for what must have been five entire minutes. Eleanor and Sukie made refreshments of iced tea and triangles of chicken salad between crustless bread. The two had never served quite so solicitously before, chiefly for the excuse to enter the room and catch a bit of old Ed themselves. From that night until Christmastime, when the congregation of St. John the Divine bought televisions from Uncle Izzy Joe en masse, there were friends of Jackson over watching television almost daily. Sukie began to badger Dr. Sassaport for a raise in her wages if every day there was going to be a party in the house. He refused. He was going broke enough, he toldher,