I started fooling around with electronics as a kid. I found an old AM radio and some headphones, but I could not make it work. I eventually realized that one of the tubes was broken. I learned this by bringing the tubes to the tube tester in a large drug store, as tube testers were common in those days (at least through the 1960s). Being only ten years old, the fact that the broken tube was no longer available stumped me.
So I wrote a letter to a magazine. I believe it was Electronics Illustrated. My letter was not a work of beauty, with it being something like, "I'm only ten years old, but I do not understand how to replace an XYZ tube now that it is obsolete." The next month's issue not only did not contain an answer, it contained a smart-ass remark from the editor: "I'm only 113 years old, but I don't know either." So that's the way adults are, I thought, just as nasty and unhelpful as children. A few weeks later I received a fat envelope in the mail. In it was an apology, of sorts, that explained how the editor thought his response was uprorious, but then he received some letters from sympathetic readers upbraiding him for being so insulting to a child, especially one who was interested in their hobby. In the envelope were all of the letters the magazine received (this was long before email). Most of them explained how to solve the situation, including references to a book which listed all tubes and equivalents thereof. But one letter stands out in my mind even today. The man offered to sell me some used equipment for $100, which was a lot of money to a child in those days. Even at my tender age, I knew something was wrong with his offer, not to mention that this was many years before eBay and other Internet sites made such transactions reasonably safe. I did not reply to his letter. I did not appreciate until years later that he was a predatory asshole who thought nothing of taking advantage of children, with this occurring years before Ayn Rand's social Darwinist philosophy became widespread.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorPete Prunskunas Archives
March 2023
Categories |