I am beginning to embrace the unique vibes of retro nerds. Retro isn’t necessarily my jam but you gotta try new things, right?
Besides, those sweet people are passionate about their favorite retro item, and I might be able to use them. Er, learn from them, of course.
I’m talking about CRT TV nerds. For the rest of this post, TV equals CRT TV so don’t be thinking of today’s refined thin TVs.
My sister, Ann, and I do some property management, so occasionally we get to empty out a house that was abandoned by a tenant. This doesn’t happen much, but we have cleaned out a lot of junk over the years.
Junk including those TVs. It almost seems required to leave old TVs behind.
When tenants move out under less than great circumstances, they leave behind TVs like crumbs or mouse droppings.
One house had four TVs left behind, ranging in size from 16” to 60”. Do you know that a 60” TV can weigh over 250 pounds? How on earth do tenants get those into basements? The narrower the stairs, the more TVs in the basement.
I assume they bought beer for the entire fraternity.
We lugged all four TVs out of the basement with help from two high school boys who overestimated their muscles. They needed a fraternity, too.
Perched on my pickup bed, the TVs looked kinda like Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear on my pickup bed.
I am told that there are nerds who love old TVs. Playing games like Super Mario All-Stars is fantastic on a old TV. Watching VHS is also a rush, too, I guess.
Woohoo.
We didn’t know any retro nerds, though. We considered leaving the TVs on my pickup bed until someone stole them, but that was only one of we. The other considers our town’s people way too honest for that. Or too smart.
So we went to Plan B. We could haul them to the county landfill.
Off we went with the TVs and a few other choice items: a table with a broken leg, a floor lamp that didn’t work, half a couch.
The attendant at the landfill gate directed us to the area for broken furniture and then to the building for electronics. Um, who was there to help us? Nobody.
So we had a 250-pound VW Bug TV and just my sister and me to unload it. One of us wanted to use leverage to push it off the pickup bed. Nope. The other we said we had to unload it gently or we’d have broken glass everywhere.
So we broke out all our load straps and wrapped them around the TV. Then Ann found a plastic stand and pushed it into place behind the pickup bed. We planned to lower the TV onto the stand and then onto the floor.
She was in charge of guiding the TV onto the stand. My job was to release the straps bit by bit. Quit laughing. This is a serious story.
We managed to get the TV to the plastic stand. The TV settled on the stand, which immediately collapsed.
The TV crashed to the floor. Huh. No broken glass.
No wonder those retro nerds loved these TVs. They’re indestructible.
“Are we going to leave it there?” Ann said, studying the crashed TV.
“Unless you know a CRT nerd, we’re out of here,” said the other we. I won that time.
