Heh, nice thing about tube type TVs was that when something went wrong with it, you could take those tubes out and carry them to some local stores and test them to try to fix it yourself. Been there, done that myself a few times.
As a kid our first TV was around the mid 1950s (can't remember for sure). It was a Crosley brand name and cabinet that thing was in was as big as today's washing machines. Had an odd oval shaped screen and of course was black and white only. We picked up 3 local channels with a fixed yagi antenna on the roof but there was a little compromise involved as none of them were best picture, but we did get to watch 3 of them though instead of just one or two with really good pictures.
Ahh yes, those were the "good old days" all right. And back then we were "GREEN" before it was ever "fashionable", ie, I either walked or rode my bike to elementary school, then I either hitch hiked or rode the city bus to a centrally located high school. We had only ONE car, one phone on a party line and we had no A/C, only a window fan. The house only had ONE TV, not one in each room. We recycled soft drink bottles, beer bottles and also milk bottles. The mail man WALKED to our house to deliver mail and us kids played outside most of the time instead of sitting in front of the TV all day. As I said, those were the days! ;-)
It had V Hold and H Hold but didn't use it much.
