we like it

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It’s hard for people now,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], city folks, especially, to comprehend what a big thing electricity was. When it came to us, we quickly installed a used Kelvinator Fridgidaire (I know, but...) and a used Silvertone radio, and with a 60-watt bulb hanging down in every room, we were in the modern age.

Consumer Reports had a letter from a woman who had just had a new dishwasher installed. She said at first, it jumped around all over the place. Somebody told her to put something under it, part of a pickup bedliner in this case, and it stopped its dancing.
That reminded me of another true tale about when electricity came to the [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
community.
Uncle Kent’s whole family would come down to listen. The fights were always on the Mutual Network, and we didn’t have a strong Mutual station nearby, so there’d always be a lot of static and whee-oo, ooh-whee, always at a critical moment, as we tried to zero in as best we could.
I’m not sure why we were so intensely interested in [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] boxing, but we were. Joe Louis won the heavyweight title from Jimmy Braddock a few days after we got our radio, and he fought all comers, not every three or four years, but every few weeks.

He fought Max Schmeling, Max Baer and Buddy Baer. He fought Arturo Goudoy from Argentina (who fought from a crouch). He fought Tommy Farr, who went the distance. There was Huge Abe Simon, Two-Ton Tony Galanto and handsome Billy Conn, who was leading on points ’til he got cocky and decided to slug it out with the Brown Bomber. Bad mistake. Some of them got return matches. They always did worse the second time around. He had solved them.
“Oh, we like it,” they said. “But it dances around all over the place. We have to
almost tackle it to get something out or in it.”
We were so lucky. Alabama Power ran a line up our fork of the road when I was 6 years old. But a bunch of kin folks who lived just a couple of miles away up the other fork didn’t get it for another 10 years, from REA. Anyway, we were blase veterans of this electric business when Daddy stopped by cousin Odus Chandler’s one day and asked them how they were liking this new service.
A few days later, Daddy stopped by again and asked about the patient. “Oh, it’s fine,” they said. But Daddy could tell that some of the adventure, some of the romance, was gone. It just sat here. No chasing it around ...
Cousin Odus had ordered a refrigerator from the Roebuck catalog, and had gone to the depot in his mule-drawn wagon to get it and bring it home, a good all-day ride, round trip. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
Anyway, the fight would be on the screen a few weeks later at the hallowed Lamar Theater (Just up the street from the mule barn).
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych] is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]: Electricity's arrival was a big deal way back when
“Hmm,” Daddy said. “Let me look at this thing.” Turns [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] out they hadn’t removed the shipping boards around the springs that kept it from springing. Daddy removed those, and the electric icebox just sat there like a broken pony and hummed.