This post is specifically for an assignment for my media history class at BYU. Hope you enjoy what my grandparents had to say. It was fun for me to hear their perspective of early TV from the small town viewpoint. The interview continues for quite a bit more than what I have transcribed. If you are interested in hearing more, I have it in WAV form and can send it to you to listen to if you would like. (Both of my grandparents signed release forms allowing this to be posted online.)
Comms 301 Oral History Project
Interview with LuWayne and Bonnie Barrington, my paternal Grandparents
Date: March 8th, 2008; Kaysville, Utah Interviewer: Brittany Barrington
Transcriber: Brittany Barrington
Digitally Recorded
Mini Biography: Bonnie and LuWayne Barrington are current residents of Kaysville, Utah. They moved to Kaysville during the Fall of 2006 from Preston, Idaho where they had lived since 1969. Before then they have moved across various parts of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho while LuWayne worked for Utah Power. They are the parents of four children, Kenneth, Evan, Rex, and Sheila. They have been married for almost 59 years after meeting each other in Preston where they both grew up. Both are retired and enjoy spending time with their family members that live near by, as well as going to the temple and working on family history.
Brittany Barrington (Br): Ok, this is Brittany Barrington, a Comms 301 student for Brigham Young University, interviewing my grandparents Bonnie and LuWayne Barrington about anything and everything involving the media, specifically television. It is March the 8th and we are in their home in Kaysville, Utah. So grandpa and grandma are you ready to talk about what TV was like back then?
LuWayne Barrington (Lu): Well, if we can remember.
Bonnie Barrington (Bo): I still think it was interesting that first television that we.. I.. I don’t know whether if we had seen it, a television… but the first one I remember seeing was over at Ray Ferrell’s in Lynrose. We went over for dinner..
Lu: That’s before we got ours, isn’t it?
Bo: Yes, yes, that was up there. And they kept the TV going while we were eating, while we did everything. And that was something that was a little hard for us to understand, why it wasn’t turned off during… during the meals and things. So mainly we have turned ours off while we’re…doing that. But um…
Lu: So that would be previous to 1956, if that’s when we got our first one in Smithfield.
Bo: And the first one we bought was in 1956.
Lu: Christmas for 1956 and we just got moved into that house in Second ward... I forgot the address. But any way we bought the TV then I moved back as a Meter man. I would read meters and correct them and I got in the meter department in January
Bo: But we bought this wonderful TV and it was just beautiful. And we were so excited about it.
Br: Do you remember what brand it was, Grandpa?
Lu: It was a Filco I think.
Bo: Filco, yes.
Lu: Because we…That was just a good brand then I thought.
Bo: Just a black and white. We were just tickled. And we had three little boys. And we just had it a day and my visiting teachers, they were older ladies, can and they sat there and they spent most of the time telling me how it was going to ruin our boys’ lives because we had television and that’s all they’d want to do was watch television. And I had it on when they came but I turned it off when they came. And I was a little bit disappointed because I thought I didn’t need them to say that. I thought I was smart enough to know when…
Lu: Well… there’s some kids get too much TV (Laughs)
Bo: Well I know… but especially now.
Lu: We have too many credit cards too. (Laughs)
Bo: Television… one thing about the kids. Kenneth, he’d want to watch that and then go do his studies. Finish the program, for a hour, or whatever. But Evan… there was never a time when television took precedence over his homework. I don’t believe. Was there?
Br: He’s still like that.
Bo: Still like that… It was important to get his school work done.
Lu: Homework come first.
Bo: Yeah. And we never did have to ask him if he had his homework done. I don’t think. I never did ask him that I don’t believe. But Kenneth, he didn’t mean to, but… well he’d get it done. But then Kenneth would want to visit and watch television and stuff. And Evan, when he got his work done, then that’s what he’d do.
Lu: I think Kenneth took after his mother. She likes to watch television as she does her work. (laughs) If I’m going to study, I’ve got to have it quite.
Bo: I don’t have the television on, but I like music or something on while I’m working. Are you like that?
Br: I’m most definitely like that. I’m constantly listening to something.
Bo: See it’s alright.
Lu: I guess if you’ve got it constantly. I have a hard enough time focusing as is.
Br: I use it more to block everything else out, so I focus in on what I’m doing.
Bo: See that’s what I do… Well LuWayne you tell about the TV we bought and we liked it so well… the one you made into a book case.
Lu: Well the first was the Filco, that we had in Smithfield. And we went back to Preston in January of ’57 for the meter department. I think it was two or three years… that Filco was a good one. Well, I don’t know when it was, but it was a Motorola, it was in big wooden case like you can see down stairs in the cabinet.
Bo: Now it was color.
Lu: Yeah the Motorola was color. And it was an expensive one, it should have lasted a long time but I don’t know… how long did it last? Well it didn’t last as long as we thought it should. That’s when we bought the Zenneth down in Smithfield. Well I worked there in Smithfield. And it was on a cart. It was a colored one too.
Bo: Well most were colored by then.
Lu: And we had it down stairs in Preston. Did we have it do there to start with?
Bo: Yes, we had it down there while the kids were home.
Lu: Which one did you have upstairs then?
Bo: I had that little one that I won from the Lyons Club that I won at a raffle, and set it on the table so I could see it from the kitchen.
Lu: In the dinning room?
Bo: Yes. In the dinning room, so I could see it from the kitchen.
Lu: But didn’t we have another besides that?
Bo: Yes, we had the one downstairs.
Lu: So we had the big one downstairs. Was the little one black and white?
Bo: No, it was color.
Lu: What became of it?
Bo: I think it finally wore out.
Lu: So you’re saying that Zenneth downstairs and the little one upstairs. Is that all we had upstairs? We didn’t watch any TV upstairs?
Bo: No that’s all. And some people have Television in their bedroom and we’ve never ever had television in our bedroom wherever we’ve lived. And we’ve been married 58 almost 59 years.
Lu: I thought we always had a TV upstairs in Preston.
Bo: No, we didn’t LuWayne. When we moved back…
Lu: We moved back to Preston in ’57.
Bo: But we didn’t have it up there until after Evan and Kathy got married.
…[The next few minutes were spent on my grandfather trying to remember the various houses they lived in, including their addresses, and how they were furnished.]…
Bo: My vary favorite program on television was Lawrence Welk and I still like that.
Lu: He’s been dead for years and years and years… and she still likes it.
Bo: I just loved those fancy customs they’d wear. They just looked wonderful in color. What did you like LuWayne?
Lu: Oh, football game, basketball games…
Bo: But you loved to watch the news and those westerns.
Lu: John Wayne and his westerns.
Bo: So that’s movies. Oh and you like the Lone Ranger… Dodge City…
Lu: Bonanza was one we liked too.
Bo: Yeah we liked it…
Lu: I often think of TV and the technology that it’s come… well take radio and the last 50 years. Our parents would be turning in their graves with what we have now… Well what I was going to tell you was in the 70’s when I hurt my back, Rex and I were working on the muffler under the Buick. I twisted my back or something…and I couldn’t get up… I went to two or three doctors, and one put a needle in my spin and we would see in my spin on a little TV… what was it called?
Bo: Oh, an epidural…
Lu: But they had to have the picture to do it. I wonder how they did it before… well that’s not quite TV, but it’s an outgrowth of it. I don’t know how many TV’s we’ve had the years…
Bo: Well, like we said we’ve been married 58, just about 59 years. And when we got married we just had the radio and it was 57 before we got our first one… And you think of everything they have now. They’ve got the cell phones that you can watch things on…
Lu: We got electricity in Riverdale in 1929. I was ten or eleven when we got our first radio. Wonder what they did before that… just work I guess.
Br: You probably had to socialize with real people.
(all laugh)
Bo: Well do you have any questions?
Br: Sure, do you remember how many channels you had when you got your first TV?
Bo: Well, 2, 4, and 5 out of Salt Lake.
Lu: NBC, ABC, and CBS… just the three I think…
Bo: Yeah… and then we got Idaho Falls, Blackfoot and Pocatello stations when we were in Preston.
Lu: When did we pick up all the other ones?
Bo: Now there was something that had cartoons on it… maybe I’m just remembering the Saturday morning cartoons. I know the kids liked to watch that.
…[They then went off on a tangent about American Fork, where they lived in the late 60s and my grandmother’s work there with the Relief Society.]…
Br: Do you remember any major events that were covered by TV news live? Like they did with 9/11?
Bo: I remember when they had the dam break in Sugar City.
Lu: I think it was 1967 when the Teton Dam broke… Yeah they had that on TV. You could see pictures of houses floating down the main street in Rexburg. (laughs) You could see the houses just floating alone and then make the turn with the street…(laughs).
Bo: Some times I remember we’d be watching a show and then something would happen and they’d bleep out the show and tell about it. I remember being younger and thinking why couldn’t they just wait until the news for them to show it. I now realize the importance of showing it when it happened. What else do you remember LuWayne?
Lu: There was the Oneida hydroelectric plant in the 80s… was it 84? That was on TV… Four guys got killed. There are three generator there and they were overhauling them. And they have these surge tanks to help hold the water while they repair them. But they were fixing a valve, the valve locked on them, and the pipe to the tank ruptured and the water shot out. It shot over a good ways where they had this two-ton trunk we had. There were some guys in the truck and the water just washed the building it was in away with the truck too. This one truck went down into the river. One of them was killed by a bolt or something. But one guy was able to get out in the river, but he was about froze by the time he got to the edge of the river. It was about 10 below, late in the evening around closing time. It ended up killing about four of them. Well I don’t really remember when it was, but I remember it happening and being on TV. It was where I first started out with Utah Power in the 50s.
Bo: Now one thing that we were really proud of was the Christmas lights we have in Preston, which is a small town. We really went to town with them. And the Salt Lake channel 5 showed us there. They still show on TV each year. We’re really proud of that.
Lu: Oh what was that movie they made there… Napoleon, Napoleon Dynamite. They even have a street name Napoleon Dynamite there now. It was an odd ball, but it gave Preston some advertising… (laughs)
Bo: What else… Conference used to be just on the radio and then they started showing it on TV. And I remember us being glued to the television because we thought it was so neat. It seems like they were just in the room with you. It made it special.
Lu: And now they use the satellites for Regional conferences so you have 30 or 40 stakes all watching the same thing. It’s neat.
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