Free TV

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Fred Stiening

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It probably won’t shock you this is on a US highway in Chicago

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26 Responses to Free TV

  1. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    April 29, 2013 at 9:59 pm

    It might be free, but I’ll bet when you check in, you find it chained down and you will get an argument from the proprietor when you want to put your free TV in the trunk of your automobile. 😉

    That switchboard is a good idea. If your kids are misbehaving from the long trip, they may need to be paddled. 😉

    Important not to see things in black and white when looking for a modern motel.

    http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3252/3112168595_2fe3ac64d4_z.jpg

    • Art Stone says:
      April 30, 2013 at 2:06 am

      I have vague childhood memories of having to put coins in the motel TV to make it work. Or maybe that was magic fingers bed.

      I think everyone should spend a night in a flophouse at least once in their life.

  2. Ed Gein says:
    April 30, 2013 at 8:25 am

    Brings to mind one of my biggest pet peeves(and I have hundreds), that being gentrification. I’m sure in Chitown that place is indeed a flop house, but those old motor lodges occasionally break the horizon on old biways in more genteel parts, and can be quite a pleasant change from the franchisification of today’s Amurika. Trying to find local flavor in unique places has become as difficult as finding honesty in government.

    Give me 1950 America. Please.

    • CC1s121LrBGT says:
      April 30, 2013 at 8:59 am

      I’m with you, Ed. The same is true for places to eat when traveling. In the 1950s, McDonald’s became so successful by locating near the new Interstates and focusing not on food but on clean restrooms.

      Consider using sites like yp.com and yelp.com to get see customer ratings and then choose the local businesses with very low risk of disappointment.

      • Ed Gein says:
        April 30, 2013 at 9:08 am

        Just two weeks ago the wife and I were traveling through the Roanoke and Lynchburg areas of Virginia and passed through a small town that part gentrified (McD’s, CVS, etc.) and part old town. We were ready for some lunch and chose a nice little local eatery that was no frills but all awesome. Nice old fashioned burgers and fries and people so friendly we thought it was forty years ago. We actually saw intact families eating together, and even witnessed one couple saying grace before eating. No lie.

        I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, but we were in or right near Forest, VA.

        • CC1s121LrBGT says:
          April 30, 2013 at 9:33 am

          That’s great. I don’t know if you have a smartphone, but if you do, and go back to that place or another like it, consider posting some nice comments on yp.com (yellow pages) or yelp.com so others will try it too.

          Without a smartphone, you can also use the 1950s technique of looking at the parking lot. A restaurant with no customers near a restaurant with a big crowd is a good indication of which is better. But you have to see both for that to work. With a smartphone, it will tell you what exit to take and how to get to the place with the good reviews.

          • Art Stone says:
            April 30, 2013 at 9:52 pm

            Places with lots of trucks are another sign – but only if you like large portions of high calorie food, and it doesn’t alarm you when the PA system announces that someone’s shower is ready.

    • Art Stone says:
      April 30, 2013 at 6:56 pm

      I need you to destroy your computer then. Your fax machine, stop putting zip codes on letters. Your bank account is a passbook that you take to the bank and the teller manually writes your deposits and withdrawals. Children walking around on crutches crippled by polio. Black and white TV, 3 channels. Gasoline is not $15.9 cents a gallon, sorry. Only AM radio in your car, no way to play your own music. Long trips take forever because every small town has a Barney Fife with his 5 mile long 25 mph speed zone.

      I have no desire to live in the 1950s.

      • CC1s121LrBGT says:
        April 30, 2013 at 8:06 pm

        This is an interesting commercial for a 1950s computer…. I think it has more apps than Palm or Blackberry. 😉

        It is only 3 mins and starts at the 30 second mark.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFuEg6wtqzc

        • Art Stone says:
          April 30, 2013 at 9:47 pm

          Random things about Univac… They were not widely used in business, but were the backbone of the Federal Government. Their most high profile customer was Walt Disney, who would include segments about his Sperry Univac computers on his NBC wonderful world of color show, and the computer room was an important attraction in EPCOT, his dream of a top down centrally designed and controlled city were there was no distinction between business and government.

          When I arrived at Nasdaq, the quotation part of NASDAQ was still pretending it was a Sperry Univac 1100 – by then the company merged with Burroughs and was called Unisys. The stock exchanges ran Sperry Univac computers because of their close working relationship with government regulators. The Federal Reserve was also a big early adopter of Univac.

          Have I connected every dot yet?

        • Art Stone says:
          April 30, 2013 at 9:57 pm

          Grace Hopper – the mother of COBOL and the person who coined the term debugging, left the military in 1.949 to work on the design of Univac 1

  3. Ed Gein says:
    April 30, 2013 at 9:38 am

    Yes, we did do the 50’s test. We felt fine going there because the lot was nearly full. I just checked google maps- the restaurant is called Carol’s Place in Forest, VA. I recommend to anyone traveling the area. Thomas Jefferson’s vacation cottage is there- Poplar Forest. Beautiful home and grounds for any history buffs.

    • CC1s121LrBGT says:
      April 30, 2013 at 1:58 pm

      This one doesn’t pass the parking lot test 😉

      https://foursquare.com/v/the-stars-motel/4f8075b2e4b0a458ba00f403

      • Art Stone says:
        April 30, 2013 at 6:29 pm

        Boy, do I feel silly. According to the Chicago Crains business from 2006, the motel was torn down in 2006, just leaving the sign. They put it on eBay, but no bids.

        Flophouses are a step below old motels. The biggest difference is there is no bathroom and you share a common bathroom and showers. If you drop your soap, don’t bend over to pick it up.

        Around the country, states have been turning these motels into half way houses. Cheaper to rent them a room for $100 a week than keeping them in prison. Add in the Megan’s laws and prohibit sex offenders from living within x feet of any school, park, church, dairy queen, or any place a child may be present and you essentially make it impossible to have a home. Most people on the sex registry are not there for having sex with children

        • CC1s121LrBGT says:
          April 30, 2013 at 6:49 pm

          I feel silly too Art. Turns out they really did mean Free TVs. 😉

        • CC1s121LrBGT says:
          April 30, 2013 at 6:54 pm

          I read that in Pennsylvania some 14 year olds were charged with making, distributing, and receiving child pornography. The boy had asked his classmate to text him a photo of her bare chest and she complied.

          According to the law, they are both guilty of sex crimes and would be on the register when they turn 18.

          There was talk about amending the law. I hope they did – those kinds of laws only serve lawyers, judges, and police that make a career out of crime. 😉

          • Art Stone says:
            April 30, 2013 at 7:07 pm

            There was another story a few days ago a 19 year old guy had sex with a 15 year old girl. Statutory rape because someone wanted to make an issue of it. Spin the clock forward 10 years. They’re happily married. She asserts that it was consensual sex and she knew what she was doing. But the law doesn’t permit that. So now they can’t live anywhere. Get a ticket for urinating in public after a concert, you’re a sex offender.

            The road to hell….

  4. Parrott says:
    April 30, 2013 at 4:45 pm

    ” restaurant is called Carol’s Place in Forest, VA”
    I know where that is Ed. Good Food, and clean. They were busy
    Parrott

    • Ed Gein says:
      April 30, 2013 at 5:36 pm

      Yeah, it was a real treat. We saw some folks getting chicken fried steak or chicken fried chicken (hard to tell under the crispy breading and gravy) so I think I’ll try that next time. The whole area was clean too, very nice.

      • CC1s121LrBGT says:
        April 30, 2013 at 6:48 pm

        You guys are making me hungry. I miss that kind of food. Hard to find here in NJ where there is a pizza joint on every other corner. Pizza is great and we have outstanding bagels too, but I miss chicken fried steak and that Bar-B-Que.

  5. Art Stone says:
    May 1, 2013 at 2:57 am

    One of the odd items on my résumé is a stint working in FORTRAN IV running on GEISCO, GE’s time sharing service. It ran on Honeywell computers which users 36 bit words – the software was called DTSS that stood for Dartmouth Time Sharing System

    The GE 600 business was sold to Honeywell, who repackaged it as the Honeywell 6000 – which was the machine used to build Multics at MIT.

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