The Entertainment Center

That Someday Is Now

My son and his family went from a 65" to an 82" in their family room, my first thought was that it really didn't look that much bigger until I walked into another room where the 65" now hung and it seemed "tiny."

I remember having a used 21" round screen RCA Color TV that originally sold for $700 bucks in 1968 dollars. When the screens went rectangular, I became certain that the sky was the limit!

23", 25", 27", RCA, Zenith, Motorola, Sylvania, Philco, Admiral, GE and Muntz.

There were Entertainment Centers combos with Stereo tuners, turntables, record storage with built-in speakers that were cloth-draped to conceal the woofers to look like theatre curtains.

And then, of course, my first and only man-cave had all the TV's I hung around on corner shelves around the basement sport's bar. I remember the two massive monsters, a 200 lb 32" Sony, and that gorilla of a Samsung 35"

Now that we are older, wiser, and settled into a condominium, we have a couple 26" flat-screened skinnies. There is one in the spare bedroom, and another in the kitchen.

We have 4k 55" in the corner of the living room that replaced the 49" pre-cataract special that convinced me I was unable to read the subtitles or credits on the screen anymore. The latter black-screened beauty now resides on a dresser in our bedroom.

Yeah, it looked pretty big at first, however, like anything else, you just get used to it.

And the surgery?

A big success.

I can see, read, and flip channels with the best of them.

So, here's a story.

A long time ago, during the mid-seventies, I worked a stint in the greater Ft. Lauderdale area for a guy named Jigs Greco. Jigs, who served in the millitary, was the eldest of the seven notoriously infamous Greco brothers that I grew up with back in Pennsylvania.

Jigs' managed an American Redball franchise that was in a warehouse district with a Pompano Beach address. His youngest brother Earp, was freshly released from a PA prison farm and his family wanted to make sure that Earp would be taken care of and coached to be put back on the right track.

Earp and I, who were good friends for many years back in our hometown, would come to move many a heavy chunk of precious, sometimes even priceless furnishings.

Rich people had everything.

There were ornate buffets, back bars, wall cabinets, antique dressers, imported Queen Victorian china fainting sofas, hand-carved headboards, grand and baby grand pianos, you name it.

We were like the original "Two Guys and a Truck" though not to be confused with the contemporary version of the same name.

Anyone who ever knew Earp knew that he was more than just a little bit off-center.

For lack of a better word, Earp was nuts.

By the time Earp was fifteen, he could shave in the morning and look like a grizzly one-eyed porcupine when Happy Hour rolled around. He would rarely need his fake ID to belly up to any bar.

The reputation of his brothers always preceded him and living up to the name sometimes required that occasional fight or two.

Trouble was the family's middle name.

Earp had a glass eye as a result of being hit in the head with a milk bottle when he was five by his only brother who didn't go by a nickname. That brother was George, or as his mother would call him, "my Georgie."

And George was the "quiet" one.

George and Earp's brothers all went by names like "Short," "Doc," "Lumpy," and "Jake." Their mother's name was Clara, and all the kids just called her by name.

"Hey Clara, I'm hungry, make me some eggs!" was not an uncommon plea. Nor was, "are them fuckin' eggs done yet?"

I never heard any one of them refer to Clara as "mom."

Never mom, just "Clara."

Clara was her own piece of work. She drank a lot, wore an array of different wigs, and drove a bright yellow Chevelle SS.

It wasn't uncommon to see her wig planted sideways on her head while she'd argue with anyone who might be up for that challenge. I clearly remember driving down the main street of Potttown one day seeing her in a heated exchange with one of the newly appointed meter maids.

Several days later, while sitting at her kitchen table, I asked her about it, and she fumed, "this town might have Dick Tracy as the chief of police and Charlie Brown as the high schoop principal, but I'll tell ya' Johnny, that broad was a dickless bitch."

The Greco home was a roach infested hoarder's intervention dream.

There were only five rooms, and you'd have to navigate through the narrow paths between the piles of dirty laundry, stacks of old newspaoers and magazines, and the cardboard cases filled with empty quart beer bottles.

Reading Premium Ale, Sunshine, Valley Forge.I guess it was just any brand that could be bought at four quarts for a buck.

Stray cats were everywhere, sticky liquor bottles lined a good section of the buffet, and partially eaten cans of crusty or slimy cat food pretty much covered the rest of it.

And the back yard? You guessed it...

There were cars on cinder blocks, mounds of scrap steel, stripped down campers, utility trailers, bumpers, fenders, truck doors, tires, several old chassis, engine blocks and enough lumber to burn the entire neighborhood down.

OK, I almost forgot...This story IS about The Entertainmemt Center.

I remember one terribly humid, nearly 100 degree day, when Earp and I were way too hungover but doing everything we could to manhandle an entertainment center into a client's second story, upscale apartment in Boca Raton.

The homeowner was an anxious, picky, arrogant little prick.

The foyer was large, but the staircases were narrow. The first few steps were easy.

When we finally realigned ourselves enough to scale the second set of seven stairs, we were about two steps in when Earp yelled to me, "God damn it man, put this fuckin' thing down, this sonofabitch' is pinchin' my fuckin' fingers!"

My head was wedged between the wall and the unit and all the weight was on my kneecaps, I could barely even look up.

We took a deep breath. Earp's sweat was dripping and rolling like spitballs down the top of that 7' long Zenith entertainment combination with every imaginable built in.

Earp's glass eye glared from above his cheekbone.

All I could think was that maybe he really is the Wolf Man.

Earp popped his neck and wiggled even more for a better grip, he was finally standing firmly near the very top of the stairs. My neck and head were twisted, my arms were shaking and my knees were about to give out.

My shoulder was wedged between all the weight of that damned thing and the handrail.

I regripped and looked up, trying to find some comfort in knowing there was just a few more steps.

And then, there was Earp, grinning with his best straight face and that one good eye looked me right in mine as he smiled and said:

"You're fuckin' lucky I like ya' man!"

Yep, I guess I am.