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Fathers and Sons

Why all the junk around the farm?
Because Dad always said, of everything:
"That will be worth money, someday!"

It was.  To the guy who picked up junk
and drove it to the landfill.  Someday,
a million years from now, someone
will drill that odd hill for gas, or trace
elements, and Dad will be right.

For so long as we have owned a TV,
we have used the darned thing for years
until we decided that it was time for
the next-to-the-latest technology.

A new TV replaced the original,
and the original found a new career
in some other room.  It was like those
steel balls that executives play with:
swing one, let it slam, and watch one
at the other end jump away.
Swing two, and two jump!
About every ten years,
we have played TV dominoes:
bump, bump, bump, toss!

Yesterday we unhooked two old TVs,
and sent both of them to TV heaven.
Both of them were old cathode ray tubes.
Their average weight was
about that of a sea manatee:
same size, shape, and loveability.

The honest truth is that we already had
a still older set, resting on its back,
that we quit using several years ago.
Some of us did not want to toss it
because maybe somebody could use it.

Today, I returned two converter boxes
to the cable company:  our monthly bill
promises to drop about fifty-seven cents.
I will bet that in the back room of Comcast,
those two converter boxes were tossed
onto a pile, and two still-older boxes
shot out the back door to a dumpster.

Now we have just one TV set.
I expect it to go out right in the middle
of a Republican primary debate,
and how will I know it happened?

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