“There are places I’ll remember,
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better.
Some have gone, and some remain.”
“In My Life,” recorded by The Beatles on their 1965 album, Rubber Soul.
“Can I take that to the front for you?” she asked, nodding toward the TV lamp tucked under my arm.
She was the antique shop proprietor. I guessed her to be a little younger than me, but that’s just about everyone these days.
“It looks just like the one my mom had,” I said, handing it to her with a smile. “In 1957. I was just nine, but memories remain like it was yesterday.
Always said if I saw one, I would buy it.”
“What’s a TV lamp?” some may ask, even some the same age as the antique shop lady.
TV lamps flourished as a phenomenon when televisions became common in homes during the early 50s. However, they were not like standard lamps because they lacked a shade, and their primary purpose was not to provide room lighting. Instead, the bulb was located behind the lamp’s body to cast a soft glow of light on the wall behind the television and a silhouette of the lamp toward the viewer.
They were born on the notion of diffusing light near the television, thereby preventing damaged eyesight from watching too much TV, a problem espoused by medical experts in the 1950s.
But then, it was a time when parents’ fear of children going blind from watching too much television was second only to shooting an eye out with a Red Ryder BB gun or, heaven forbid, catching ringworms from a cat.
Since they occupied prominent places on top of large floor model black-and-white televisions popular back then, TV lamps quickly became decorative statements.
Ceramic frogs, flamingos, seashells, swans, and suchlike. However, for some inexplicable reason, the most common lamp was a panther. Sleek, black, and poised in a stalking stance.
And that was mom’s TV lamp. A squaredoff, gold-colored metal mesh base supported the ceramic cat and housed a planter in the bottom. Mom kept ivy growing under her panther, giving the illusion that it might be prowling the jungle while she watched Perry Mason.
I always remembered mom’s lamp.
And the night a lifetime ago when both her lamp and her heart were broken.
It happened during a move from the public housing apartments in Seymour, where we lived out in West Texas until my parents bought a house on E. Morris Street, just a few blocks away. I don’t remember what else was in the back of the pickup truck.
Maybe a couch, a coffee table, or something else. I just remember the truck hitting a bump, bouncing the panther out and onto the pavement, shattering the ceramic figure and my mother’s heart. Probably because of her tears as we picked up the pieces off the dark street, that’s all I remember about that incident. Maybe it was a special gift. Perhaps she had saved money to buy it or used books of S&H Green Stamps from shopping at the grocery and meat market on the downtown square.
Memories defining her attachment to it are gone.
We all have memories of special moments, places, and things that remain. But I’m not just a memory collector; I collect documentation. I have furniture that belonged to my grandparents.
Some of mom’s salt and pepper shaker collection. Dad’s coin collection and his tools.
My grandmother’s dishes and nick-nacks.
Hey, I even have a ‘57 Ford my grandparents bought new 66 years ago this month.
Each piece evokes a memory. A smile. A laugh. Other times, tears. And whenever a memory of that TV lamp crossed my mind over the years, I would think, “If I ever see one like it, I’m going to buy it.”
That day dawned last Saturday.
“My mother had one like this, too,” the lady at the antique store, the lady who was probably a little bit younger than me, said as she carefully wrapped it and placed it in a bag.
“It brings back lots of memories.”
Tonight, my 1953 vintage sleek black panther planter TV lamp is casting a soft glow on the wall under my flat-screen television mounted above it.
I’m drafting memories into words, watching Perry Mason, and remembering the night mom’s lamp was lost.
I’m also thinking now that I have a TV lamp, I should quit worrying about going blind from watching too much television.
