3 years in New York City, I lived there, and I worked for [a company] and I installed antennas, did TV work there, but I didnt own a TV at the time. As matter of fact I put the first TV that went in to Jack Daniels Bar on 5th Avenue in Times square. We installed a 7 black and white TV. But I didnt own a TV for myself until 1949, back in North Carolina, because Greensboro had a TV station. I bought a 10, round, metal tube TV.C. K.:When you were young, did you have a radio?W. B.:Yeah, we had a radio, it was battery operated. I dont remember when the first radio was, but I do remember that you wouldnt turn the radio on and leave it on. We would turn the radio on after supper, listen to the daily news, it wouldnt be much of a big deal. We would listen to Amus and Andy, and when the program was over we would turn it off. We would sit around and watch that radio just like a television, like we wanted to see what was going on.C. K.:What was Amus and Andy?W. B.:Oh it was kind of a comedy program with two men, they were white men, talking in a Negro dialect. It was, you know, just a comedy. It was well accepted.C. K.:Since you were in the war, did you get a chance to fly in a plane in the war?W. B.:No, not until after the war, not until December 1945. Then I stayed in New York for a while, then I went home. But during the war, when I was a radio electrician aboard a destroyer, one of the officers aboard the destroyer was commodore Arley Burk. You might have heard that name, like the Arley Burk class destroyer. Like the [USS] Cole. But Arley Burk was a commodore at the time, and he was in control of one of the squadron destroyers of his own. And he was a man that came up through the ranks. And a man named Shellenburg was under him with the electronics group which I was in. And we did some basic things back then, at least basic to us. For instance, at the battle of the Phillipine Sea, we listened to the radar from the different destroyers, battl...
