In 1952, a man named Gerry came to our house in Roscoe, NY and talked to my mother and father.  A few days later, way up the mountain, I noticed, something different  very close to where I spent a lot of time camping (I was 11).  There was a strange assortment of aluminum tubes that suddenly appeared only a few yards of my “camp”.  It was only about 10 feet off the ground and easy to climb.  These pipes were pretty cool to use as blowguns and arrows for my new bow.  Then, I noticed that there was an electric outlet at the base of the collection of tubes.  I borrowed a 100ft extension cord from my house and took a heater up the “mountain”. I discovered that I could get radio reception up there also, if I plugged in.  WWVA from Wheeling, WVA.  I hauled an electric hot pad allowed me to cook without the hassle of building a fire.  Sometimes it was really cold in the Catskill Mountains, so I took up an electric blanket.  It was really great to have electricity where my camp was. Then one day while I was hosting a pre-teen party at my camp, listening to the radio, and drinking elderberry wine that I had “borrowed” from my parents latest home-brewed batch, a bunch of old guys came up the mountain.  (Except during deer hunting season, it was very rare to see adults up there since there were no roads or trails.)  Mr. Gerry was really angry about my blowgun assortment.  And to make matters worse, – so much for the conveniences: they unplugged all my appliances, confiscated all my gear, and told my parents.  

My parents had given Mr Gerry permission to put an antenna up on our property.  I unknowingly had unplugged the amplifier.  And all my gear blew a fuse some 2000 feet down the mountain and the signal from one of the country’s first cable TV experiments had failed.  While my parents thought it was funny (“boys will be boys”), I had foiled Alan Gerry’s first experiment into cable television.  Only a momentary setback for him:  a pioneering  entrepreneur  in the  cable  television industry, Mr. Gerry was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Cablevision Industries Corporation (???CVI???), one  of the  nation’s largest privately owned  cable  companies.  In 1996 CVI, then the nations 8th largest cable system sold ($2.7 billion) and became Time Warner Cable.  

There you have it, my 1952 story.