dual personalities

As you know, I’ve been going through boxes of old papers and letters whenever I can find the time. In my latest foray into the past, I found this business card:

It brings back some good memories. Back in the early 1960s we had a large black and white TV in a nice Maple case that looked more or less like this.

Its insides were full of complex tubes and wires.

Periodically, when one of those little glass tubes needed replacing, some fuse blew, or one of the more delicate knobs required fine tuning, we called Danny, the owner of the business card shown above. He would come right away and fix the machine.

Danny’s visits always thrilled this little dual personality. From his first appearance when I was three or four (?), we became fast friends. Danny always seemed like a kind of magician to me. While my father couldn’t make heads or tails of all that circuitry, Danny understood it all! More important than his technical expertise, he was an incredibly cheerful, friendly and tolerant guy, who never seemed to mind that I hung around watching what he did and chattering incessantly. I probably drove him crazy, but he never let on. His acceptance meant a lot to me. Alas, time flies. We got another TV and rarely needed to call a repairman, and I grew self-conscious anyway. Gone was the outgoing chatterbox of yore.

Finding the business card brought all of that back to me. I was chagrined to discover no last name on the card, but I did look up the address. It’s a nice little house in nice suburb and it happens to be for sale.

My sleuthing discovered that a Daniel W. Witt and his family once lived there. He’s now 92 — could he be our Danny? I don’t know, but if I did identify him correctly and someone close to him ever finds this post, I’d like to say thank you for being kind to a silly little girl way back when.

Isn’t the internet wonderful?