Thoughts of the New Day Jay Jacobs

laughing and giggling at Lucy’s antics and zany dilemmas. “Wasn’t it funny when she . . . ?” How about when she tried to. . . .” All the while I, a garrulous and often funny schoolyard participant, was struck dumb.

I had nothing to offer. All I could do was smile, nod in silent agreement to their comments, and imagine what they all had seen that was so hysterical: Stomping on a vat of grapes in her bare feet before falling into the tub; trying to keep ahead of an accelerating conveyor belt spewing out chocolates for packaging; rapidly becoming inebriated drinking an alcohol-laced health concoction while making a TV commercial.

In fact, I had never viewed the inside of the Ricardos’ New York apartment, where so much of the hilarity had its origins.

As the second or third season (I forget which) of “I Love Lucy” was about to begin, I knew my days of faking it were ending. I had been getting funny looks from my classmates all through the previous season. My ah-ha! moment came about suddenly, without warning as do many great solutions to dilemmas.

How did I pull off one of the early miracles of early television? To know how, you need to know the layout of another New York City apartment. Mine. On the small side, our apartment was shaped a bit like a semicircle with all the rooms opening on a central hallway. No room was totally hidden from the others.

With my bedroom door open, I could see a portion of the living room across the hallway. The television was at the far end of the room between two windows, way out of my line of sight. The set (as TVs were generally called then) was positioned there so that the cable to the antenna on the roof could easily be attached to the TV in our apartment three stories below.

On the opposite wall of the living room closest to my bedroom and visible to me, was a large wooden cabinet with a radio and phonograph inside and room for 78 rpm records. When not in use, this piece of furniture (today it would be called an entertainment unit) was adorned with two large, glass-framed photos on swivels and a joining base. The sepia-tone photos were of my father’s deceased parents, Jacob and Dora.

Although they died before I was born, their likenesses were the critical element in my brilliant scheme to watch – not just hear -“I Love Lucy.” Like so many of the world’s greatest inventors before me – Edison, Bell, Mme. Curie, for example – I came across the solution purely by accident. A Strategic Repositioning

At some point in the weekly housekeeping at the end of the summer, the positioning of the two aligned photos atop the cabinet had been altered, unintentionally I’m sure, from their normal position parallel to the wall behind them.

Instead, they were now at slight angles to each other, reflecting the windows on the opposite wall clear into my bedroom. The brightness of that sunny afternoon gave birth to a brilliant idea, one that I immediately intended to guard like a state secret. I quickly realigned the pictures correctly so as not to give away my new-found stroke of luck. I maintained my silent vigil of my grandparents’ images every day until it was nearly lights out for me on that Monday evening in late September.

Just prior to my bedtime and Lucy’s airtime, I quietly angled one of the two sepiatoned photos so that I could see the reflected image on the TV screen from my bed. With the audio as usual loud enough for me to hear it, I had the immense pleasure of actually watchingthe show.

Of course, what I saw was a mirror image of the show, but I didn’t care. Edison’s elation at his first working light bulb was nothing compared to mine.

I watched the entire season that way and the next one, too. I am certain I am the only one of those millions of viewers whose view of “I Love Lucy” was backward.

Indeed, in the notoriously funny episode when Lucy and Ethel take jobs in a chocolate factory, the conveyor belt filled with chocolates for packaging sped across my screen from left to right; everyone else saw the candy whiz by at ever increasing speeds right to left.

Also, on my jerry-rigged mirror TV, Lucy’s real-life husband Desi Arnaz entered the Ricardos’ faux New York apartment stage left, where he made his iconic announcement, “Lucy, I’m home!”

I revealed my secret to my parents years later when they arranged for Goodwill to pick up the radio/phonograph unit that had not worked for years. I was in college by then and old enough to choose whatever I wanted to watch. Once it was gone, my grandparents photos went into the hall closet.

I still have them all these years later, but I don’t know whatever happened to that marvelous swivel frame.

Along the Charles River, Cambridge, Massachusetts Photo by Chris Lang