Where's the remote?

I was seven years old when my parents bought our first television set. The year was 1956, and the set was a huge blonde Zenith. I'll never forget the excitement I felt when the deliveryman rolled that behemoth into the living room.

They kept that TV till they bought their first color set sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. I was a newlywed at the time, and we were still using hand-me-down items to decorate our home, so the Zenith made its way to our apartment. Of course, blonde wood was totally passé at the time, so I availed myself of the same remedy everyone else was using on old furniture. I "antiqued" it...olive green.

Not only that, I gutted it, put a shelf in it, put doors on it...and covered the doors with some hideous-beyond-belief flocked Con-Tact paper in a Spanish scroll design...more olive green, but with gold flecks as an added (albeit even more gaudy) bonus. I hung a huge conquistador picture above it and called it our bar.  As ugly as the thing was, it saw many a good time roll back in the day.

1956 Zemotj
flickriver.com (Roadsidepictures)

Here is one more TV I found on another site that I had to include in this post. This is a futuristic German entertainment unit from 1958. How wild is this thing? It looks like it's about to blast off.

gadgethim.com