In the mid-1970s, television was still a growing medium. It was becoming so entrenched in the American way of life that people gathered around it in living rooms every night. People talked about television as the new “fireplace” – it was the focal point of conversation in the family, much like a fire would have been in bygone days. Television was emerging from the black-and-white era into full color. But color TV sets were still so expensive that not many families in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood could afford them. It would be another ten years before the advent of the personal computer led to a worldwide Internet and thirty years before Google and YouTube.
