The TV Repair Shop On West Dixie Highway

Eddie DeKneght owned Delta TV back when TV repair was big business and big console TV sets were fashionable furniture for the livingroom. He was a few years older than I was, old enough to remember living with his mother through WW-II, safe house to safe house, one step ahead of the Nazis.

I'd first met him at one of those Love-Ins at Greynolds Park a few years earlier. It turned out that we lived near one another and became great friends. He actually lived in the back of his shop. He had a Coleman camp stove and an itty-bitty refrigerator, and most of the "office" was filled up with a double bed mattress. This was even more amazing if you consider that Eddie had a full drum set in that little shop!

Eddie was from Holland where smoking pot was legal, and like a lot of guys I've met from there he had a thing for brown skin girls. I don't recall the name of this girl, but things were a lot more friendly and relaxed back in 1972. She was probably more concerned about being seen with rollers in her hair. Eventually Eddie fell in love with another brown skinned beauty, Eva, who had been my daughter Elena's nursery school teacher. They had a cute little girl named Shenequa, and then the three of them moved to Holland. I haven't heard from them since!