Build a boat or plant a garden, but turn off the TV!

Posted on by John Nation

I would like to applaud reader Meredith Hope’s letter “Shame on You, Charter” [Feb. 9 Xpress] for taking [the cable company’s] current idiotic ad campaign to task.

I gave up commercial TV in all its forms in 1972. At that time, the average American was watching 39.6 hours of TV a week. Call it 40 here. So I suddenly had weeks with 40 (more or less) extra non-TV hours in them. Here’s what I did with those 40 hours per week.

I built a 40-foot wooden sailboat; I built a classic “tear-drop” camper; I learned to play the piano; I have completed the fuselage and tail for a replica of the immortal Supermarine Spitfire airplane; I co-planted a garden with my life partner in north Asheville; and I put a new bed on a 1982 truck.

So that’s what I did and am still doing.

(Oops, I almost forgot: I also wrote four books.)

I do not however know very much about what’s on television. I’ll try to survive and not spend too much “watching gravel.”

— John Nation
Asheville

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2 thoughts on “Build a boat or plant a garden, but turn off the TV!”

  2. twinkie223

    wow, you are so much more evolved and enlightened than I am! I’m just a simple mouth-breather who believes that TV is the greatest single human invention ever. It tells me what to buy and who to hate. So go, get in your boat and sail away, but remember what happened to the crew who took the three-hour tour. Wait, I guess you missed that episode. Let’s just say you might end up eating a lot of coconut.

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