I can see it in my mind’s eye as if it was yesterday. With the exception of the excitement I felt at the moment, the events of that warm afternoon are as fresh in my mind as they were then. Timeline: Spring, 1955. Dateline: a cotton field in Dunklin County, Missouri. IT was inside a large box riding in the back of the family truck as my father drove toward our little house in the Mississippi Delta just a short distance from Dead Man’s Slough and a mile or so from Dead Man’s Curve–both of which were notorious for, as I’m sure you have guessed, dead male bodies. The monster in the back of the truck was about to add three more corpses to the area’s notoriety, only these victims would die spiritual deaths. And one of them would be a female.

Life had recently taken a major up-turn for the Jaques family. We had just moved into a house with an indoor bathroom. I had just turned 15 and felt as if we had arrived at the big time–I did not have to leave the house to answer nature’s call. And now, as I ran across the field, I could see IT getting ever closer to my house. Could life get any better? Now we could really live. With IT in our possession, we would be as technologically sophisticated as our friends and relatives. No more walking to a neighbor’s house to watch wrestling on Saturday night. No more riding a horse to Johnson’s Store to listen to The Lone Ranger on the radio. No more braving the freezing cold or the blistering heat to hear the Friday Night Fights. The world had come into our home. By now you have probably guessed that IT was a television.

Like everyone else with a “boob tube” at their disposal, I immediately became hooked on the various types of entertainment which magically materialized in the corner of our living room each evening–westerns, game shows, baseball, wrestling, prize fights, sit-coms–what I had only been able to imagine now became reality with the turn of a nob.

As the quality of t.v. production advanced over the years my addiction grew. Though very religious, I knew more about the t.v. schedule that I did about the Bible. And I was not alone. From the 50’s through the 90’s the T.V. Guide was the best selling book on the planet. Wherever you went you could hear people talking about what had happened on the screen the night before. The nation and much of the world was now planning its evening meal around the t.v. schedule. Bible study and family discussions had taken a back seat to the whatever was on the tube. In the case of religious people, the fact that the one-eyed monster was consuming four hours or so of our day, more on the weekends, was not a problem. The fact that the Bible was gathering even more dust on the shelf did not matter. After all, we were all “saved.” There was no need to be fanatical about such things. And it was all so innocent. The most risque’ thing seen on the tube was an occasional kiss. I, along with the rest of the American population, was totally hooked on the offerings of the grainy, round eye that was bringing the world into  our living rooms.

Then, when I was about 40, something happened–I was REintroduced to Jesus Christ. Having been called to His ministry in my early teens, I had rejected the call and had settled for being religious and churchy. One of the first things He brought me to task about was television. I soon realized that the innocent looking box was Satan’s instrument by which he was mesmerizing the world, entertaining them while easing himself into the minds of hundreds of millions of unsuspecting victims. By the mid 60’s he was firmly ensconced in the hearts of the Western World. Now he could turn those hearts into havens of sin and degradation. But he needed a spokesman, an up-front man, someone who, with a smile and a laugh, ease sin into viewers’ minds without their realizing it. And he had just the man. His name was Milton Berle.

Soon Uncle Milty’s salty words and racy scenarios were filling our living rooms and being greeted with laughs and giggles, words and scenes that, prior to the advent of t.v., had not been allowed in the presence of women and kids. Now, instead of watching white hat-wearing cowboys take down the bad guys we were watching scenes formerly found in the pages of little 10 cent pamphlets purchased on Saturday night in the alley behind the bank. Satan had pulled off this stunt thousands of years earlier in the Garden of Eden. Once again he was victorious. And this time his prey numbered in the millions.

Several years ago a video game called “pokemon” took the world by storm. “Pokemon” in Japanese means “pocket monster.” Though the video game has come and gone, the concept is still with us. Today the world is obsessed with a modern version of the pocket monster. Only this time the monster is real and actually resides in the pocket. No longer confined to an area in the living room or bedroom of the home, the beast, disguised as a must-have toy, is found hiding in billions of pockets in the form of little plastic boxes. The monster among us is the Internet. To be continued. L.J.