Cold Toes and Busted TVs

The ten stories that comprise COLD TOES AND BUSTED TVs range in location from the Appalachian Mountains to the Libyan Desert, and in time from the 1940s to the present. The cast of characters includes an old mountain man and his young, big-city-dwelling great-grandson; a military “brat”; Cherokee tribal elders; Arab college professors; Haight-Ashbury hippies; dirt-track race car drivers; and, of course, TV repairmen.

Doug McGuinn was himself a TV repairman. Which explains why he sometimes compares life to a television set – everything works fine until the warranty runs out! The warranties have run out for many of the dreamers, drifters and deadbeats who wander the pages of Cold Toes and Busted TVs. Now their fates are in the hands of God or Allah or the Great Spirit. Or the 24,000-volt zap of a high-voltage rectifier.