By CHRIS FREY

We owe it all to bad TV reception.

The announcement that Alan Gerry and New York State have pooled resources to make the Woodstock Performing Arts Center a reality is obviously very exciting news. The sound of flutes, oboes, trumpets and tympani noodling their way into proper tuning and then creating beautiful music is, at least to my way of thinking, much more exciting than the whir of a roulette wheel and the raucous clatter of slot machines.

But let's face it-it's very possible that none of this would be happening if Sullivan County had simply had better television reception several decades ago. Oddly, the cultural drawing power of Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, Dinah Shore, Ernie Kovacs, etc. may be the real reason county residents today find themselves on the brink of a new age of tourism.

When Dad wheeled the second hand TV into our Barryville house in the early fifties, we could not contain our excitement. It didn't take long before we were enjoying Kate Smith, Les Paul and Mary Ford and the others-beamed into our home from New York City.

I remember watching Roger Bannister break the four-minute mile on that television set. Like all other images on that DuMont screen, he appeared to be running through a Yukon blizzard in his skimpy shorts as he made sports history that day.

And there we have it. In the valleys and hollows of Sullivan County, we simply couldn't receive the signals necessary for satisfactory television viewing. In order to participate in the new technology that was knitting this country into one very large quilt of black and white dots, someone needed to figure out how to capture those elusive electronic waves.

That's what Alan Gerry did. We know the rest.

But Alan Gerry was not alone in his quest for better television viewing in Sullivan County. In Barryville we had two cable TV pioneers and I can't help but wonder what would have happened if they had created Cablevision Industries, earned mega-millions for their toil and then become philanthropists like Mr. Gerry.

Millard Hulse tried early on to capitalize on the TV era-his television repair shop on the banks of Halfway Brook no doubt became a vital stop for Barryvillagers baffled by the tubes and gizmos inside the cabinetry of those early out-sized TVs. I have to imagine that Millard was furiously trying to keep one chapter ahead of the customers in the repair manuals as the new technology engulfed us all.

Somewhere along the line, he realized that all the new tubes in his shop wouldn't make a bit of difference without a decent antenna perched atop the highest point in town-high enough that those invisible TV waves could be intercepted and funneled down the hill to be interpreted by those mysterious new boxes in his neighbors' homes. While I do not pretend to know the chronology of events in Sullivan County, Millard Hulse was the father of cable TV in Barryville and you can look it up.

As the phrase "good reception" began to be linked to TV viewing instead of football or a post wedding wingding, Barryvillagers eagerly signed up for Millard's "line." As I recall, the "line" was in fact a double strand of copper wire with plastic ribs and it ran through the woods and up the Glendella Hill to a small tower. Whether there was a background story of legal wranglings, property easements, etc. I have no idea; all I know is that pretty soon we all could see Whitey Ford and Moose Skowron in pinstripes-without the blizzard effect.

In a transaction that presaged Alan Gerry's sale of Cablevision to TimeWarner, Millard ultimately stepped aside when the "line" became too big an enterprise for him. Enter Eddie Wilson, the enterprising gas station owner, taxi operator, eel wrangler and all-around outdoor sportsman. Eddie's penchant for tromping through the woods in search of white-tailed deer made him a natural to now track the copper wire through those same woods, link up new subscribers and figure out how to get the winter ice off the line before it snapped right in the middle of The Ed Sullivan Show.

I actually remember the monthly hand-written "cable" bills that would arrive at our home. No doubt Agnes Wilson was the bookkeeper, and in between cleaning up the kitchen from one of Eddie's legendary venison suppers, taking the family to church and keeping up her bowling average, she managed to handle the cash flow for this fledgling communications venture.

Somewhere along the line Wilsonvision did not become Cablevision, but if it had, I suspect that Eddie would have underwritten a slightly different category of good works for his adopted county. I can see it now.....

Bucktown, USA-a simulated deer-hunting experience-for adults only and slightly sanitized for a politically correct era. Armed with electronic rifles, visitors would travel on a moving sidewalk through a virtual forest as computer-generated white-tailed deer emerge from behind the evergreens. If the digital hunters miss, a sound card in the computer system will emit one of Eddie's favorite epithets-there is a large selection!

Players would get only five shots-Eddie always encouraged marksmanship-and there would be no blood. Instead, successful players would be shunted off to a different sidewalk that would land them in a simulated 50's style kitchen complete with breakfast nook and a view of the Delaware River.

Here, life-sized robots would serve them an ersatz venison dinner made from soy product and the lucky hunters would wash it down with a pilsener glass full of Kaier's beer from the almost-forgotten Pennsylvania brewery favored by Barryvillagers of the 50's.

Or how about.....

An Erie Experience-Visitors to this tourist attraction would be ushered into a reproduction Packard taxicab for their short virtual trip across the Barryville bridge. Their animatronic driver would pull up to a simulated Erie Railroad station and regale the passengers with fishing stories while waiting for the evening train from Hoboken to roar into this Shohola of their imaginations.

From a computer in the backseat of the cab, passengers could select a virtual traveling companion or two to emerge from the Erie's Pullman car to join them for a weekend in the country. A film or television star of the 50's, a sports legend or even a long-lost relative found through AOL's White Pages.

Your virtual driver would grab your digital companions' bags, guide them by the elbow to your roomy passenger compartment and then drive slowly and reverentially past the large format video of Rohman's Hotel and back over the bridge. At the intersection, your passenger window would roll down automatically, revealing a vision of Reber's German-American Restaurant, and the sound of the Hammond organ and clinking beer mugs would briefly fill the old Packard cab. Time travel at its finest.

Or this scenario...

The Lure of the Outdoors-Animatronic Eddie would boost you up on the wing of a pontoon plane simulator and help you settle into your seat and strap in. Larry, his helper, would stow your fishing gear in the baggage compartment and then pound three times on the side of the fuselage to signal the pilot that it's time to take off for the greatest fishing of your life.

Shaky, the pilot, would take one more long pull from the silver flask in his vest, blink hard and take off toward the horizon. As the shimmering lakes pass below your plane, Eddie's recorded voice is heard through your headset as he begins instructions on how to land the big muskies and sturgeons that await you.

You soon find the tins of smoked Delaware eel that serve as in-flight snacks; the cold bottle of birch beer emerges from the chute at just the right time!

When the pontoons touch down and you glide to a stop on the chilly waters of Lake Ketchabigwan, you bound from your seat into the waiting rowboat. The trophy fish can be heard splashing just a few yards away.

Eddie Wilson, the honorary son of the father of Cable TV in Barryville, certainly loved the outdoors. He loved the Yankees and he loved his Packard cabs. But, as a philanthropist, he would not only have endowed the above tourism projects, but he would probably have followed the lead of Alan Gerry and given to medical science as well. In gratitude for successful hip surgery, Mr. Gerry has ensured through a generous endowment that an orthopedic surgeon will be trained to continue research in this field.

I dare say that Eddie would have had a personal medical cause too. Let's call it digital surgery.

When Eddie took over the "line" from Millard Hulse, you could count the customers on one hand. For Eddie this was especially meaningful.

You see, Eddie had lost several fingers from one hand in an accident. All the kids in town grew up thinking that he had shot them off with a hunting rifle-no doubt an apocryphal story encouraged by various parents as an object lesson in gun safety. Sorry, Mr. Heston.

In hindsight, Eddie was much too good a sportsman to have had this kind of accident. I don't actually know how Eddie became a candidate for custom mittens, but I would bet that he too would have found a deserving medical institution to support in the quest to restore people to the full complement of fingers.

This, of course, explains why, when Eddie would signal over the din of their garage to his helper Larry to take a ten-minute break, Larry was always back at work in seven minutes!

It is fun to speculate how things might have turned out had Millard and Eddie been the ones to spawn a huge cable television industry from Barryville beginnings. Theirs is a common story in the history of American enterprise. The proper mix of inspiration and perspiration, according to Thomas Edison, yields genius. We needn't bother to debate who in Sullivan County got that formula correct.

It's a safe bet that Eddie is right now sitting atop his celestial deer stand tipping his hunting cap to Alan Gerry for his foresight and especially for his benevolent reinvestment in Sullivan County. But the Eddie Wilson I remember is also trying to figure out how to land the taxi concession for the Performing Arts Center.

I suspect the fax will be arriving soon in Mr. Gerry's office.