Living in our changing times . . . .

[Linda196]

I was reminded vividly of "the good old days" last evening for Earth Hour. I was a few minutes late starting, partly because I spent some time explaining the  concept to my granddaughters before lights out, but also because it takes time to shut down TVs, computers, and lights you forgot you leave on all the time, like my Himalayan salt light LOL.

After an hour of enjoying the remarkable quiet (no electronic hum from media appliances) and the beauty of the bright, though not full moon on the fresh snow, I decided not to turn back on, and that I could wait to "tune in" to the world again. My hour turned into nearly two of quiet and flickering candlelight, and I enjoyed every minute! I only went back "on the grid" because I needed some information ...the upside of this technological world...a world of information at your fingertips.

[Joe S.]

Linda's comment triggered my childhood memory of the console radio that was larger than our HDTV on its stand. The radio sat in the upstairs hallway between two bedrooms. You tuned it to the radio station that you wanted to listen to and then you tuned the Helmholtz (2 big loops) antenna to get the strongest signal with out fading. The local stations usually came in good. If you wanted news from somewhere else you had to try to tune in a distant station. Being on the second floor of the house it was easier to get a distant channel than on the main floor.

My aunt and uncle had a Victorian Farm house. The house had no electricity. It was lit with hurricane lamps, and candles. They had a windup Victrola that played 78 rpm records as a form of entertainment. The wood cook stove was used for cooking and heat. Chamber pots were found in the bedroom. It was about a block to get to the outhouse (450 foot). When you had to go, and it was cold, it seemed a lot further. The hand pump well was about 150 foot from the house and you had to carry water from the house to the pump to prime the pump. The 5 gallon pails were a challenge for young boys to carry. We made a competition game out of chores to get them done.

Another aunt and uncle lived in a log cabin east of East Grand Forks, MN. The main level had a living room - Kitchen with an open room fireplace and one small bedroom. The outhouse was 50 foot away. They had the hand pump in the kitchen. My seven cousins slept in the upstairs loft. Several kids (male and female for small kids) per bed.

We staid at my Grandmothers house that Christmas. Dad used to say that it was on "the wrong side of the tracks" in Grand Forks, ND. It was two log cabins that grandpa put together. As my dad was growing up they modernized the house with clapboard siding, Electricity, Plumbing, and interior plaster walls. A kerosine furnace in the living room heated half the house. The wood stove that was converted to gas heated the kitchen (other cabin). The Old Ice chest was replaced with an old ammonia refrigerator. You still had to check the drip tray every day or it would flood the kitchen. They had gotten electricity when you were charged by the bulb. Each room had a bulb. There were no outlets. A few year latter I helped prepare for Christmas Dinner. We spent the week cooking and preparing food. Outside was our freezer and we spent Christmas Eve day bringing food in and warming it up.

Our technology has come so far and there have been so many improvements in society since that time. I think of the changes my grand parents lived through and what I have lived through. I can not imagine what my grand children will live through.

[Cricket]

I remember shoveling coal into the furnace when I was young,  when I was first married we had oil heat and the truck would come once a month to fill you up.

This is a great thread Bucky, thanks!

I am sure there is more but between Sjogrens and chemo brain I am pretty much shot!
This morning my hubby asked if I recorded a certain movie, I said yes and he said he was surprised cause I already saw it.  I told him that is what is great about not remembering is you get to experience things a few times as if they were the first time!  Lol!

Cricket~

[bloodless]

LOL! I remember arguing with the girl down the street to get off the phone, so I could make a call. We not only had party lines and had to dial, but remember when your phone number started with a word? My phone number began "Chapel 7".

I chose to embrace the technology I like and reject what I don't. I don't have a bothersome cell phone, but I do use the "do not disturb", and caller id on my land line. I love my computer. It's so much easier to reconcile your bank account than by hand.

My Christmas tree looks way better with my mini led lights than the silver aluminum one with the giant bulbs that would burn the crap outta you we had when we were kids.

I'm disappointed we haven't put a man on Mars. I was sure when I was kid we would by the time I grew up. And where's my flying car!

[Bucky]

I do go to a pharmacy that has a drive-thru

That is one area that has really expanded through the years . . . . drive-thru's. 

Fast food restaurants (which were few and far between growing up) - in fact, I know it's hard to believe, but McDonald's didn't really take off until the early 1960's and their first drive thru not until 1975!  The only "drive in's" that I remember were the A & W Dog 'n Suds, where the carhops came to your car on roller skates, and brought your food on a tray that hung on your window (much like the Sonic's chain of today).

The few fast food restaurants that did exist, you use to have to park and go inside, there were no drive-thru's.  Look at all the fast food drive-thru's they have now . . . everything imaginable.  I admit, I use the drive-thru's . . . but, when you stop and think about it, how good is something that is cooked, wrapped and given to you within minutes as you drive around their building??  They don't call it fast food for nothing.  I guess one could debate the "food" part of fast food.   

Growing up, people didn't eat out as much as they do today.  If they did, it was more at the Mom and Pop restaurants rather than all the "chain" restaurants they have now.

Let's see . . . you can have drive thru food, pharmacies, banks, postal services, liquor stores, dairy stores, car wash, weddings and funerals.   

Cricket - we had a coal bin at our house too.  When I'm home next month, I'm going to see if the little door where the delivery company use to put the coal in from outside is still there.

Bucky

[quietdynamics]

By the time I started college we had moved out of NYC. I used to tell people they could see my nail marks as I resisted the move driving across the George Washington Bridge....Whaaaa!!! I did not want to move to the boonies!!!!

Eventually Abuela (step-grandmother) age 89 came to stay with us. Well, in the boonies I had to learn how to drive. So I asked Abuela if she wanted to go with me while I did errands.
The drive-thru bank amazed her....she loved the fabric store ( I used to sew)...so I thought WOW, Abuela is really going to love the car wash. 
Well we were fine with the spray...and the soap...but, Oh My...why those flap washy things hit the windshield....Abuela grabbed her chest and started screaming and rocking...Dios...
I thought oh no I am going to kill her!!!!

I reached over and took her hand and said Abuela close your eyes ...It is only like a big mop cleaning the car.

Never did that again.

[Carolina]

Me?

I like that no one gets polio.

I like that life expectancy today is 76 and it was 66 in 1955.

I like hip replacements and knee replacement, heart and kidney transplants.

I like that we have medications for conditions that didn't exist because science hadn't even defined the illnesses, or the medications.

I like decent frozen food.

I like my microwave.

I LOVE my computer, and my iPhone.

I like that air travel isn't only for the fabulously rich, as it was in the 50's.

I like that we have more than one bathroom.

I love my dishwasher, washer and dryer, and PERMANENT Press clothes, which did NOT exist in the 50's.

You want to go back to ironing, BE MY GUEST.

I like Benedryl over the counter, and big box discount stores.

I LOVE AMAZON.com

I like ATMS, stores open 24/7, cars that don't get flat tires or dead batteries every 250 miles.

I like paved roads (remember gravel? I do)

I like air-conditioned houses and cars.

I like answering machines, the DVR, color TV.

I like Coke Zero.

I like civil rights for so many groups.  I like birth control, family planning, women Senators.

I hated the 'closet' for my gay friends.

I HATED Help Wanted Male, Help Wanted Female.

I hated girdles, garters, hose, slips, hair curlers, hair dryers, heavy luggage, white gloves, curfew hours at the dorm.

I hated making less than my husband for the exact same job because he was a man, so he got more money!

And most people lived in small towns and there was NO privacy.  Everyone knew your business and you carried the shame of a relative unto the third or fourth generation.  You were so and so's son or grandson, or nephew, and heaven help you if you wanted to be different.

Oh, and ethnic and religious differences were terrible!  There was more conflict between Catholics and Protestants in small town than you can imagine.  The WORST thing was to 'marry out of your religion!".

I could go on and on and on.

You couldn't drag me kicking and screaming back to 1950.

Yes, life changes, and there isn't a generation of old fogeys that doesn't say "what is this world coming to?"

It's changing.

Get over it.

Hugs

Elaine

PS ask your parents, or your grandparents how much better things were in their day.  And so on and so on.

See Midnight In Paris, each generation idealizes the earlier years.

The French say "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"  = The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Joe S.]

I do not want to live in the past but it is nice to remember where I have come from and where my parent and grand parents have come from. When my wife and I were first married, we lived in a large apartment complex. We did not know anyone. We lived in a mobile home when our youngest was born. We knew no one. We lived in our first home and knew some of our neighbors. With our lake home that we visited on weekends we knew most of our neighbors. We purchased a foreclosed home that we live in now. We are doing work on it. We do not know who our neighbors are (names and stories) but we do wave and say hello.

It seems like life tries to move too fast to spend much time with family or visit with neighbors. I knew more about my short term neighbors in the nursing home. With all the networking that we do today, we have very little personal connections with other.

[irish]

This is so interesting. I, took remember coal bins in my first house at age 4 and also a refrigerator that used ice until my folks got a Kelvinator. I can still remember the smell of those old cars--a 1939 Ford and then a 1946 Ford--stick shift naturally. We had a Mercury automatic shift when I was learning to drive but I learned on a stick shift and lovedd it.

When I was young we knew all our neighbors and lived in a small town. All of us kids would roam the town and if we were 6 blocks away and got into mischief somebody would scold us and send us home and no one got sued!!! Everybody was responsible pretty much and accountable. Every place I have lived we neighbored a certain amount until we moved to the country in 1977. We all know each other and watch out for trouble at each others places, but we are all busy with our own lives and families. A sign of the times I think. It is a shame that we are too busy and tired to take time to know each other.

I miss a lot of things about those good old days. I miss having big gardens and canning. I miss the feeling of the odors and colors of seasons past that do not seem to show up as much anymore. The seasons have changed enough to change some of these things. The one thing that seems to always be there is the moon. It keeps on being full every month and makes a gorgeous picture in the night over the fields across the roads. I can follow it hour by hour as it moves across the sky from my road side picture window to the kitchen window at the side of the house after midnight. It is always the same and causes me to always get goosebumps at the magnificance of Mother Natures gifts.

I love the sound of the katydids at dusk during the end of a hot July. This beings back memories of the garden getting ripe and time to buy school clothes for the boys.

There are so many things that make our lives easier and I would be hard pressed to have to make a choice. I do know that even though I love my computer, etc I am very thankful that our boys grew up when it was "in" to play outside, get dirty, ride bikes, collect leaves, play baseball on a wet back pasture with the neighbor boys and were able eto clean a barn and know what it means to work. My grandkids are all computer literate but haven't had as much fun. The thing is, life marches on and we can't change it so we must adjust-but that doesn't mean I have to like it. lol Irish

[Carolina]

Oh, and Thinsulate, velcro, anything plastic.

do you remember galoshes?  wool leggings?  freezing outside?

Elaine