Back to the Future

I am amazed at my gut reaction when my daughter mentioned the “shocking fact” that she didn’t have television service in her home. I feel like she is deprived of something bordering on a basic constitutional right. Then the “trusty” laptop computer that graces our kitchen table most of the time dies and a similar feeling comes over me.
I look around the kitchen and think of the “can’t do without things” I have accumulated in my lifetime. Let’s see there is the icemaker, the microwave, the dial phone (not counting the cell phone), the answering machine and voicemail, the bread maker, the convection oven (although my parents’ coal-fired stove was kind of an accidental convection oven), the ceiling fan, the blender, the CD player, and the list goes on and on. That’s just in the kitchen.
Like many folks my age and older it’s easy to turn nostalgic. The memories of my grandparents’ stories are fleeting and fading. I wish I could hear them one more time to get the facts right. I occasionally have the rare opportunity to take my Mom for a wonderful drive down “memory lane” (Pleasant View Road). I love to hear the refreshing stories of plowing with horses, storing food in the springhouse, and having a horse depositing her at the one room school a mile down the road and going back home on its own.
In my own lifetime, there were the hobos who showed up at our door when the steam trains stopped at the water tower about a hundred yards from our home. There were quiet restful (boring?) Sundays when, by law, almost all commerce came to a halt. I remember when I was just one of many hitch hikers that dotted the roads to get where I wanted to go. I remember picking up the phone and waiting till the neighbors were done so that you could tell the operator what number you wanted to call. (If you didn’t remember, she knew.) I remember when the “Keystone Shortway” (Interstate 80) was being built. It was a favorite drag racing spot till one fellow drove his car off an unfinished bridge one night! I remember when it was the talk of the town when someone would dress up in their Sunday finest to go somewhere “far off” on a “huge” 24 seat propeller-powered airplane. I remember when I paid 23 cents a gallon for gas and about the same for bread. I remember that the chicken destined for the Sunday table could fly after she was beheaded and I remember how indispensible a pressure cooker was before animals were bred to be tender. I remember when, according to my Dad, our car burned a quart of oil going 16 miles “over the mountain and back.”
It’s easy to slip into being nostalgic and to wish for more of the perceived simple “Ozzie and Harriet” days of old. Somehow it’s easy to overlook the six days a week of toil that many men endured (and seemingly seven for most of the women). I myself wouldn’t be alive without the later medical miracle of a clot busting drug called TCP. I wouldn’t be able to experience the joy of being with my grandsons on long distance computer video hookups. I think you get the picture.
We are blessed to be where we are in history today. I am not sure any of us would want to go back to life in the past with all of the sometimes forgotten hardships. What I truly miss so much are the values and relationships of old. I often forget that I have the privilege of importing them into this “tech” generation and beyond. In fact, it’s my duty. There is a growing “hungry” world wanting more than just our latest gadgets—they too want “old-time” relationships and values in a new way.