2000-12-07 - 17:06 MST

December 7, 2000

Time Moves

Pearl Harbor Day today, if I remember correctly that is about 59 years ago.

It is hard for me to remember how things were then as compared to now.

How much the world has changed in my generation's lifetime. If I had known that my thoughts and recollections would be set out by me, maybe at least I would have jotted a time line down. I made a couple of abortive attempts at a diary, you know the one with a little lock and key -- but it all seemed so girly to me at the time and I really didn't have much to say then either, too busy soaking up the world about me like a sponge dried by a burning sun.

When I heard about airplanes and finally could pick out a very occasional one in the sky overhead, they were the open cockpit kind. I think in my early years aircraft only flew during the daylight hours.

Back then I think that other than the military, about the only aircraft flying were the mail planes. They began to fly at night back there somewhere in my foggy past. We often went 63 miles from Denver to Colorado Springs in the day to visit friends of the family, returning after dark to Denver. That is the only night time stretch I was familiar with, but I imagine it was the same the country over. Every few miles there would be a rotating beacon on a tower to guide the night flying postal aviators. I don't know what the facilities were at destination airports for lighting the landing strips. Just guessing, I think they were barely adequate. Time passed, I saw my first aircraft up close, a Ford trimotor with a fuselage clad with corrugated metal of some kind -- no tail wheel, just a rough metal spring loaded thing dragging at the rear. It was at a little airport where Park Hill golf course is situated now. From those early days things progressed to night flying, where the beacons were radio systems and Jeppesen Maps with flight routes and radio beacons were denoted. Now I think that with radar, radio and radar/radio guidance for landing, the aircraft can be pretty well pinpointed both for location and altitude as well as being guided for approach and landing. World War Two was fought mostly with gasoline engine powered air craft, jets were not quite up to carrying the load.

Travelling was done by train and somewhere along the line Greyhound buses came into play. In my childhood most people got to work by tramway trolleys, which at the time could reach into most parts of Denver. Rush hour into town some trolleys on busy routes had trailers attached. Within a half block of where we lived, the tramway company had a wye, where trailers were stored during the slack part of the day, dropped after evening rush hour and later picked up for morning rush hour.

Privately owned cars were mostly for the well-to-do folk and even they used them mostly for outings. The first truck I saw was I think a Mack, chain drive with solid rubber wheels in front of our Piggly-Wiggly store. Much delivery and peddling out in the neighborhoods was done by horse and wagon, milk, bread, Jewel Tea, ice and the men who would drive their wagons down the alleys saying something I couldn't quite understand. Later I found to be, "Rags and Bottles," two things that had enough value for someone to buy them, rags mostly for wiping around machinery and bottles for refilling. I think the last wagons I saw were the milk wagons and the bread wagons.

Except for the central part of Denver which was paved with blacktop, with cobble stone streets in the warehouse and depot district, the rest were gravel streets, later curb and gutters were installed and then blacktopped later yet. Many of the streets in Denver are still very narrow, some of which have parking only on one side. Side walks, even in town were often flagstone, beautiful slabs of red sandstone which was mined north of Denver, later on cement sidewalks came into being. The suburbs were behind Denver in improvements of the infrastructure.

As a kid it seemed to me that there were telephone and electric power lines and poles everywhere plus the poles and wires around the trolley lines. Conservation was pretty lightly treated then, I remember that the Public Service (gas and electric) building downtown had been built to accomodate thousands of light bulbs which were lit at night, all night. I think that it was World War Two which doused them, I don't recall seeing the lights on after that.

The media in my childhood was the printed newspaper, and if you want to consider the monthly magazines like Collier's, Saturday evening Post as media -- well, maybe it was. Radio came from crystal set to battery powered radios ours was a three piece set, speaker, battery box and radio. Then later radio with electron tubes pretty well put a radio in everyone's house. Along about then, set schedules of programs were established on the networks. some of the earlier programs I remember were Eddie Cantor's, Texaco's Ed Wynn, Ben Bernie's band (Yowsah, Yowsah) was his vocal trademark. Soap Operas were born and blossomed, wow -- The Romance of Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday, Ma Perkins and many, many more. Programs for after school for kids, Jimmy Allen sponsored by Skelly Oil I think, Lil' Orphan Annie by Ovaltine (yuck I hated that taste), Jack Armstrong The All American Boy by Wheaties, The Shadow (I can't remember the sponsor) were a few. Baseball and football games were annouced by the first sportscasters, who only spoke to tell what was happening on the field -- Not the dog and pony show peopled by men constrained by the advertisers who dare not let the dreaded "dead air" happen. Nowadays when I watch a game on TV it is with the volume turned off -- the pertinent information is shown in boxes on the screen. Man I remember the men who announced the boxing matches, now there were some fast thinkers and fast talkers, yet they had sense enough to stay quiet when there was actually nothing to be said.

Health care then could not cure or alleviate many things now taken care of. There were no actual anti-biotics, no cures for tuberculosis, flu shots came around I think in the thirties. Flu shots are firmly fixed in my memories, I would ride the tramway to make it to our doctor's office, get my shot, hurry over and catch the tramway back home and wriggle my way into a pile of blankets to have the flu all night -- all the aches and pains, but by morning it was gone and I was safe for the winter from the flu. Colds, and bronchitis were my torture for the winter which blended into hay fever in the summer. The hay fever was brought under control for me by a series of desensitivation shots, ending for me when I was in the last half of the tenth grade, fairly successful too. Alcohol, iodine, mercurochrome, hydrogen peroxide and Epsom Salts, cotton wool and adhesive tape were in the family medicine cabinet along with Phenolax (a laxative with phenol) or some other gut busting thing like castor oil, Sal Hepatica came later I think, which was quite mild, corn plasters and usualy a bottle of Lydia Pinkham's for the women in the family, some form of cough syrup often with an opiate derivitive, and whatever old Grannies herbal cures passed on by tradition were used.

The after effects of an operation often were fatal. If the patient did survive, adhesions seemed to be more frequent then than now subsequent to abdominal procedures -- the recovery was super slow and the bed rest and restricted exercise did a few more in. The practise of getting the patient to become ambulant as soon as possible after surgery, if used in earlier years would have been very beneficial. I personally remember being in a room after an appendectomy being in a bed beside a man who came to the room about the same time I did having had an appendectomy also. We were encouraged to move around as soon as possible, carefully -- which I did and he didn't. He was still lying there when I was discharged, moaning and groaning and not paying any attention to his doctor's urgings to start moving around.

The machinery of medicine has drastically changed since I was a child. I remember in our doctor's office there was an appliance for use to sterilize instruments. I remember our doctor taking the hypodermic needles from the sterilizer and also the syringe which the needles attached to, holding the little bottle up and drawing out the hay fever shot or the flu shot. Those sterilizers in the doctor's offices were boiling water sterilizers. The Autoclaves were used in hospitals.

Very, very much progress in medicine, surgery and orthopedics was made during World War Two, which eventually benefited the civilian population. Gradually in modern times Mercurochrome and Merthiolate use was discontinued as they were both mercuric.

The infinite comparisons between what was in my childhood to what is now, blows my mind. Such vast amounts of progress in so many ways -- and yet we seem to be heading for an arboreal habitat, dragging our knuckles as we go, ook ook ook ugh ugh.

As the dial on the clock shows, Time Moves . . . . . .

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