Dec. 11, 2006 - 20:49 MST

A TIME I REMEMBER

Of course I can't go back again, nor would I really want to in acutuality, heck I survived it. Why go for a double dare and go back for a rerun.

BUT, remembering the good things of the past, the routines and traditions of long ago is another matter. I visit there often.

There is a lady who wrote a column recently in The Denver Post, by the name of Kiesa Kay. A person who recently founded Oleander Cottage, a writing retreat in the south of France, and has edited two educational anthologies. Her e-mail is [email protected]

The title of her column sort of gives away the contents, but is pretty neat. Quoted here in full:

BEFORE CELL PHONES AND RINGTONES

"I miss my IBM Selectric typewriter and my 33 RPM albums."

"I miss having a corner drugstore owned by a real person instead of a corporation."

"I miss living in a town where instead of a fire truck with hoses and ladders, we had an orange Volkswagon Beetle with a red light on top -- "the Fire Beetle" -- and a bucket brigade of volunteers from the lake to the fallmes."

"Most of all, though, I miss the multi-family party line there, in Gardener, Kan. When I was a kid, my family was one of three or more to share a single telephone line."

"For awhile, we had a sea foam green telephone on the desk between the bookshlves and the fireplace. When it rang, my father had the annoying habit of saying, Dingwah, Chop Chop." I never did learn what he meant. Nowadays I suppopsed we'd call it our personal family ring tone. Sometimes he'd say, "Better get it, might be the telephone." So we had two personalized ring tone choices."

"Back then, when our neighbor's cat knocked her phone off the hook, nobody's calls could go in or out on the lake road until somebody went down there, knocked on the door, and asked her to hang the phone back up again."

"With a party line, people can pick up and chime in if they have an opionion to share, or eavesdrop. We respected one another for the most part."

"Telephones were for business, for emergencies, and any girl going on a date had a dime in her pocket to make a call in case the date went downhill fast. Long-distance calls were costly and rare, and when one came in, everybody had to be real quiet and respectful. Far away family members called on holidays and each person at the family dinner took a turn swapping a "howdy." Each long-distance call felt like a rare and treasured event for the whole family to share."

"I never though I'd see the day when each child in a family carried a personal telephone. Now my daughter has talked me into a family plan so she and my son can talk to their friends whenever they want to "for free."

"She got one of those phones with games and songs downloaded from the Internet, and text messages from her pals, and she can reach anybody any time day or night by pushing a few little buttons. That cute little metal rectangle does everything but stand up and dance the mamba. I inherited her old phone, which was plenty exciting enough for me. It was a time-waster, though; I spent 13 minutes trying to find a song I liked on the ringtone choices, going back down memory lane with "Barracuda" and "Bad To The Bone." I finally settled for "Moon River."

"Just when I had every persdon I'd ever called or who'd ever called me stored in that little piece of metal, it busted due to corrosion. I even lost my "Moon River" ringtone. You'd think in a world where people can dial Thailand without an operator or so much as a fare-thee-well, it'd be simple to fix up that phone -- but it wasn't."

"After a lot of running around and waitingfor help and confusing sales pitches and haggling, I found a store clerk who charged me more for a new phone than any human has the right to ask for a metal rectangle -- but she looked friendly doing it."

"And I realized then how I missed that party line. It never gave me any false metallic voices telling me to press a number for this or that, and it didn't play my favorite classic rock songs in my ear in strange symphonic versions. It had that human element. I got to take to , and we shared a common ond of annoyance from time to time whan that cat did its cabinet dance and kept us all out of reach. Come to think of it, being out of reach wasn't so bad. We had no answering machine, and no electronic tether to anybody who happened to think of something silly to share."

"As people spread farther apart to build their lives, instead of living in one small town, they stretch their invisible phone waves to one another to keep in contact. Cell phones have broken some kind of boundary to the brain. creating a brain-to-brain intimacy with computers that replaces human contact."

"And that thing rings all the time. Sometimes it seems like the only way to get any peace and quiet from other people is to break the cell phone."

"Hey, I didn't do it on purpose, I swear."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I remember the good parts of years ago, and note that it seems that everything of today is designed to drive a person insane in minutes.

I learned to type on an open frame Underwood typewriter, could change the ribbons and all - myself - the power source for it were my fingers.

And for instance, companies and corporations have taken advantage of our marvelous communications system to distance themselves from humanity, by means of, "If you wish yadda, yadda, push number 1, and on down the list and for the most part I can push all the buttons in their menu and never reach a live body who has a modicum of intelligence -- in fact on the phone system of today live bodies on business phones - even non-intelligent ones - are few and far between. There are a few systems that if you don't push any buttons finally a live body will come on the line and make a stab at connecting you with a human -- often to no avail because the recording comes on, "Hi, I'm away from my desk, please leave your message on the beep." So it seems that companies and corporations have cut a whole bunch of live bodies from their staff who once were used to actually communicate with a customer.

We had a party line phone when I was young. I had a lot of fun eavesdropping, never heard much exciting because all the women talked about was woman things. But it was fun in a way, being a neighborhood spy. I finally had to quit that activity though because one day, one lady said to the other lady, "Well, I guess Doug has heard enough for the day, and I have housework to catch up on."

I remember front porches where people sat out on pleasant evenings and welcomed visitors from next door or next block. The glow of cigarettes and tinkle of ice in tea glasses and the smell of fresh coffee gave a homey atmosphere I always thought.

But back to this communication bit - - - - I sort of got burnt out on being constantly available when I was on the Mesa in Utah. I'd get sent on errands in St. George or Cedar City and was in constant touch with the office on the Mesa. They had two way radio. Oh man, "Hey Doug, where are you now ?" "Have you picked up the parts yet ?" "On your way back stop by Hersheimers and pick up a bundle of yadda yadda." And the bad thing about it was the menu of my stops and pick-ups changed by the minute. When I got back someone was sure to ask, "What took you so long ?" because anybody there would be constantly asking me to do things and no one really knew the hoops I had to jump through. I was trying to drive and talk and it pissed me off. I still feel that anyone who holds a cell phone to their ear and drives at the same time is somewhat insane. It is dangerous I say. I was younger then and had too many near collisions, which made me despise being in contact every second.

That is one of the things I like about the e-mail system. I send an e-mail, the receiver reads it in his or her own time, and may take a day or so to reply if fast action is not requested before they reply. The e-mail comes back to me and I read it in my own sweet time and reply when and if necessary. I check my blog and diary for comments and make appropriate replies, but refuse to go on "Messenger," I was on it when I had WebTV, but my time was getting too split up by someone yanking my cord wanting to gab. Not seriously talk, just gab. Train of thought just choo-chooed away.

It is nice to be in touch, but nice to not have somebody breathing down the back of my neck 24/7.

I am a person from simpler times, when autos were for weekend outings and visiting relatives and streetcars ridden to and from work or shopping. Not everyone had a telephone and we weren't too far past the hand cranked ones. Refrigerators were things of rarity excepte in houses of the rich and coolers in the stores. I was water master of the ice pan and woe unto me if I let it run over, besides it chilled me to the bone to walk through run over ice water on a cold winter night on the way to the loo. Dad banked the fire before we went to bed and it got cold, cold in the house.

His first car was bought in the late 20s, a mammoth 1925 Studebaker coupe, had storage behind the back of the seats with a lid. I used to ride up there, so I was pretty young when he got it. We used to go to Colorado Springs to visit friends, seems like every time we went Dad would have to patch an inner tube. What a process that was.

The highways near town had a long string of "Cottage Camps" where travelers could stay the night and sleep under a roof. Most of the units were tiny little things, but were probably better than sleeping in the car.

There were many bad things in the world as I grew up, people who went to hospital often never came back, or if they did were bedridden or crippled for the rest of their life. Diptheria and pneumonia were killers for sure.

But I am not required to remember those things, it's my trip back and I like to think of the good things in my young life, so now and then I go back to A TIME I REMEMBER . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Blog