If you are old enough to remember life before air conditioning, count yourself among the luckiest people on Earth.
That was back in the good old days, before zip codes, cellphones, dot-coms, credit cards, plastics of newer kinds, Styrofoam, kids with heavy backpacks trudging to school, artificial turf on the local school athletic field, and automatic ice dispensers.
Of the latter, when our twin granddaughters were about 10, they spent a day with us. They were completely flummoxed when they found out our refrigerator did not have an automatic ice dispenser and that you had to use the kitchen faucet in order to get a drink of water. They must have thought that our ice trays, which had to be filled manually, were quaint.
Back in the “old days,” you could fill in the name of your bank, write out the amount, and sign your name on a blank counter check. Now, you must have checks with your name and address printed or embossed. Not only that, you can pay with bitcoin, Paypal, etc. I do use credit cards, and I love my debit card.
I am not saying that these were necessarily the “good” old days—just the time we spent in a much simpler world than today.
The 1940s and ’50s were filled with promise. The defeat of Nazi Germany promised a new world for all of us. The post-World War II era was one of mostly prosperity. However, in many states—including Kentucky—schools were rigidly segregated until the mid-’50s. Have we reached a state of social and racial justice, even now?
Like many families, Mom, Pop and I—along with most of our other family members and friends—attained a higher standard of living than during the Depression decade of the 1930s. When first purchased in 1947, our little frame house on Snow Hill outside Shelbyville on Hwy. 55 had only three rooms and a path. The latter led to you-know-where. Pop was a jack-of-all-trades and master of most. Within a few years, I had my own bedroom, and we had indoor plumbing.
I was taught to study and read, work in a garden, chop weeds out of a tobacco patch, and use a grubbing hoe to help dig a foundation. I also learned the basics of wiring and plumbing. Beginning in the summer at the age of 12, I began to work in my father’s welding shop on Clay Street in Shelbyville. There was nothing laborious about it. Pop liked to recall that I wanted to be paid a dollar at the end of each day. I saved money. I bought a watch. There is nothing more rewarding than working beside a parent or grandparent.
I learned to play sports without adult supervision. There was no Little League, with parents hovering over our every move and mood. They had other things to do, such as working long hours to provide for their families. We kids got dirty and muddy, and every once in a while, an argument ended with a tussle that would be considered a fight today. We had no counselors. None of us went to jail or prison. I don’t recall much, if any, cursing. We played baseball with a ball that had lost its cover. Wound with friction tape, the ball sufficed. I still have a bat held together with nails and tape.
When it got hot, we opened all the windows and used electric fans to cool our house. It could be quite noisy where we lived on the corner of Hwy. 55, but we put up with it. For some reason, people would drop off unwanted pets on that corner. I had several pet cats and dogs. My favorite was a terrier mix called Daisy, who was named after the comic strip character Dagwood’s dog. I can still show you where I buried her after she was poisoned when she ate part of a buried carcass at a slaughterhouse. I never wanted another dog.
Television made its way to Snow Hill in the early 1950s. When we got our first television, nearby neighbors and relatives came to watch. Many a night in the summertime, the TV would be placed in a window, and we sat outside. There were only two Louisville channels. If you turned our antenna northward, we could sometimes watch a Cincinnati channel.
Now, TV and other electronic devices often segregate us, as do other forms of media. I watch people at the place where I exercise sitting at machines glued to a phone screen. Ever go to a restaurant and see several people at a table not communicating with each other but enthralled by their electronic devices? Are you one of them?
With the internet, communication is now much easier. I am afraid that many folks would have a nervous breakdown if they had to live with silence for a while.
Plastics are filling up our landfills and infiltrating our streams. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is expanding. Why do we continue to use so much plastic and Styrofoam? I seem to recall paper straws in the old days. Now we are told that the flesh of ocean fish contains small pieces of plastic.
Remember the old days when you washed your own car, sometimes driving down to a shallow creek? I welded in the pipe for the first automatic car wash in Shelbyville way back in the early 1960s. Before I left for a job teaching at Lees Junior College, I did the same in Frankfort.
Remember when we were all boys and girls, men and women? Now, we are all “guys,” regardless of our gender, as in, “How are you guys?”
“Thank you,” I tell the bank teller, or the waiter or waitress, or the receptionist at a physician’s office. What do I get in return? “No problem.” I did not know it could be a problem to wait on me.
I know many people my age keep and maintain “old” cars. It seemed like every one of these I owned eventually developed some problem. For example, radial tires are much better and safer and wear longer than the old bias-ply tires. We changed the oil every 1,000 miles; brakes had to be replaced at least every couple of years. Something always seemed to be leaking on the driveway. I carried extra bulbs to replace ones on the car that seemed to burn out every few months. Batteries conked out. You had to add water to cars occasionally. I like my low-maintenance modern vehicles.
The only thing I miss about the old days, as far as automobiles are concerned, is when the cost of a gallon of gas was about 25 cents.
As I have mentioned before, I dislike the current use of the word “issues,” as in health issues, etc. I still like the word “problem.” I tell my doctors, mechanics, etc., “I have a health problem” or, “I have a brake problem.”
I am so contrary to modern times that I still use paper road maps.
If I sound as if I am 80 years old, well, I am, and proud of it.