An other nice morning, I hear it is nice at home also.
I don't know when VCR's came along I know we got our first one about 4 years ago. Very few people had telephones and the ones we had from the time I was 15 to 18 were the old crank kind that were on party lines, you cranked a code of short and long rings so people would know which house you were calling, of course everyone listened in to each others conversations. Later as modernization came along you would ring the operator and ask for a number and then eventually the dial phone came and now we have touch-tone not to ,mention cel phones, texting and all those things that make so many of you slaves to pointless games and thereby becoming removed from the everyday real world.
Doesn't look like we will be able to get home in time to vote in the advance polls so will try and cast absentee votes here today.
As I indicated yesterday here is an extract from some writing (for my grandchildren) that I did quite a few years ago. I just added a few words here and there today.
I will return tomorrow to RH Little's pioneering experiences.
Here’s an excerpt from some stuff I wrote for my Grandchildren – probably about fifteen years ago. Some of my comments may ruffle the feathers of some, too bad.
I also note that the world has moved on since I wrote this, laptops, Blackberries, Ipods/pads and other communication methods now live amongst us. And who knows what will be here next week or next month!
I may be out a bit on some of the eras (dates)but I figured the exact time was not as important as the differences between “back then” and now.
When one talks about older or old people, it is unfortunate that our eyes can only see the surface of those people and it is that view that influences how we think we see them. Yes as we grow older we mature, physically and mentally and within our heart or the thing called a soul we continue to grow without ever losing anything we have ever been, included in that is our youth. My Grandma to me looked old and wrinkled, her outward self often seemed very bitter, caused no doubt by the distresses in her life. But inside there still throbbed the soul of a two, a ten, and a twenty-year-old girl. Her love of fishing, her pride in her son, her wish to give support, all of these things were clues that have taken me 40 years to figure out and only then because I am now what she was then. I still have day dreams and wishes, at times in my mind I play at make believe, the thoughts in my mind know no age but the actions from those thoughts are tempered by my maturity.
Unfortunately for many people, the brain also ages and the youthfulness that is beneath the surface no longer has that protective barrier and we become creatures of ridicule or shame. This may not happen to everyone but it can happen to anyone. So before you laugh at some "old" person, try and remember how they were, how you were, how you are at this moment and then imagine yourself in a few more years.
Everyone has dreams, for some the dreams become goals and sometimes those goals become reality. Most often in our many journeys towards our ever-changing goals we come to many crossroads. It would be nice always to choose the best path but that is not possible, you can afford the luxury of wishing you had chosen a different path when things don't go right, but you must never waste the effort of reaching where you are, learn from each step you have taken and every experience, to not learn is to waste (your life). Try not to make the same mistake twice, but often mistakes are cleverly disguised therefore it is not dishonorable to make a similar mistake a second time, but if you think and be honest as to who made the mistake you will have learned and if you have learned you then can profit by your mistake(s). Above all, have dreams but don't dream your life away!
Now I would like to go into the other subject I talked about, what changes I have seen in the world. Perhaps this may stimulate your imagination, one person can make a difference, do you dare to be someone who will make change in our world? We cannot all be movers and shakers that command the attention of history but each and every one of us has the chance to contribute even if you are the only one who knows of your contribution. You have the opportunity to influence your life, someone else’s life, a community, a nation or the world!
I was born in 1934 at the tail end of the great depression. This was when jobs were very scarce, money to have the barest of essentials was hard to come by for most people, men of all ages and backgrounds rode "the rails" looking, looking for work for money for a chance.
In those days the first jet aircraft had not yet been invented, as a matter of fact airplanes were just beyond their infancy. Cars and trucks were made from steel, I doubt if plastic had been invented yet. Vitamins basically consisted of cod liver oil and Scotts emulsion, both tasted absolutely awful! Boys did not wear blue jeans and girls wore only dresses or skirts. T.V. wasn't invented yet and it would be many years before it would be on the market let alone into every home. In one of my first papers I described the radios we had and how they were battery operated, many people still used the old cylinder records to listen to recorded music. Although by this time the old phonograph that you wound by hand and played single 33 1/3 rpm records on was used by those people who could afford luxuries. The electric record player and long play records were not around until the 1940's. CD's did not appear until around 1990. Very few people owned cars in those days; they were considered a luxury even though a brand new one cost less than a thousand dollars. Two car families started happening in the 1950's. For the record my parents never owned a car until I was 20 years old and had been gone from home for two years. I don't know when computers were invented, there were probably prototypes in the thirties but It was not until the late 1950's that they started to be fairly common amongst wealthy companies the computer boom and every day household use did not start until the early 1980's. The provincial government first started using them in the mid 70's. In the early days a computer that “thought” slower than a turtle and could only store a few thousand bytes would occupy a whole room!
I believe it was in 1965 that man first walked on the moon, and we only managed to get into space a few years earlier. Watches and clocks were all non-digital and worked on springs and gears, no batteries and no solar power. Calculators never came along until the 70's and even when my children were in school were forbidden as a tool in the classroom. Speaking of the classroom, when I went to school the strap was still allowed, I don't know when it was forbidden but it was several years after I left. I wish it was still allowed, in spite of what do-gooders and psychologists tell us, it is healthy to have the ability to administer punishment with pain for wrong doing and for every time it was misused, there were five thousand times when it was justified. Schools were a place where learning and respect were taught; we did not have gangs, destruction of property and fear. Oh yes we had fights among the students, after all we were human, but our differences were settled with wrestling or fists, for which we were later punished by the school or our parents or both. I guess in all fairness we didn't have marijuana, LSD, crack, heroin and all the other types of brain and body killing drugs that are hustled through our streets and schools today.
In those days we had coke, orange crush, grape or lime soda (in bottles only) as soft drinks. We often hear (are you guilty of this?) that kids have nothing to do, that they have no place to go --- ! Surprise, in those days the schools had single use school fields, hardly any equipment and no after school sports. The communities supplied no kind of recreational facilities or grounds. We had to find our own ways of entertaining ourselves, yet child and youth crime was almost non-existent, there was no TV and yet we thought we were having a good time, how can that be?
I remember during the war many food items were rationed. Such things as sugar, meat, flour and others I don't recall. This meant that such things, as candy bars were very hard to get. The only one that was readily available was a bar called pep chew, it was a peppermint flavored bar, it cost 7 cents and wouldn’t you know it one of the kinds of candy I don't like is peppermint!
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