I was thinking the other day how far my world has come since I was born in 1949. I have pictures of my life to sort of help me along, but I also have pretty good memories stored in this mellon sitting on my shoulders.
For instance: I recall being in a high chair in the first kitchen I ever had meals in, and my mother feeding me. Nothing was real outstanding about that western Pennsylvania home, except for a huge pot-bellied stove strategically positioned to warm my tootsies while I ate my oatmeal. Pennsylvania winters were pretty brutal in 1950 so that stove and I spent many mornings together.
As I started exploring this new world of mine, I began to spend time in what my father often called “that damn Plymouth,” more commonly known as an automobile. The back seat was my domain, but no seat belts and darn little else to protect me against sudden stops on icy roads of which Pennsylvania had an abundance of for four months every year.
Of course 99% of the vehicles on the roads those days were equipped with what was called standard transmissions (had to use a clutch to shift gears); no automatics, which meant 99% of the drivers were men. I’m not going to get into why cars were predominately male domains except to say they were.
My father went to work five days a week, which meant my mother was relegated to household chores, which included — but by no means was limited to — cleaning, cooking, baking, shopping, diaper changing/washing/drying/folding, bedmaking, toddler dressing/changing/re-dressing, bill paying and a couple of hundred other sporadic chores every month. Oh, and giving birth.
Buses were big back then, and I remember taking a bus from our town to the town where my grandparents lived on several occasions, about 20 miles away. And vacations were spent on trains, not planes.
Church was a huge part of our lives, as in every Sunday morning part of our lives, but after Mass we usually had eggs and bacon, and occasionally pancakes, prepared by dad. I’m not sure if that was an attempt to give mom a break, or if he just had a fondness for making breakfast.
School was also a little different back then. We walked a half-mile every morning, half-mile home for lunch, half-mile back for the afternoon classes, and then a half-mile home at the end of the day.
In later years we packed our lunches because of the brutal conditions in winter. We usually had cheese or bologna sandwiches, but sometimes our mother treated us to fried egg sandwiches. They were often soggy after being wrapped in foil, but a treat just the same.
Phones in those days were always black, with a rotary dial, but there was never a need to consult the huge phone directory because we memorized our most-often called numbers. Of course, that was a huge upgrade from the days of picking up the receiver and hearing the operator ask, “What number please?” Which was also an upgrade from party lines where we shared our lines with neighbors from nearby streets, usually elderly females with a lot of spare time to talk to their friends.
Speaking of phones, my wife needed to have communications for her home-care nursing duties in 1996, so she bought a “bag” phone. It was about the size of a large hoagie, but it did the job. Most of the time. A far cry from today’s devices, which can be worn on our wrists, not unlike Dick Tracy used in the comics about 60 years ago.
I’ve also seen Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, communism crumble like the Berlin Wall, planes transitioning from propellers to jets, and a plane that could get us from New York to Paris in less than four hours. Oh, and lest we forget … cars that drive themselves.
And, who could have predicted that microwave ovens would cook our meals in just minutes, that refrigerators wouldn’t need huge blocks of ice in their freezers to keep our food cold, or that we could wash and dry our clothes in the same machine? Not me.
Funny how we take for granted the overwhelming number of innovations that have shaped our world today. Makes me wonder what’s on the horizon for us in the next 76 years.