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| The Modern World, and "Old Farts" From dinosaurs to cell phones; the Changing of the World |
The Modern World, and "Old Farts"
The following story was triggered by a recent breakfast conversation here at the Inn. Since it was not the first on this subject, I thought
I would share it with all of you.
I would probably have to be considered in the "old farts" category now. This is a term that was popular when I was younger, for people
impossibly old. Dinosaurs. Older than the hills. Anyone past 50, and surely 61 qualifies. We girls were not allowed to use that
particular term, but we heard it all the same.
I started life in the tiny sawmill community of Unity, Oregon. It is somewhat like here, but we had a real phone that worked there, way
back when. Here, we are still awaiting a land line phone, after 16 years...
The phone then was a box that hung on the wall, with a sort of funnel affair that you spoke into, and another one you held to your ear
which was attached to the wall box by a cord. I could only reach this by standing on a chair. It was a party line, so three rings was yours,
while five rings was your neighbors, and two shorts and a long was someone else's. It wasn't polite to interrupt another's conversation,
unless it was an emergency, nor to listen in. People did both. I could always find my Dad by asking the operator, who knew where
everyone was all the time. " Oh hon, he just went by The Watering Hole, you'll catch him at the mill in a couple of minutes." Or, "He said
he was going to Strattons". The Watering Hole was our one and only tavern and food place, and Strattons was one of two stores,
carrying everything under the sun, from canned goods to fishing lures.
In that small town, the operator was kind of like a cell phone: she made sure somebody could always get a hold of you somewhere.
Later in the slightly larger town of John Day, where we moved just before my seventh birthday, we got different phones, and not even
party lines. A guest here said when they finally got a phone, her mother made them go and use the pay phone up the street because
the home service was so expensive when it started. The phones at that time where the big old rotary dial ones, where you stuck your
fingers in the dial holes and spun it all the way around for each number.
In time, we would even get a phone of our own, my sister and I, because Dad got tired of the line always being busy with our calls. We
could then yack for hours to our favorite friends, but this wasn't until high school, in the mid- 60's. These phones were called "Princess
phones", but they were still rotary. "Push button" phones had yet to be invented. Imagine that.
Our phone numbers were simple: 1, 93, and finally 646. Everyone was aghast at the 3 number ones, sure no one would ever remember
them. Our office manager was named John Brown. We lived in John Day. The phone number was 1. Try calling that from someplace
like San Francisco or Hawaii! And it all had to go through the operator of course.
In Tacoma, where my grandmother lived, the phone numbers had names and numbers: like SKYline 9 7279, or Cherry 4 2408. Later
these were converted to all numbers and you had to learn it again. I remember when they added area codes and then the numbers
became impossibly long. I look at cell phone numbers, and international access codes with cell phone numbers, and have to laugh.
But nobody really remembers phone numbers anymore. They are all programmed in and you just punch a button for the name. And
the phones are now so tiny, you can barely find them.
Ah yes, the dinosaur age we come from. Computers were unheard of. Did we even know the word?
My father had one of the first companies to get a "computer". This was a huge mainframe computer that took up most of a wall, in a
specially built room, carpeted, special wall covering, air conditioned, and you had to get permission to enter! Only one person was
allowed to work this, a lady we stole from the high school business office in John Day to move to Baker, to operate it.
So I grew up knowing nothing about computers, but my children did. Their uncle was one of the first persons we ever knew to have
his own computer. A huge MacIntosh, as I recall, that nobody really knew how to use. It fascinated everyone but me. They would
stew over this thing for hours everyday, trying to learn how to work it. By the late 80's, my kids were using computers all the time.
Computers had become part of life, but cell phones had not. That would come still later.
I was forced to learn something about computers by my former business, but I soon hired a person to run my office, and therefore
the computer, and it was she who learned the skills, not I. I am a complete illiterate. I manage to do e-mail and that's all. So how did
this website get created? By my genius daughter in law, far away. The beauty of computers and e-mail, and scanning. All these new
terms we have learned.
Computers are moving in here too. Little kids come into the e-mail place I use in Ticul who know much more than I do! Kids have
cell phones everywhere. We still have no land line phone in our part of the village, so consequently we have no computer. Cell
phones now work all over the peninsula and Mexico, but they didn't for a long time. Guests wold arrive and have a cell phone
panic attack. No bars! Only 1 bar! No signal! Like the world was ending. We would see people on the roof of the big church,
pacing back and forth, trying for a signal. You could usually get one on the outermost NW edge of our roof, but you couldn't move
even an eyelash once you got contact, or it would break off. People would stop on the hill to Ticul and make phone calls!
So it is only in the past year or so that service has become fairly reliable in this area of Mexico. I can call Hawaii. I called my daughter
in Eugene, Oregon, and was so shocked when she answered, I didn't know what to say. I didn't think it would work.
Young people when they hear part of this story look at you strangely, like you are making it up. But you're not. This is the changing
of the world. Now kids are deprived if they don't have their own cell phone, and lost without it.
Santiago was born before the village had electricity, and he is only 45. It wasn't until he was around 9 or 10 that the village got it.
Everyone was afraid to go out at night before, sure the spirits would get you. There was one man who used to walk through the
lanes late at night, wearing big squeaky rubber galoshes, scaring people to death. Santiago's parents would never open the door
to their small thatched house after dark. The doors all had small windows that you opened to peer out, to see who was there.
Santiago's mother Carmen had never used a telephone. When we took the girls and went on a road trip around Mexico, we called
her on the one village phone and they went and brought her to the phone. She was so startled to hear her son's voice coming out
of this black object, she dropped the phone. She just shook her head "yes" and "No" to the questions Santiago would ask her, so
Nephew Will had to answer for her. And this was in 1997!
My grandfather was born before men flew. He never did get on a plane. We flew a lot when I was growing up as we had a small
private plane, and Grandpa never got used to it. He would hold his breath and worry from the time we left John Day, until we
arrived outside of Tacoma. My living down here would have been unthinkable to him. I can't even imagine what he would think
about computers and cell phones.
But then, he was one of the old farts...
Kristine,
Flycatcher Inn, Santa Elena,
15 minutes southeast of Uxmal in Yucatan, Mexico
The following story was triggered by a recent breakfast conversation here at the Inn. Since it was not the first on this subject, I thought
I would share it with all of you.
I would probably have to be considered in the "old farts" category now. This is a term that was popular when I was younger, for people
impossibly old. Dinosaurs. Older than the hills. Anyone past 50, and surely 61 qualifies. We girls were not allowed to use that
particular term, but we heard it all the same.
I started life in the tiny sawmill community of Unity, Oregon. It is somewhat like here, but we had a real phone that worked there, way
back when. Here, we are still awaiting a land line phone, after 16 years...
The phone then was a box that hung on the wall, with a sort of funnel affair that you spoke into, and another one you held to your ear
which was attached to the wall box by a cord. I could only reach this by standing on a chair. It was a party line, so three rings was yours,
while five rings was your neighbors, and two shorts and a long was someone else's. It wasn't polite to interrupt another's conversation,
unless it was an emergency, nor to listen in. People did both. I could always find my Dad by asking the operator, who knew where
everyone was all the time. " Oh hon, he just went by The Watering Hole, you'll catch him at the mill in a couple of minutes." Or, "He said
he was going to Strattons". The Watering Hole was our one and only tavern and food place, and Strattons was one of two stores,
carrying everything under the sun, from canned goods to fishing lures.
In that small town, the operator was kind of like a cell phone: she made sure somebody could always get a hold of you somewhere.
Later in the slightly larger town of John Day, where we moved just before my seventh birthday, we got different phones, and not even
party lines. A guest here said when they finally got a phone, her mother made them go and use the pay phone up the street because
the home service was so expensive when it started. The phones at that time where the big old rotary dial ones, where you stuck your
fingers in the dial holes and spun it all the way around for each number.
In time, we would even get a phone of our own, my sister and I, because Dad got tired of the line always being busy with our calls. We
could then yack for hours to our favorite friends, but this wasn't until high school, in the mid- 60's. These phones were called "Princess
phones", but they were still rotary. "Push button" phones had yet to be invented. Imagine that.
Our phone numbers were simple: 1, 93, and finally 646. Everyone was aghast at the 3 number ones, sure no one would ever remember
them. Our office manager was named John Brown. We lived in John Day. The phone number was 1. Try calling that from someplace
like San Francisco or Hawaii! And it all had to go through the operator of course.
In Tacoma, where my grandmother lived, the phone numbers had names and numbers: like SKYline 9 7279, or Cherry 4 2408. Later
these were converted to all numbers and you had to learn it again. I remember when they added area codes and then the numbers
became impossibly long. I look at cell phone numbers, and international access codes with cell phone numbers, and have to laugh.
But nobody really remembers phone numbers anymore. They are all programmed in and you just punch a button for the name. And
the phones are now so tiny, you can barely find them.
Ah yes, the dinosaur age we come from. Computers were unheard of. Did we even know the word?
My father had one of the first companies to get a "computer". This was a huge mainframe computer that took up most of a wall, in a
specially built room, carpeted, special wall covering, air conditioned, and you had to get permission to enter! Only one person was
allowed to work this, a lady we stole from the high school business office in John Day to move to Baker, to operate it.
So I grew up knowing nothing about computers, but my children did. Their uncle was one of the first persons we ever knew to have
his own computer. A huge MacIntosh, as I recall, that nobody really knew how to use. It fascinated everyone but me. They would
stew over this thing for hours everyday, trying to learn how to work it. By the late 80's, my kids were using computers all the time.
Computers had become part of life, but cell phones had not. That would come still later.
I was forced to learn something about computers by my former business, but I soon hired a person to run my office, and therefore
the computer, and it was she who learned the skills, not I. I am a complete illiterate. I manage to do e-mail and that's all. So how did
this website get created? By my genius daughter in law, far away. The beauty of computers and e-mail, and scanning. All these new
terms we have learned.
Computers are moving in here too. Little kids come into the e-mail place I use in Ticul who know much more than I do! Kids have
cell phones everywhere. We still have no land line phone in our part of the village, so consequently we have no computer. Cell
phones now work all over the peninsula and Mexico, but they didn't for a long time. Guests wold arrive and have a cell phone
panic attack. No bars! Only 1 bar! No signal! Like the world was ending. We would see people on the roof of the big church,
pacing back and forth, trying for a signal. You could usually get one on the outermost NW edge of our roof, but you couldn't move
even an eyelash once you got contact, or it would break off. People would stop on the hill to Ticul and make phone calls!
So it is only in the past year or so that service has become fairly reliable in this area of Mexico. I can call Hawaii. I called my daughter
in Eugene, Oregon, and was so shocked when she answered, I didn't know what to say. I didn't think it would work.
Young people when they hear part of this story look at you strangely, like you are making it up. But you're not. This is the changing
of the world. Now kids are deprived if they don't have their own cell phone, and lost without it.
Santiago was born before the village had electricity, and he is only 45. It wasn't until he was around 9 or 10 that the village got it.
Everyone was afraid to go out at night before, sure the spirits would get you. There was one man who used to walk through the
lanes late at night, wearing big squeaky rubber galoshes, scaring people to death. Santiago's parents would never open the door
to their small thatched house after dark. The doors all had small windows that you opened to peer out, to see who was there.
Santiago's mother Carmen had never used a telephone. When we took the girls and went on a road trip around Mexico, we called
her on the one village phone and they went and brought her to the phone. She was so startled to hear her son's voice coming out
of this black object, she dropped the phone. She just shook her head "yes" and "No" to the questions Santiago would ask her, so
Nephew Will had to answer for her. And this was in 1997!
My grandfather was born before men flew. He never did get on a plane. We flew a lot when I was growing up as we had a small
private plane, and Grandpa never got used to it. He would hold his breath and worry from the time we left John Day, until we
arrived outside of Tacoma. My living down here would have been unthinkable to him. I can't even imagine what he would think
about computers and cell phones.
But then, he was one of the old farts...
Kristine,
Flycatcher Inn, Santa Elena,
15 minutes southeast of Uxmal in Yucatan, Mexico
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| All content on this website, except where otherwise noted, is copyright 2003-2008 Flycatcher Hotel Inn B&B, Santa Elena, Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico, and may not be copied or reproduced in any way without the express written permission of the copyright owner. |