In Simpler Times

We hear it all the time, "I'd love to go back to simpler times and live life the way it was intended". In fits of madness, I have said the same thing myself and I actually lived in those simpler times. Funny, they didn't seem so simple at the time. We had no microwave, our radios came from Japan and were called Transistors (and I loved mine even when it couldn't pick up a channel that was right down the road...Donnie Goodale was the disc jockey. Whatever happened to Donnie? I should google him and find out. Now that's not something I could do back in the simpler days. There were no cell phones. Our telephones had party lines and that's where a lot of folk got their news about their neighbors. It put a whole new spin on the term "eavesdropping". There was no a/c and when we had heat waves like we are in now, we kept every light in the house most determinedly in the OFF position, kept the drapes drawn to keep out the heat and the rooms with their high ceilings were actually cool. Well, coolish I suppose.



We ate our main meal at noon and called it dinner. We still call the noon meal dinner even though we eat far to much at what is supper and should be a light repast to get us through til breakfast. When did all that change? It probably didn't change for the farm families still out there, and I've tried to change us back to the old time way of eating. It's a hard job to change a generation of habit, I've found. We had no microwaves to make the preparations of meals a bit easier and faster, but we did have a toaster. It mainly burned the bread when you weren't looking and we all learned to spot the signs of scraped toast. We hated the taste of burnt toast at first then got used to it till I have to have mine so near burnt that it could use a bit of scraping. Where I once had to pile that homemade jelly on to give it an acceptable taste, I find that I now have to have that slightly scorched taste to make breakfast taste like breakfast.



Given all that, I can remember hearing my grandparents complain that times were changing to fast and they wished they could go back and live when times were simpler. Overhearing this, I would wonder how far they wanted to go back. No electricity, no cars, I mean how much more simple could life get than we had it in the 50's and 60's! I know one thing, I don't want to go back to simpler, I like my a/c, my fast truck, my cd's and dvd's, my microwave and dish that gets me 500 channels (but only shows three shows at one time that you'd admit to watching). No way would I go back to simple. That is proven to me every time we have a storm so severe that we lose power! For the first half hour we talk about how people used to live without power (this while we're looking for the nonexistent candles) for the next hour we're on the phone calling the power company to make sure they know what's going on...you know, power is out come fix it NOW. If it lasts for more than a couple of hours, boredom usually drives you to take a nap or fight. If the nap wins over the fighting everyone is glad that no one had to go to jail. That in itself is a good thing. So, simpler times anyone? Please Lord, NO.