Less than a century after the united States of America came into existence, around or just after the terrible civil war was fought (and lost as much as won), my great-grandparents were born.
It was an age in which Indians still terrorized much of what would become the contiguous United States (yes, they were prone to attack, murder, take and steal whenever and whatever they liked, and the response by the white, black and oriental man was also brutal, but effective).
An era long before most modern means of conveyance from automobiles to planes existed, cross-country travel by anything other than horse, carriage, stage-coach, an occasional steamship, clipper ship, or the still growing network of train tracks and locomotives, or on foot, was the only way to go.
An Entirely Different World
There was no government oversight of birth records, which were the responsibility of every household head, recorded in family bibles, and baptismal or other records of various churches.
There was no need for social security cards, or limitations on the freedom to work when, where or how a man or woman needed or wanted (unless, like women or minority races, including white men, there was some legal disability such as indentured servitude entered into voluntarily. presumed through involuntary slavery, or under coverture on behalf of women to protect them and their children from legal disabilities), nothing other than the occasional national census every decade, and no income tax.
Driver's licenses did not exist, and the very idea of state or government-issued identification, other than a passport or visa, were unheard of, as were computers, video cameras, and even telephones (the post office or telegraph were about the best means for "rapid" communication available, and the telegraph only so far as the wires reached; it was 1861 when the first transcontinental telegraph line began service).
Money was commonly gold or silver coins, or paper notes redeemable in either of these.
I cannot say how others may have felt, but when my family visited our rural relatives and forebears, in the quiet country town where they lived, I recall the slightly southern (but distinctly mid-western) hospitality, the simple ways and responsibilities of "modern" life as it then existed (outhouses were still commonplace), and the daily duties of men and women in an era when such things were never shirked, avoided or neglected.
Power tools did not yet exist, other than those belt-driven devices requiring large electric or gas-powered motors, or by foot-driven treadles, yet my paternal grandfather managed to build two homes, the first in the English Tudor style, the last as a modern ranch-style home next door to his first effort.
A Far From Better New Age
Sometime after the first world war, however, the generation of my great-grandparents dropped the ball of grandparents educating their own grandchildren (which was commonplace before school houses and teachers became ubiquitous), and children started abandoning homesteads, farms and families for the "big" city.
By my generation, this was a total fait accompli, which younger generations today take completely for granted.
It was not a perfect world, make no mistake about that, but it was a much more prosperous age in ways that did not require great personal wealth or power; where even the simple and humble poor never had to go homeless or unfed, so long as they were willing and able to work, and even those unable were cared for, not in forced retirement homes but rather living in family-run homes or boarding houses, where the younger generations helped care for and provide the needs of their elderly relatives, roomers or boarders.
The big city nearly cost my life while I was still a toddler, when I followed my sister across a busy city street one morning, and we were both very nearly run down by a car, the bumper of which came within mere inches of my face, as I watched innocently ignorant of the danger I was in.
My sister escaped death because she had tripped and fallen to the pavement, uninjured except for a cut lip. The only clue I had of having been endangered was my mother's bloodcurdling scream, and the driver's frantic attempt to make certain he had not just committed vehicular child slaughter that day.
This is when I first suspected the very real nature and presence of protective angels, when he protested that there was simply no earthly way he could have stopped the several ton, solid steel automobile he was driving in time!
For some reason I know more about my father's paternal and maternal relations than I ever knew about my mother's paternal relatives. Living in the "big" city had ways of distancing once close relations from one another. My maternal grandfather is about as far back as my memory or knowledge of relations from that side of our family reaches.
Harking Back To Bygone Values
Because I grew up in an age before the not-so-great welfare state arose, before "big brother" (and "sister") reared their autocratic heads, prior to the "requirement" (which doesn't even exist legally) for social security registration and state IDs, I now tend to live my life more in alignment with how my great-grandparents lived.
By this I mean that we grow our own foods from seeds, grind our own flour by hand mill, and try to live most of the year without either central heating or air conditioning, as far as possible.
Not that we don't appreciate some of the conveniences of modern living, such as electricity for lights, cooking and computing, working almost daily on a home computer for more than thirty years, and refrigerated or frozen foods, modern modes of travel, from train, to plane, and bus to automobile, and now even shopping online with home delivery soon after ordering.
While the means and methods that once supported a more agrarian age have disintegrated, vanishing into the mists of past memory, or have been replaced by supposedly better newer devices, means and contraptions, much of what once made life enjoyable has also disappeared.
The Generational Gaps
Social interaction between the youngest and oldest generations is one of the links that I miss the most. Now it's all too easy for the only interaction being the same old, tiresome question: "Have you seen_____?" (fill in the blank with whatever form of "entertainment" that is commonplace today).
Meaningful conversation has, for many -- perhaps most -- people today been relegated to a senseless quest for affirmation solely from peers, rather than validation from multi-generational ethics.
Little wonder then that the younger generations are fairly lost in their own worlds of school acquaintances, gangs or rarely clubs, with little to inform them of prior mores, morals or modes of conduct.
When visiting my grandparents and great-grandparents (while they were still alive), I was often recruited to assist, or could at least watch, their activities of gardening, cooking, woodworking (with hand-operated planes, saws, screwdrivers and the like), fly tying for fishing, and other then common pastimes, including perusing the still prevalent and behemoth mail order catalogs.
The only difference between them and the Internet today being the paper they were printed on, which was often useful for toilet needs (torn from old, worn-out, past years' editions) before indoor plumbing became the norm.
The Changing World
My great-grandparents were farmers, mostly, who grew their own produce -- something I am endeavoring to learn how to emulate now that I am elderly and more settled -- and also canned and preserved their own stockpiles of the tasty fruits of their husbandry and culinary efforts.
Which brings to mind the sometimes pungent, always vibrant, vivid smells and tastes of country cooking and cuisine, which put to shame the "best" that most modern markets, restaurants, fast "food" franchises, or homes have to offer today.
This was still the era of wood-burning stoves, when microwaves were as yet still generally unknown, and ovens based upon them were largely still unheard of; when daily deliveries of large blocks of ice for ice-boxes (if any), instead of electric refrigerators, were still the epitome of modern convenience.
Washing of laundry was still done in wash tubs, with scrub boards, by hand, or in the then brand-new washing machine tubs with hand wringers (no driers), which although operated by a hand crank at first, and later by a hidden motor and belt, were always a danger to young fingers and hands.
Drying racks for hanging laundry indoors, during inclement weather, or poles and clotheslines for outdoor drying, using straight or spring-operated wooden clothespins, were all common household necessities.
There were no hair dryers, food processors, or blenders, but there were waffle irons, toasters and curling irons, for those with the means to afford and the electricity to run them.
Real dairy butter, non-pasteurized whole milk (that had real cream on the top), and fresh farm eggs from range-fed hens were all standard staples, either to be gathered or obtained from livestock on hand, or were delivered daily right to your door and home (as fresh baked goods also were, along with daily newspapers).
Growing Poverty Economically And Spiritually
None of these things endangered lives, or sickened people, nearly as much as the homogenized, pasteurized, preserved, adulterated, largely imitation substitutes mostly sold only through groceries or markets today.
Packaged and canned foods had been around for a few decades by the time my generation arrived, along with all the attendant tooth decay, ill and malformed dental arches, and related illnesses and diseases associated with these now prevalent form of comestibles.
While I knew about and experienced good home cooking and culinary country cuisines that were nourishing and healthy (for the most part, with some notable exceptions), I also soon learned about the sickening, barely life-supportive, largely malnourishing, bad tasting standard government-issued commodities rarely distributed to poor families and their near-starving children, prior to the introduction of food stamps or general welfare.
From a generation that mostly never knew poverty or want, hunger or privation, I would often suffer the ill effects of all these conditions, as I struggled to grow and mature in larger suburban cities of the American Midwest.
My first (and last) train trip took place when I was eighteen, my first cross-country bus ride when I was eighteen (and the last when I was 32), and my first plane flight when I was nineteen (and last when I was 33), while my very first and last boat trips (other than a brief fishing boat foray when I was twelve) outside of a popular amusement park ride, didn't happen until I was 31 and 33, respectively.
Mostly I got around, even when I attended college, by walking (a lot), by bicycle or city buses, while my cousin taught me to ride a motor scooter and motorcycle, and later an old standard stick shift transmission automobile nearly as old as myself (without a license or permit), when I was sixteen or seventeen.
For instance, I usually walked the three miles to and from junior and high schools, in two different cities, year round, and even took to sprinting or jogging home to catch a favorite television show in time, when I was a sophomore in high school.
This is one of the features of "modern" living I wish there had been a lot less of, since television (and now Internet or DVDs) robs us of so much time in the fresh air, or having meaningful conversations with family, relatives and friends, as well as from learning and productive activities.
No matter how poor we were, it seems, we could always somehow afford to have a television, which was often left on although nobody was watching it, sort of as an electronic pacifier, or in case of some unforeseen emergency news flash!
My guess is that we would have been far less impoverished, monetarily as well as mentally and emotionally, had we done without this particular modern "luxury" device, just as an earlier generation probably wasted a lot of time sitting around and listening to radio broadcasts (though this could usually be done while working also).
From Handmade To Computerized
Typewriters, in my era, were almost all manual, and I didn't own an electric typewriter until I was in my late twenties (although home computers would not make their first appearance for another three or four years, their word processor programs, now sort of taken for granted, would not come on the scene for another decade after that).
Everything I published, to start, was done largely and mostly by hand, from typesetting and correction, to paste-up, layout, and printing or copying. Nothing came easily, including the headline type fonts, which were purchased on waxed plastic sheets and rubbed off onto paper, one letter or punctuation mark at a time, with a wooden stylus.
Even collating, binding, inserting into and addressing envelopes, up to regular postal mailings, were all jobs that I handled mostly myself, with a little help on occasion from my wife and children.
The first computer printer I owned was dot matrix and required a change of cartridges to print in separate colors, purchased in the late 1980s, a far cry from the color laser printers which are now the standard.
Our first fax machine was a portable model that used a phone handset cradle to connect (often by long distance) to another fax machine through common land phone lines, printing out its results onto the same sort of heat-sensitive paper used by most store cash registers today.
And cell phones were either entirely non-existent, or were more akin to the large, bulky walkie-talkies used by the military since the late 1950s through the 1970s (before that, in world war II for instance, long runs of wire were often used to directly connect handheld units with base transmitters, where bulky shortwave radio equipment was less practical or secure).
It was an age were staples and cellophane tape presaged post-it notes, and ink pens either had to be dipped into jars of ink, or carried refillable bladders that, by means of a built-in lever action, were refilled from such jars, long before the advent of gel pens, when ball points were just starting to become the newest technology in handwriting, and telegrams or wire services -- along with daily mail delivery (often twice a day) right to your door or mail box -- foreshadowed the advent of emails, texting, and wireless communications.
The Darker Side Of "Progress"
Not all of these "advances" have been as advantageous as the public has been misled to believe, with the ever-pervasive atmospheric radiations from microwaves to radio, television and satellite transmissions -- engulfing everyone from the country to the city in a blanket of man-made electromagnetic smog pollution -- with mind and mood-altering, health debilitating, inevitable consequences.
Air pollution or smog was so commonplace, in the big cities of America -- and cigarette smoke pervaded every nook and cranny, from restaurants to private homes -- that the smokey, ghastly, asthma-inducing pall hanging over them contrasted starkly with the clear, fairly pristine, fresh air of the countryside.
The modern counterpart is chem-trails spewed forth from commercial jet planes (coordinated by satellite and wireless computerized communications, unknown to pilots) over city and country -- polluting the environment with poisonous barium salts, aluminum and other toxic metals -- for either weather engineering or, more likely, as some ultra-secretive form of military radar map-painting to control or dominate air space, with military drone surveillance and weapons of remote destruction.
Traveling was rarely by interstate highways, since most had not yet been built, but was by winding, twisting, motion-sickness inducing two lane country roads. Sometimes these wouldn't even be paved, or crossed over raised railroad track mounds that could send driver and passengers flying into the air (this was also prior to the invention of seat belts) if traversed at too high a speed (anything over say 5 to 10 miles per hour).
The top speed limit for safely traveling such roads was rarely over 40 to 45 miles per hour, with 55 the absolute top speed until the late 1960s to early 1970s. In some areas, after interstate highway systems were well in place and still fairly new, the speed limits during the mid to late 70s were sometimes over 85 to 95, but were then lowered to a much safer and saner 55 to 70 mph during the late 70s.
Even then, some roads over mountainous regions were still in the construction or renovation phase, during the early to mid 1970s, with winding, dangerous curved portions of some mountain roads still largely unpaved in at least one western state (southern Utah) through which I traveled.
Even into the mid 1990s some state highway road systems were far from ideal, such as the rough, "Hillbilly" highways of Arkansas in the then recent post-governor, Clinton presidential era.
Things Recalled
From my perspective, spanning at least five or more generations now, America is not at all a better place to live than it was before all the modern "conveniences" that nearly everyone takes for granted today.
I can remember quality and quantity, before cheap substitutes, inferior materials and workmanship, and dishonest quantities flooded the marketplace, when it was much easier to live a more dignified lifestyle, when mass travel did not involve full body searches, or paranoid suspicions, and you left your neighbor alone unless they needed your help, which was readily offered to widows, the elderly, the infirm and others who couldn't easily care for themselves, whether young or old.
Phone lines were often party lines, where neighbors could sometimes eavesdrop, and you had to wait your turn while making calls brief, but long distance charges could put you into the poor house (which didn't really still exist, although reform schools, like orphanages and insane asylums, were still commonplace).
Although television broadcasting converted to color programming in the early to mid-60s, for many the reception was still only through black-and-white sets, which remained commonplace well into the 1980s, and solid state electronics were not introduced to replace vacuum tube technology, until the early 1970s.
Things Still To Come
Just as my great-grandfather was a county judge, I now act as a judge of the corrupt, vile and cruel injudicial system that gravitates ever lower into the insane cesspool of carnal human reasoning, along with the ever-cheaper, baser, meaner, freedom-deprived, court-oppressed society it creates and exacerbates daily.
Far from the imaginations of the most prolific future fiction authors of my great-grandparents' time, the age that is about to come in my lifetime, or at least that of my children and grand-children, possibly even great-grandchildren, will make the present age look primitive, lost and terribly backward by comparison.
The new spiritual age that is coming will, in fact, eclipse all ages before it in blessed splendor and wondrous prosperity, unparalleled until then (following a period of major false, counterfeit religion, deception, world-terrorizing carnage and bloodletting, that will make both World Wars I and II, the Korean, Vietnam and cold wars all look tame and pale by comparison).
While I am my great grandfather's great grandson, I hope to become, if possible, even one of the least grandchildren of the greatest and grandest Father of them all, spiritually speaking!
This is no slight to past generations of my carnal forebears, any more than it is a denigration of my own generation, or those that are following it.
We each bear our own share in the burden of guilt for the sins of our own eras, just as the truly repentant will receive abiding pardon for all their past wrongs, provided they (and hopefully, we) learn to never repeat them, or engage in any present or future sins.
It is only those who fall under the protective shelter of this saving Grace alone who will soon enough receive and enjoy those blessings of tomorrow's world, along with those few of all previous ages who were likewise obedient, living in hope of the future resurrection, and faithful even to the point of persecution or their untimely deaths.
The carnal world was not worthy of them, but here's hoping and praying you may become such as they were, and worthy to receive the rewards of salvation alongside them!