Things Change ...

I used to listen in awe when my dad would tell me that he sometimes rode a horse to school in rural Oregon. As a kid, I longed to be a cowboy--an ambition fed, no doubt, by the countless TV shows and movies about the West in the 1950s.

I just checked a reference book--and online: In 1954 (I was ten) the following Westerns were on TV: Annie Oakley, The Lone Ranger, Death Valley Days, The Roy Rogers Show, The Cisco Kid, Gene Autry, The Adventures of Kit Carson, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Hopalong Cassidy.

And this doesn't count the Western movies and re-runs on Saturdays. Among the movies in the theaters that year were Johnny Guitar and River of No Return. And, again, this does not count what were called the "B movies"--cheap things they threw together to entertain little boys like me--movies featuring, oh, Whip Wilson, Lash LaRue, Johnny Mack Brown, The Three Mesquiteers, Bob Steele, and countless others.

Life was simple for me then--good and evil were easy to identify: black hat = bad; white hat = good.

And other things were simpler--and more difficult--too.

In Enid, Okla., where I grew up there was one TV station--another in Oklahoma City that we could draw in with our rooftop TV aerial. (In the nearly two years we lived in Amarillo, Tex.--1952-3--we had no TV signal--had to listen to radio drama.)

There were, of course, no computers, no cell phones, no portable phones. When the phone rang, you went to where the phone was, answered it, and, if it was for you, you sat down in the chair (always by the phone) and talked.

My grandmother Osborn wrote a newsy family letter every week--using carbon copies on her typewriter (mechanical, not electric) to send to her son, daughter (my mom), and, later, her grandsons. I saved some of them--and realizing now that I did not save them all is a horrible feeling.

Snail-mail (a term not yet coined) was really the only way to communicate--except for long-distance calls (which cost $$) and telegrams (which cost $$).

There was no such thing as self-serve at the gas stations. A guy (almost always a guy) came out and filled your tank, cleaned your windshield--and the back window.

No such thing as self-serve at the grocery store.

Old-fashioned mechanical cash registers.

At school, no videos--just filmstrips and 16mm films shown on a projector.

Power lawnmowers were a novelty. Snowblowers were unknown. Leafblowers were unknown.

Alexa and Siri were silent.

There were no 24-hour news services--just the national news at 6:30 on the three major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC). Local news was a half-hour earlier--and at 11:00 p.m.

Newspapers ruled. Pic shows a commuter train ...

Not many people on our street subscribe to a daily newspaper now--though we, retro to the core, take three (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Akron Beacon-Journal, New York Times).

I could go on, but I'm getting weary (as I'm sure you are).

My father died late in 1999, and he was already feeling estranged from the New World. As I've mentioned here before, the last piece of technology he learned to use was a TV remote (a device that did not exist in my boyhood--want to change the channel, or turn the TV on or off?--walk over to it and use the buttons on the set). He never used a computer, self-serve gas, a cell phone ...

But he did ride a horse to school--and that is awesome!