age and technology

I feel honoured to be as old as I am. I actually do remember the "good old days". For Example:

Being way way up north in the freezing country, our vehicles needed help starting. There was no such thing as an engine block heater to get the oil warmed up and thusly starting the engine. So...we had a pan, much the shape of a wok, and we would fill it with hot coals from the house furnace topped with kindling. We would set this pan of burning fire under the block under the car and leave it for thirty minutes. Voila!!! The car would start!

Speaking of furnaces, ours was a full on wood/coal burning furnace. Early in the freezing morning, way before daylight, we would hear our dad downstairs stoking up coals and throwing on new fuel. It would take about two hours for the house to heat, but still be very chilly in the outer rooms. We would be up and out of bed around 6 am and we would rush into the closed off kitchen, full of bright lights and bacon smells and warmth. Coffee would be brewing on the old wood stove and the oven door would be wide open with our clothes laying over the door, warming. We would huddle in front of that stove in our calf length, long sleeved cotton nightgowns, waiting to dress in our warm clothes. My mom would turn the radio, CBC (the only station we had) on and listen for the farm report.

Our telephone, at that time, was a crank phone. Everybody between Smithers and Telkwa, an eleven mile stretch full of farms and houses, was on that line. Our ring was a short and a long. Everytime the phone rang for someone along that route, we would hear it and we had everybody's ring code memorized. Three shorts and two longs was my best friend Barbara's ring! I will never forget the day they came and installed a rotary dial phone. I just didn't understand how one ring , and everytime it rang, it would be for us. And that we no longer heard the others rings. If we picked up the phone to use it, and if we heard someone talking that meant someone else was using the phone and we had to say sorry and hang up immediately. As I got older, the hanging up part got slower!!

So, now here I sit in a room, three thousand miles away from home, typing this missive on my laptop, occasionally picking up my cell phone to text one of my kids, listening to my music on my ipad, answering the house phone when it rings, and keeping an eye tuned into the tv (something we never had while in the north). This is when I am happy to be old enough to still be blown away by these forms of communication. And oh oh!! what is that I hear??? Its a jet flying over getting ready to land over at the airport. When the first jet landed in Smithers all those many many years ago...the whole town turned out to see it! Now I ride in one several times a year....and it still scares the hell out of me!







\