THEN AND NOW

I was born in 1948, so the 1950s are my first taste of life. I can remember a long way back and how things have changed between then and now. Hard to believe but my first memories are of the outhouse. I know many people have never used one and it isn't my most favorite memory. I remember in the winter time I was afraid my butt would freeze fast to the seat and I would be stuck there for hours. In the summer I was afraid a spider would crawl up my butt. Alright it is funny now but not to a young boy around five years old. Yes,
that was then and now the luxury of the flush toilet. People of today don't realize how good they have it.

In the 1950s our home phone was on a party line with two other families. Again I know many young people have no idea what a party line was. One family might have short rings, another long rings, and another a combination of short and long rings. No one in the 1950s ever imagined that there would be phones that people could carry around in their pocket. The cell phones are an amazing invention, but it seems like people
has lost common courtesy since they were invented. I have seen people using them at the teller window in banks and not even listening to the teller. I have seen people using them in checkout lines at the supermarket like their life is the only one that matters. It seems like common courtesy has flown out the window since the invention.

In the 1950s all shows on TV were in black and white. We saw no color TV until the early 1960s. The TVs were built to look like a piece of furniture with beautiful cabinets. Not so in today's world. We had an antenna on the roof of our home to watch TV. There was no cable TV or satellite dishes. Funny now today I have ditched cable TV and went back to an antenna to save almost a thousand dollars a year. I also still look at the reruns of many old shows in black and white. I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, The Rifleman, to name a few are still watched by me. Of course I now look at many shows in color, but the black and whites are classics that will remain forever in my heart.

I used to lay down on the grass in our yard and stare into space. I would look at the moon and wonder what it was like there. In the 1950s it seemed so distant. I thought no one will ever walk on the moon. In 1969 the first astronauts landed on the moon. I was in the Air Force in Florida at the time and was amazed that only a little over a decade earlier I thought it would never happen. Now spacecraft are flying to other planets and taking photos that in the 1950s we never thought possible. I have always been interested in space and like many I am sure that we are not the only form of life in the universe. The vastness of the universe is mind boggling.

We had an old typewriter at home and I later learned to type in school in the 1960s. The computer wasn't even thought of at the time. To make a copy on a typewriter we used carbon paper. It was so difficult to make corrections on a typewriter. Now today we have the personal computers that we can type and make any correction in a matter of seconds. We can print out copies of what we are typing immediately.

These changes over the years are only a few of what I remember and have seen. Who knows what the next fifty years will bring. I see all the advancement in technology now, but I will always remember riding my bicycle on the roads in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. We never wore a helmet and we survived. Sure I got the usual cuts and scrapes. I remember around 1961 when I was getting ready to go to a Little League game. I went out to put by bat and glove in the car. When I slammed the car door shut my index finger on my right hand was in the way. It cut the tip of my finger about half off. No need to go to the doctor then just push it back together and tape it up. Yes, it healed, but to this day I have a scar on the finger that stands out like crazy when I get finger printed. Now it seems we go to the doctor for any little sniffle.By the way our family doctor in the 1950s made house calls. No chance you will get one to do that now.

This has been just a glimpse through sixty years of my life. Sixty years from now people will be looking back at how things have changed for them. People may think I am crazy, but I often wish many of the things today was still like it was in the 1950s. I have so many memories you can't imagine, many good, many bad. However, I have always felt that the bad times make the good times seem a lot better.


Copyright   Larry W. Fish   2015

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