A different time

I can remember my step-grandmother telling me stories when I was in high school and college that used to amaze me. Not because they were so extraordinary in their content, but in their time frame.

She grew up in San Antonio when it was still a relatively small city in Texas. Certainly not the 7th largest city in the USA as it is now. Mama Linney actually was my stepmother’s aunt. My stepmother’s own mother died when she was three and her father was some merchant seaman who disappeared. Mama Linney and her husband took my stepmother in and treated her like a daughter.

So when Mama Linney’s husband died when I was around 10, she came to live with my family. At the time, it was my father, sister, stepmother and me and Mama Linney became a part of my life at a fairly early age.

According to Mama Linney she came from a prominent family and loved to talk about her ‘courting days’. There is no doubt that at one time Mama Linney had been a catch. I remember red auburn hair and striking blue eyes on a face that still attracted men well into her 60s.

She actually drove everyone in the family crazy at some point.

My poor stepmother could never cook well enough, clean well enough or mother well enough to suit Mama Linney. This woman literally boiled all her cooking utensils because she didn’t trust our family and dishwasher to clean them. She also insisted on cooking most of her own food.

Mama Linney didn’t think my father was good enough for her ward and she made it clear with her remarks here and there. My father was a country boy from a farming community in Virginia who just happened to turn into an aerospace engineer. He had absolutely no airs about his accomplishments and found his mother-in-law quite pretentious. He put up with her–barely–for my stepmother’s sake.

My sister and I got along with her fine for the most part as long we recognized we weren’t blood so neither of us were really relatives. She told us that many times over the years.

Funny lady.

She lived to almost 100 years and was pretty damn sharp until her death.

To get back to her stories; what was amazing to me, she would talk about being picked up for an outing by a horse and buggy. I am guessing it was around the 1920s to which she was referring.

She could remember seeing her first airplane and how they were still a thing not for common use.

I couldn’t even imagine a time without automobiles and since my father made a living with space flight, no airplanes was a tough one for me to understand fully. When she talked about radio shows being her form of entertainment and zero television, it seemed like cavemen times to me.

By college, I really enjoyed her taking me back in time as I felt the world get more modern.

I had an electric typewriter at university and that was a big deal. It even had a ribbon that would erase letters instead of relying on white out ink. That ribbon was cutting edge.

I can remember taking a college course in a new field called computer science where I learned to punch cards to create a program.

Talk about good times.

When I graduated from university, my sister gave me a microwave. It was excellent and my roommates were ecstatic. It might have taken two people to carry it because it was the size of an oven today, but our household felt modern.

Cable TV changed the way we watched television. 24 hours became the way of all networks. Gone were the days when most programming went to bed at 2 a.m. with the American flag being honored just before the TV went into white noise.

The modern world marched on.

One of the biggest changes I have taken in over the years is going to airports and flying in and out of them.

My parents split when I was five and, by the time I was around eight, they lived in different sections of the U.S. That meant my sister and I flew a couple times a year for visitation.

I totally remember my parents seeing me off at the gates and having them waiting as we came off the plane. It was really easy.

The security tightening has been amazing. There was a time when I would fly a dozen times a year and I have seen tons of changes from the airports to the planes themselves. I can say the room in economy seats on all airlines based in America have gotten much smaller the past five years.

Sometimes the so-called improvements haven’t always been for the better.

All this reflection about what has changed in my life over the years started coming to me about a week ago when another birthday was experienced. I think you can’t help but reflect on what has changed when this day springs forth.

Then a visit from my year younger sister had us doing the ‘do you remember when there was no … ” game.

The world I live in, Mama Linney could not even imagine when she was alive. I guarantee Mama Linney would not have wrapped her mind around cloud technology or how to utilize all the apps out there. To be fair and honest, neither have I.

I can remember thinking Mama Linney lived in the past somewhat as she recalled the days of her youth often.

I get now why she did long for the simpler times.

She actually knew a world with no weaponry that could wipe out the earth. Pollution from cars was non-existent and, in her mind, the world was safer when she was growing up.

She saw the world change so fast and I think she wanted it to slow down some. Time does seem to go by faster year after year.

I can empathize with her thinking as I look back now myself.

There is so much to be in awe of as the world progresses and I mean good and bad.

So this birthday, I made a wish to myself; I don’t turn into one of those folk that remember life was better in the past. I want to be that guy who looks forward to the future and wait to be amazed a little bit more.

This attitude is contingent on no terminators coming from the future or some virus that makes zombies out of most mankind.

 

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