My Life Before Technology

           I remember a time when life was much simpler. A time before technology took over as a substitute for family time.

           Growing up as a young boy, my parents and my two older siblings made the best of the times we spent together. We had our arguments like any other family, but you could still feel the love. We looked forward to our summer vacations where we would travel to the east coast to visit with family, or the trips to amusement parks like Fantasy Island in Grand Island, New York, or Crystal Beach near Buffalo, New York.

           I remember being in awe of the live old west shoot-outs that would be performed a few times each day. It was amazing to see these gunfighters being tossed through windows or thrown from rooftops into a trough of water below. It reminded me of the old western movies that my dad and I used to watch together. I would picture the likes of Roy Rogers, John Wayne, or The Lone Ranger being the hero in the white hat who rushes in to save the day.

           On the trips to see our family, we would spend hours playing cards or I would spend time together in the loft of my grandfather’s barn with my cousin. It was such a different life than the big city. I enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere and regretted having to leave.

           There was one trip we took as a family to the west coast of Canada that will forever stick in my mind when my parents, two sisters, my grandfather, and my aunt, I believe, traveled by RV across Canada from Ontario to British Columbia. The Winnebago my dad had rented was about twenty feet long and was like a home on wheels.

           We had made a stop in Calgary right around the time of the Calgary Stampede. I was so excited to watch the chuckwagon races and rodeo show. Of course, my thoughts about the chuckwagon races had since changed knowing how hard it is on the horses, but as a kid, I did not know any better. My parents even bought me a cowboy hat to wear while we watched the parade go through town. I felt like a little buckaroo.

           After leaving Calgary, we made a stop in Banff, Alberta where we took in the wonder of Lake Louise, a breathtaking lake with a luxurious hotel at the edge of the lake. It was truly one of the most beautiful places I had ever experienced, and I look forward to my return there soon.

           Before leaving Alberta, we also explored Lake Moraine, and we headed north to Edmonton, Alberta and made a stop at The West Edmonton Mall. This massive mall is forty-eight city blocks and has everything your heart desires including an indoor amusement park. A must-see for shopping enthusiasts, but don’t expect to see everything in one day.

           Driving through the Canadian Rockies was an amazing experience as well. We saw a herd of moose on the side of the highway. They were magnificent to look at closely, but I sure wouldn’t want to be confronted head-on with one.

           We stopped for a break at the base of one of the mountains and got out to stretch our legs for a bit. My sisters and I walked closer to the mountain and had a snowball fight in the middle of the summer. I remember wanting to take the snowballs with us and keep them in the freezer, but I don’t recall that idea being excepted by my mom.

           Once we reached the British Columbia border, we did not travel any further. It was time to turn around and return home. It wasn’t until years later, that I was able to reach the city of Vancouver on the West coast of Canada.

           Outside of the summer vacations, my family would gather for game nights. We would play board games like Scrabble, Sorry, Clue, and Yahtzee, or we would play card games like Cribbage, Fish, Crazy Eights, or UNO. Those days were so much fun. We still get together for game nights occasionally.

           As much as I enjoyed television as a child, the choice of channels was limited, especially as a young boy before we ever had cable TV. Saturday morning cartoons would keep me amused for hours, or during the week, I would rush home at lunch so I could watch The Flintstones and Leave It to Beaver before heading back to school. There was a lot more wholesome family entertainment in those days.

           I recall when my parents bought our first color television set. That’s right boys and girls, there was a time when TV and photographs were all black and white. The first time I watched The Wizard of Oz on the color TV, I thought something was wrong with the set. I didn’t realize that the film started in black & white then turned to color. Watching that movie on a black & white set did not have the same effect during the scene with the “horse of a different color.”

           When my parents were able to tear me away from the television, I would spend hours outside with my friends. We did everything from throwing around a ball or a frisbee, to building forts in the trees or snow forts during the winter months. The rule was, that I needed to be back inside when the streetlights came on.

           When we wanted to contact our friends, we would pick up the phone which likely had a cord attached to it that only reached four feet away from the wall, or we would get on our shoes and walk down the street to our friends’ homes to see if they could come out and play. Nowadays, of course, almost everyone has a cellular phone tucked away in their pocket or purse that they use to talk, text, video chat, search the web, or watch movies from.

           It was the mid-eighties when my family finally invested in a computer of our own. I had zero experience on one at that point, so I spent days reading over the instruction manual of our Commodore VIC-20 to learn how to enter lines upon lines of computer code just to make it do the simplest of tasks. With its 20 KB of Read Only Memory (ROM), it wasn’t exactly a supercomputer, but I still enjoyed learning what I could do with it. I was, however, envious of one of my friends who had a brand-new Apple II computer at the time. It was far more advanced, and I was amazed at the better quality of the games we played on it.

           I also enjoyed going to the public library, and I still do. I would either browse the aisles of categories that I enjoyed the most, or I would search through the drawers of cards where all the books were listed and categorized. Each book had a specific number and showed the genre that it belonged to. It was known as the Dewey Decimal System. I would write the numbers and titles of the books on a piece of paper and carry that paper around to locate the books. Today, I search for a book, CD, or DVD on the library website, place a hold on the items, and when they are ready for pick-up, I get a notification on my phone to tell me what is ready.

           Technology has its benefits and its downfalls. For example, before technology, families spent more quality time together as I mentioned. Also, I found that the simplicity of searching for information or solving math problems using today’s technology has seriously affected the way that children learn. They no longer need to think to get an answer. The days of showing HOW you solved a problem is over with. Now, all they need to do is “ask Google.”

           It seems crazy to me when I see children who are barely old enough to speak, picking up a tablet or iPad and knowing how to activate the camera mode. We went from typing on a typewriter which had one font to choose from (Courier M for those who were wondering), to word processing applications with hundreds of fonts to choose from. We used to have to search through countless books and encyclopedias to find a paragraph of information that we needed for a school project, and now we can type in a keyword and be given thousands of references without leaving the comfort of our couch.

           We no longer need to feel the weight of the 1,225 pages of the book War and Peace in our hands while we read it, now it is available on your portable device that weighs less than two pounds. Do I enjoy the convenience of modern technology? Absolutely, but it should not take the place of personal contact with other human beings. Do yourself and the ones you love a favor, take some down time once in a while to get out and enjoy nature or visit with someone you haven’t seen in a while. I know that during the COVID-19 lockdown, I found myself online more often, and like many others, I will admit that I am drawn to my phone or laptop more than I should be, but I will never give up time with my loved ones.

           Those of you who were born after the 1970s may never understand what life was like before home computers and cellular phones, but when you are older and technology is so advanced that it does everything for you, you may have a clearer view of what I am saying. Before my time, there were no televisions, only radio. If you wanted to find out what was going on in the world, you needed to wait days or weeks before the news reached our country.

           Think of how people lived before electricity. Lighting was by candles or oil lamps. There were no indoor toilets, only outhouses that they had to walk outside to reach regardless of the weather. There was no running water. If you were lucky, you had a pump that you could manually syphon the water out of the ground with, otherwise, you had to bring it up from a well with a bucket on a rope or carry it from the nearest stream.

           Every generation has been through changes, and not all of them good. I just hope that you don’t let go of the past as the future continues to pass us by. One day when your descendants are living in space or on another planet, they will read back on the history of our planet in the twenty-first century and wonder how we ever managed to survive.