Remembering Grandparents' Days

Dear Gentle Reader,
My husband asked me today, "What do you suppose our grandparents did for entertainment during the evenings when they were in their fifties?"

I speculated, "Probably my grandmother did handwork like crocheting or embroidering and my grandfather smoked his pipe."

He said, "I remember my grandparents listening to the radio a lot when I was a kid, but the radio wasn’t in common use until the 1920s. And what did they do before they had electricity?"

So we talked about different amusements that were available during those years. There were bowling alleys back then, because my grandfather worked at one. And there were secret societies like the Masons and Oddfellows. They probably attended church activities. I told him that women were likely to be happy just to sit down in the evenings after busy days of laundering and hanging clothes out to dry (certainly, no dryers in those days); ironing (with a non-electric iron); beating rugs, making butter by hand (my mother did that, in fact); caring for chickens (my mother would chop off the chicken’s head in our backyard); preparing meals on a cook-stove, and so many other activities for which there were no labor-saving devices.

We compared their options to ours: over 100 channels on the television so one can watch dramas, talk-shows, sports, etc; view movies and educational programs on DVDs, listen music on CDs, on-line computing, books on CD or tape; read newspapers or any of hundreds of magazines; read newspapers on-line from cities across the globe. The list goes on and on. We actually don’t have time to do everything that’s fun/interesting!

Tonight I was burning CDs for him while I was dubbing tapes for me, and also printing out music that I’d written on composer software. I received a phone call while I was on-line, and a close friend who is on a cruise to Hawaii gave me an update on her daughter who will be having back surgery next week. I use "Callwave" that allows me to hear phone messages while being on-line. Aren't there so many technological advances! I also printed out labels for packing books and other media that I will mail tomorrow to friends and relatives. Yes, I’d ordered the books on the computer.

Our lives have changed a lot since I was in high school and first used a dial telephone while visiting my sister at the university in Iowa City. That was the first time I’d used an elevator that didn’t require an elevator operator as they did in department stores in Omaha.

What will another fifty years bring? It boggles the mind!