No Electronics: Stories To Scare Your Grandkids

A quick note before the attempted entertainment begins:  For those thinking about going to our author appearance on October 30 in Kendallville, we're dropping the price of Haunted Noble County, Indiana bought from us there by two dollars. Our reasoning is that since you have to sign up and there's a $15 ticket price, we should offer a deal. Here's all the info, along with the signup link:

https://commevents.eventcalendarapp.com/haunted-noble-county

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 So, do you kids want to hear a scary story?

"Yay!"

I grew up in a dark, backward land called No Electronics.

"That is scary!"

I know.

Every generation has some version of this story. Not only that, but every generation sees so much technological advancement that the story can change depending on their desire to impress the listener. I once rented a VCR from a video store, to hook up to my first color television; but it's much more impressive to talk about my childhood black and white console TV, which brought in 3-6 channels depending on how willing you were to go outside and turn the antenna.

What's the big deal about this car? It was the first automobile in the town of Albion.

We once pulled in a Chicago TV station, which was playing old black and white westerns. The pictures were snowy and the volume barely audible, but we watched anyway, because at that moment our only other choices were The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, or Dialing For Dollars.

I'll explain that last one some other time.

My grandmother told stories about her family's mules. To me the idea of no indoor plumbing or electricity is just as fascinating as the day I showed my youngest daughter the manual typewriter I spent my first ten years writing on.

After I explained how it operated, she looked it over carefully and asked, "But where's the power cord?"

You want portable entertainment? Here's the Albion Library's bookmobile.

 My parents once listened to their favorite shows on the radio. "The Lone Ranger", "Fibber McGee and Molly", and of course "My Favorite Husband", which later morphed into the TV show "I Love Lucy". My question: What the heck did they look at while the show was playing? The wall? Certainly not each other?

Kids, when I was your age and I missed my favorite TV show, I wouldn't have another chance to watch that episode until it was rerun in the summer.

"But why didn't you record it?"

We did once record an episode of "Superman"--on reel to reel audio tape. When I was thirty I bought a video camera, to record the kids and their activities. Now we whip out our cell phones.

It's Albion's phone service, circa the turn of the century. No, the PREVIOUS century. Not a Bluetooth or USB port to be seen. (Our original Bell Telephone office still stands, about two blocks from my home.)

 

 

It makes me wonder what stories my kids will tell their grandkids, someday.

"When I was your age, I couldn't just touch my earbud and have my shows downloaded directly to my brain. I had to actually turn on the TV and bring up the DVR!"

"What's a DVR?"

My kids won't be able to tell the story of how they walked to school a mile every day, uphill both ways, through snow in the morning and a heat wave every afternoon. They'll be asked for video proof. By the time my great-grandchildren are putting on their radiation suits for the hover-car trip to sky-school, they'll be automatically recording from the moment they wake up.

They'll have proof that the good old days weren't all that good.

Go ahead, find the electronics section in this Albion store. I'll wait.

 

As for me, somewhere around the house I have vinyl records, cassette tapes, CD-Rom discs, and that old VHS camcorder ... and a laptop, podcasts on my cell phone, and a car that talks to my phone as soon as I turn the key. Not that new cars need keys.

The changes come so fast that looking back can make a person both nostalgic and dizzy.

 

I'm so old, some of my books are already ... history. The photos on this blog came from my research for Images of America: Albion and Noble County.

  

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Remember: Print books don’t need electricity, but be careful with the candles.

 

Landlines Leave Lasting Legacy

I'm cutting the cord, so to speak. Unwiring, vaulting myself into the 21st Century, taking the leap--

Okay, I'm mostly doing it to save money ... I was perfectly happy being wired. I suppose someday soon the doctor will want me to cut out caffeine, and after that I won't be wired in any way at all.

I've been a hardliner all my life. I'm not trying to start an argument about politics--I mean telephones. You see (listen to this in a grumpy old man voice), when I was younger they didn't have them-there newfangled cellular phones.

Don't laugh. When your kids grow up, they'll make fun of you for not having a brain input port on the back of your neck.

But when I was a kid you couldn't even carry the phone over to your couch: Our phone was on the kitchen wall. Maybe the theory back then was that housewives could talk while cooking. We don't really have housewives anymore, either.

And it was a party line. I know, right? Just imagine.

Wait, you don't know what a party line is?

Well, we lived out in the country, and several homes around the area shared the same line. Before you made a call, you had to quietly pick up the receiver, to make sure someone wasn't already talking on it. If they were, you very quietly continued to listen for any good gossip.

So we didn't have a private line until I moved into town as a teen, and even then it was still screwed into the wall. It wasn't until I moved out on my own that I got a phone that was actually portable. And by portable, I mean it rested on a table, and had enough line coming from the wall that I could carry that heavy thing anywhere in my apartment.

You could use it to call a hospital, or send someone to the hospital.

 

Of course, my first apartment only had two rooms, if you include the bathroom. Still, a phone that heavy could be used to give burglars a concussion.

Back then you could actually get tired dialing. Why? Because dialing in the 80s often meant an actual dial. If you called a number with a lot of ones, no big deal. If you called 219-797-8998, you'd have cramps at the end.

Around that time somebody came up with the idea of a mobile phone you could have in your car. You had to pay attention to how much phone line you had left, or the car would come to an abrupt stop at the end of the reel.

Around 1990 we got our first cordless phone, a huge advancement, as long as you didn't stray far from the base. I remember standing outside (okay, five feet from the house), feeling strange that I could talk outside, at least until the neighbors complained. Cordless phones also encouraged exercise, by which I mean wandering around the house, trying to find it.

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

Then, in 2001: My first cell phone. Entirely portable! All you needed was a shoulder strap and a back brace to carry it. After that you could have real fun with your phone, like drop it in your drink, or talk while driving, or drop it in your drink while talking while driving. It was great to have a way to call for help if you crashed while talking and drinking.

But I kept my land line for twenty years after cell phones became a thing in my family. My initial argument was that if cell service went down, or a power outage led to drained batteries, we could still talk on a phone that used a separate line. But then, one day, I realized he only phone still hooked up was the cordless--which would stop working in a power outage, anyway.

By now the only calls I got on it were from people sitting in cubicles in India, asking about my extended warranty.

So as of now, although the number's still in the phone book (if they still make those), it no longer works. If you want to talk to me on the phone, you have to ask for my cell number. And I don't pick up there when there's no name on the incoming call, because apparently the FBI has a warrant out for me and doesn't use caller ID. Well, that's what the guy on the old phone said.

Or, you could e-mail me. But that's a whole other story.

Is that a tiny little phone in your pocket, or are you just sad to see me?

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Booting Up the Carpocalypse

Remember when cars didn't have starters, and you used to have to crank them to start?

Okay, neither do I. But I'll bet a lot of you remember a time before cars were mostly computers. On my first car, the starter was about the only thing electric, let alone electronic. On my current car, you quite literally can't operate it without the help of a little brain.  No, not that little brain.

If all the computer stuff in my car stopped working I'd not only be out my radio (excuse me, entertainment system), but I'd have no way of knowing my speed or how much fuel I had. I mean, I could get a dipstick, but don't we have enough dispsticks on the roads? My car's abilities are awesome, but also scary to a science fiction fan like me.

So it should have come as no surprise when I got into the car awhile back and saw this:

Yeah, my car was installing updates. I kept waiting for it to restart all by itself.

And how do I know what new program was loading? Cylon? Terminator? Didn't Stephen King write a whole story about this? Someday I may not be able to escape from my Escape. It's the carpocalypse.

I suppose the survivors will have to go back to the crank start.

Starman and the Space Roadster, Or: Musk to Mars!

When I was supposed to be sleeping the other day I woke up with a stomach ache (long story), and went downstairs for some soda crackers and 7 Up. (They're called soda crackers, so you have to drink soda with them. That's the law.) Naturally I flipped on the TV, only to discover we were thirty second from launching a car into space.

By "we" I mean Elon Musk, the rather eccentric rich guy head of SpaceX, who I now love more than ever in a not creepy sort of way.

So I got to see it live, and it was so much fun I could almost forget the part about how I spent the rest of that afternoon in the bathroom, doing a little launching of my own. (Long story. Never mind, I'll write about it later.)

Musk was testing the Falcon Heavy rocket, the biggest space vehicle since the shuttle. He intends to use it to send people to interesting places like the Moon, Mars, and Uranus, which I understand is infested with asteroids. Since this was a test--Musk actually said pre-launch that the chance of failure was high--he decided not to put any important cargo on board. But he needed something to test its payload capacity, some weight ... and, looking around, he spotted the vast warehouse that contained his collection of over ten thousand cars.

I'm making that part up. All I can say is that if I had several billion dollars, I'd be launching stuff into space, and I'd also have a collection of antique fire trucks in a vast warehouse. Clearly he and I are virtual twins.

Anyway, he did happen to have a Tesla roadster sitting around, and also a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit. I'm trying hard not to judge, here. Besides, I'd have a spacesuit, too.

So he set the spaceman in the Tesla, a detail I didn't know about when I turned on the TV and found a giant spaceship on the pad. After launch the two booster rockets, in a display worthy of an Olympic event, landed simultaneously, ready to be reused. The main booster ... not so much, but two out of three ain't bad. Then the spaceship went into orbit around the Earth, and its roof retracted, and ... wow.

The last official Instagram from "Starman".

When Emily came in I got the footage online and played the whole thing over, still grinning ear to ear. It was just so cool. Elon Musk, in addition to understanding that the future of mankind lies in space, also has a great sense of showmanship and humor. When I grow up I want to be just like him, especially the rich part.

Musk sent the Tesla into deep space, having said there was a slim chance it might actually hit Mars, although apparently it wasn't aimed directly at the Red Planet. Instead the rocket overshot its mark, and is now on a long loop that will take it into the Asteroid Belt. I wouldn't be surprised if Musk did that on purpose, just to show off the capabilities of his rocket. I mean, the thing can haul 64 tons, so what's a sports car and an astronaut? Talk about an off-road race.

I applaud Elon Musk, and not just because I want him to send me seed money to launch my writing career. Space is still hard and dangerous, but it's also full of possibilities in resources, knowledge, innovation, and just plain being neat. One of the problems with the world today is that so many of us no longer have a sense of wonder, or understand the value of exploration for the sake of discovery. We need to get that back. And with our politicians busy infighting and backstabbing, it may be innovators like Musk who will take us into the next phase of the human adventure.

Or at least send me some cash.