by Pa Rock
Globetrotter
I am spending the second day with my Oregon grandchildren, and as I look around their child-centric home, I am amazed at the wide array of clever electronic gizmos and intelligent toys that grab their attention and spur their creativity. The world is speeding well beyond my grasp.
My own grandfather, Dan Sreaves, was just a boy when he rode into Missouri in a wagon at the beginning of the twentieth century. His final trip out of the state was on a jet plane seven decades later when he and his wife flew to California and fulfilled a life-long dream of wading into the Pacific Ocean. During Granddad's lifetime he witnessed two world wars, a great depression, and the Korean and Vietnam wars, all while scratching a living out of the hard Missouri land and raising seven children. He moved into Missouri before radio was even invented, and by the time he passed away he was the proud owner of a color television set!
I was fortunate to know my grandfather for twenty-two years before he died. He was one of the best people that I have ever encountered.
Although my family acquired its own television at about the time I started school, I can remember the evenings when my mother and I sat and listened to programs on the radio while waiting for my dad to come home from work. Color television was becoming common by the time I left home and headed to college, and a year or two after that I took my first ride on an airplane.
We brought home our first computer, a Commodore 64, while my kids were in grade school. and by the time they graduated it was not uncommon for homework to be completed with the aid of computers and hand-held calculators. As the kids moved off and started their own lives, email was coming into fashion and proved to be the easiest way to keep the lines of communication open. Cell phones rode in on the electronic wave and everyone suddenly had a personal means of communication that they could carry around with them.
Today I am driving a car that locks and unlocks electronically - at the push of a button - and starts and stops without a key. I fly from city-to-city and across oceans on jets that carry hundreds of people (albeit uncomfortably), and move across airports on conveyor belts and escalators. I have a device in my house that hears everything I say and responds to requests for information and music, and my television is streamed in over the internet allowing me to watch entire seasons of a particular show in just a couple of sittings. Many of my meals go from frozen to piping hot in just a couple of minutes in a machine that sends "microwaves" of energy through the food. My telephone, which I carry in my pocket, allows instant communication with friends as far away as Japan - and it also warns me of impending natural and man-made emergencies.
And in my spare time I sit down and preserve my thoughts in a blog.
God only knows what my grandchildren will see and do in their next several decades! As my adventure winds down, theirs is only beginning.
Globetrotter
I am spending the second day with my Oregon grandchildren, and as I look around their child-centric home, I am amazed at the wide array of clever electronic gizmos and intelligent toys that grab their attention and spur their creativity. The world is speeding well beyond my grasp.
My own grandfather, Dan Sreaves, was just a boy when he rode into Missouri in a wagon at the beginning of the twentieth century. His final trip out of the state was on a jet plane seven decades later when he and his wife flew to California and fulfilled a life-long dream of wading into the Pacific Ocean. During Granddad's lifetime he witnessed two world wars, a great depression, and the Korean and Vietnam wars, all while scratching a living out of the hard Missouri land and raising seven children. He moved into Missouri before radio was even invented, and by the time he passed away he was the proud owner of a color television set!
I was fortunate to know my grandfather for twenty-two years before he died. He was one of the best people that I have ever encountered.
Although my family acquired its own television at about the time I started school, I can remember the evenings when my mother and I sat and listened to programs on the radio while waiting for my dad to come home from work. Color television was becoming common by the time I left home and headed to college, and a year or two after that I took my first ride on an airplane.
We brought home our first computer, a Commodore 64, while my kids were in grade school. and by the time they graduated it was not uncommon for homework to be completed with the aid of computers and hand-held calculators. As the kids moved off and started their own lives, email was coming into fashion and proved to be the easiest way to keep the lines of communication open. Cell phones rode in on the electronic wave and everyone suddenly had a personal means of communication that they could carry around with them.
Today I am driving a car that locks and unlocks electronically - at the push of a button - and starts and stops without a key. I fly from city-to-city and across oceans on jets that carry hundreds of people (albeit uncomfortably), and move across airports on conveyor belts and escalators. I have a device in my house that hears everything I say and responds to requests for information and music, and my television is streamed in over the internet allowing me to watch entire seasons of a particular show in just a couple of sittings. Many of my meals go from frozen to piping hot in just a couple of minutes in a machine that sends "microwaves" of energy through the food. My telephone, which I carry in my pocket, allows instant communication with friends as far away as Japan - and it also warns me of impending natural and man-made emergencies.
And in my spare time I sit down and preserve my thoughts in a blog.
God only knows what my grandchildren will see and do in their next several decades! As my adventure winds down, theirs is only beginning.
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