Life was simpler then. People knew and helped their neighbors. The distinction between right and wrong was pretty clear. Home, family and church dominated priorities. In general, life was more pleasant than the hectic world we live in today.
Those thoughts have been repeated for generations, each remembering or hearing about the “good old days” of some prior era. And I think that to some extent, that is true. Life may have been physically harder for the covered-wagon pioneers but the stories of homesteading, cabins and gold rushes evoke feelings of admiration for individualism and achievement.
Images associated with Christmas often include snowy farms with smoke curling from chimneys. Warm feelings of being with family members and living off the land overshadow the likely difficulties that came with life a hundred years ago.
My father was born in 1911 and my mother in 1916. My mother had wonderful memories of growing up on a Willamette Valley farm. My father could recall even small details of his life growing up on an eastern Oregon ranch. Neither family was well-to-do. My parents shared many similar childhood experiences.
I was born during World War II and grew up in the 1950s, a decade now remembered as a time of peace and prosperity, rapid home construction and happy music, pre-dating Vietnam. My parents scrimped and saved just to get by.
I always had cardboard in my shoes to slow down the water that came through holes in the soles. I made my own teeter-totter with rocks on the other end due to a lack of playmates and store-bought toys. Yet other families were probably worse off.
I've read that around 1900, boys, age 13, could be charged with tending 1,000 sheep and hundreds of cattle, batching in a camp, cooking for themselves, and making decisions. No phones, of course. Today, people hire babysitters for children of that age. It may be easier to make good decisions later in life if a person had more true decision making responsibility at an earlier age.
How things have changed.
My parents walked a few miles to school each day or rode horses. I also walked a couple miles to school. That would be unheard of today.
My family had a party-line telephone — we'd answer on two short rings but not answer on other sounds. When not home, we sought out a payphone when necessary to contact family members or businesses. Today most 12-year-olds have their own cell phones at an alarming monthly cost.
How many cars and television sets do American families really need?
Another change involves fixing and repairing things versus throwing them away. I join with those who gain much greater satisfaction from refurbishing items than from buying new. But that's not the norm these days.
On the up side, people are living longer than a few generations ago, but exercise for many people comes from gym memberships rather than physical labor. After all, it's just too cold outside to dig in the ground. What vegetable garden?
What's really different about 2017 from 1957 is the pace of change. (I know this is hardly a new thought). Instead of the latest development being a specialized manufacturing process for steel or oil production, new devices appear almost daily to fill needs we didn't know we had. We now want a drone to deliver new cushy pillows in 30 minutes that we ordered with a few clicks online.
I've often wondered when I would have chosen to live, had I had a choice.
Would I rather have spent my lifetime during a different era? My guess is that most people would say they would choose to live now, if posed that question, rather than during Elizabethan England of the 1500s or the pre-airplane days of 1900. Maybe we all think we have lived during the best of times, the most interesting of times. I consider myself very, very fortunate to have been born in the United States.
Future generations may look back on this period of time as a simpler, happier era. We can't even imagine how life will be in 50 to 100 years. Maybe people will be able to transport themselves to the moon simply by thinking about it. Maybe humans will evolve and diseases will be eradicated, leading to a life expectancy of 200 years or more. Maybe my mother's dream of world peace will one day be realized and resources and energies can be focused on more productive endeavors.
There is no going back, of course. Everyone knows the world has changed and the rate of change keeps picking up. The need for higher and more specialized education has never been greater. It seems harder today to foresee the future than it might have been 100 or 50 years ago. But life goes on.
Yet some things remain the same. Parents are charged with raising productive members of society. True and lasting friendships, including marriage, are priceless. Volunteerism is alive and well. People care about others, even strangers. And in the end it's how we lived our lives, how authentic, how honest and with how much integrity that fuels the lasting memories.
Sure life was different “back then,” but I for one am looking forward to the New Year.
