Image Up Advertising & Design

6 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | FEBRUARY 2015 | COMMUNITY NEWS ALL GROWN UP — THE WAGES OF THE GOLDEN YEARS FOUR SEASONS SPOTLIGHT The Electric Age is Beep Beep Beep! By Crochet E. Oldman It is said we live in the Atomic Age. Well, I think we really live in the Electric Age. When I was a kid in the Depression we had four electric things in our home: the telephone, the radio, the lights and the doorbell. Having a phone and a radio meant we were securely in the middle class and electric lights meant we lived in town. My relatives on farms had oil lamps until the REA connected them in the late 1930s. The doorbell meant we lived on the second floor in a walk-up apartment. The button for the bell was in the first floor lobby where a door knocker wouldn't work. Our oven ran on gas, the clock on a spring, the furnace on oil (recently converted from coal), and the egg timer was sand in an hourglass. The iceman (he made his deliveries from a horse-drawn wagon), used to lug huge blocks of ice up to our apartment and put them in the icebox. As the ice melted, it often filled the drip pan faster than my mother could empty it, causing floods in the kitchen. We finally got a refrigerator when I was about six — I remember how tickled my mother was. It was only the first of a flood of electrical devices that have come to define our age. We now have an electric dishwasher, not a stopper in the sink, dish towels and a lot of elbow grease. We have an electric washer and dryer, not a sink in the basement, a wash board, cranked wringer and a clothesline in the backyard. We use a microwave oven instead of a pan to warm leftovers. I admit they save a lot of time and labor, but things can be overdone. My car has electric window openers, door locks, window locks, adjusters for the side view mirrors, seat adjusters, sensors to turn on the headlights, seat and rear-view mirror warmers, an electric defroster for the rear window, a good dozen interior electric lights and an electrically operated sun roof — to say nothing of a radio, headlights, starter, a CD player and a Bluetooth connection to my cell phone that allows me to talk without touching the phone. When I open the door with the old fashioned key, the electrical system gets upset and the car alarm (it's electrical) goes off and I have to push the electric panic button to get it to stop. It wasn't the least bit inconvenient to crank down the windows or pull the headlight switch, adjust the sun roof, mirrors and seats or put a key in the lock — and I got by fine with a single dome light. I have used the seat warmer once and the mirror warmers never. The rear window defroster and the starter, however, are useful. I'll bet six months could be cut off the typical auto loan if all the unneeded electric motors and wires and sensors and switches and controls for those contraptions didn't have to be paid for. In the realm of unnecessary expense, I had occasion recently to eat at an upscale restaurant that had a fancy, fold-up menu with a leather cover. I put it down, closed, for a minute or two. When I opened it, it was blank — all the writing had disappeared. I stared at it in disbelief, only to see the writing suddenly come back. The thing was electric; it turned off when not being used. The food was nice, but when the bill came I was charged for spectacular. I guess I had to help pay for the electric menus. When I was in high school, the kids taking science courses and advanced math had slide rules hooked on their belts. It was sign of scientific smarts. Today, the slide rule has been replaced by electronic gizmos which all look alike, so you can't tell the physics whiz from the dim bulb who is constantly complaining on his iPhone to friends, or listening on his iPod to bad, loud music. A symbol of scholarship has been replaced by a symbol of immaturity. And these electronic gizmos cost several times as much as slide rules and — judging from the constant introduction of new ones with gotta- have features — they only last about six months. I have a GPS that cost a couple hundred dollars in my car to tell me where to go. It gets really cranky and snaps "RECALCULATING!" when I have the gall to pull off its assigned route to grab lunch. I used to have a free map from the Automobile Association that never said a word about going to In-N-Out Burger. And the map never got me lost like the "Try telling all those beeps apart. I spent most of a recent morning changing hearing aid batteries, checking the refrigerator door, the microwave and my iPad before I discovered I had a text on my cell." Continued on next page

• Cover