A Time of Innocence
by Sam Crenshaw
Our world was one of innocence. For us, summertime was running around barefoot, no shirt, and usually short pants. It might include taking a cane pole to the river bank, hoping to catch a big catfish or a string of red breast. If the fish were not biting, it was not the worst thing that could happen. I would simply look around for a few small sticks, occasionally throwing them in the river to watch them flow with the current downstream to some mysterious and unseen paradise.
Should some of them become lodged in the branches of a fallen tree, all the better. I would simply look around until I saw a rock and play the imaginary game of "bombs away," until the small sticks were freed to float along their way.
Today, I sometimes become sad thinking about our young grandchildren. I can not imagine allowing one of my grandchildren to walk around town unsupervised. The very thought that one of them might walk down to the banks of a river alone conjures up a boatload of fears that would make my childhood monsters, "Bloody Bones", "Soap Sally" and "Hugging Molly" seem tame in comparison. Am I paranoid? Am I just over protective? I don’t think so! In that time of innocence, I could walk to town to get some
groceries for dinner unsupervised and alone. If I was lucky I could ride a bike with a basket to fetch the items on my mother’s list. She never worried about sending her tousled-haired son on such a mission.
Progress, in some instances, has not been good. I read the other day about someone’s recollection of those days long ago regarding a telephone. They indicated they would simply pick up the phone and say to the operator, "Belvedere-3454, please." I chuckled at how preposterous that statement seemed. With that many digits in the phone number, it must have been a much larger city than mine. I clearly recall in the 1950s picking up the heavy, and I mean very heavy, receiver, listening to the voice of the operator ask, "Number please?"
It was now my turn to reply to her, "45J, please." That was my friend, Dickie’s phone number—and I had it memorized!
It was later, using those same heavy phones with new technology, that I thought making phone calls was about to become an encumbrance. We finally got a prefix to our phone number. Twilight! The new, and much longer, phone number which one would be required to speak into the mouthpiece would be something akin to, "TWI-4564." The numbers became longer still, in anticipation of something yet to come. On newer phones, they would require us to dial numbers without the assistance of an operator. E-gads! Surely this would not work!
I recall reading the Dick Tracy comic strip and thinking, "Yeah sure! A watch with two-way telephone capabilities." Fifty years later, those capabilities exist! Really!
Oh! Such a time of innocence we have left behind!
© 2007 Sam Crenshaw
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Contact Sam at sam@samcrenshaw.com
If you liked this story, you should read Daddy Drove a Bus