Urban sprawl and techno-gadgets. The internet, gaming, and social networking.

As we said goodbye to 2011, and hello to 2012, there was yet… another report on….. the expanding waistline of Americans. Too many sodas, fast food, white pasty foods… blah, blah, blah. I think they are missing the bigger picture.

Yes….I think the problem has settled into place…… because we quit doing things for ourselves.  These days, it seems….. we need the faster, sleeker, effortless way to get that “something” accomplished.

But tonight I am NOT writing about that topic at all. It just reminded me of things I miss. If I were King of Everything… I would bring a lot of this stuff back.

We used to have push mowers. Those were neat. There were little blades that twirled around the axis when the wheels would move. Give a push and looky there. The grass would fly.

Same with raking leaves. The old way was a lot of hard work. It could take all afternoon… and when you were through…. your muscles would really ache. A hot shower and some warm stew afterward was one of the best feelings in the world. Now we have leaf blowers.

Shoveling snow.  The heavy wet stuff was the biggest challenge. But the hot chocolate with marshmallows tasted SO good when the walks were scraped clean of all frozen precipitation.  Now….. Snowblowers.

We would chop our own vegetables, knead the dough for bread, wash dishes by hand.

Food processors, bread makers, dishwashers.

From pounding nails by hand….. … to writing letters by hand.    All those things are slowly fading away.

I liked playing stick ball in the street with the neighborhood gang until the streetlights came on.

On Saturday nights….. it was fun to spread a jigsaw puzzle out on the fold-up card table…. and pop the popcorn in a pan… with oil.

I liked that we only had one phone in the whole house when I was growing up. It had a really long, stretched out cord. If the phone rang, and it was for you…… you actually had to get up from what you were doing and walk in to the kitchen to take the call. I liked standing there, talking to my best friend on the phone…. twisting myself up in the cord… round and round. And if there was something you didn’t want anyone else to hear… you’d have to walk into the other room and stretch to cord really far.

The phone was all black, had a rotary dial, and hung on the kitchen wall.  We don’t see those too much any more either.

We would walk to church on Sundays. Heck, we’d walk everywhere. Urban sprawl has squelched that.

I really don’t want the gadgets on the infomercials to take over the world. Or the video games…. or even the social network.

Yet……the truth of the matter is…..  I like a really good gadget….. and yep…. I love technology.   I am constantly amazed at its expanding  capacity.  I’m a freak for a fun video game too.

But at the same time…. I miss a good typewriter, and a wristwatch that you have to wind yourself.

It is kind of like missing Steve Jobs…. and Andy Rooney….. at the very same time.

“We change, whether we like it or not.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson