The thread about the transparent wood reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandfather 35 years ago. It was one of the very few times, we sat alone on the deck, had beer and he opened up and told me some things I did not really think about. I had just shown him our home computer and some of the things possible to see and find at all 8 or 9 kb per second. He was born in 1902, he was an 8th generation American, but had to learn English when he was 5 so he could go to public school because they only spoke German and even Churches had services only in German in that area of PA. If there was a fire, you ran to the corner and pulled the fire alarm and waited so you could show the fire depart, horse and buggy how to get to the house with the fire if it wasn't apparent. He was 11 when electric line and phone lines were strung down the street. A neighbor actually got a phone, but neighbors getting calls and wanting to make calls were such a bother, that they got rid of it. When world war one started he was a part time bicycle telegram delivery boy. People started to cry and hide as soon as he turned down a residential street to deliver. The grieving by customers was too much for him. He was the second teenager in Allentown PA to get a driver's license and got a job for a car sales dealership. His parents finally got a phone about 1920. When the local dept store got a radio, it was a huge deal. they scheduled a special demonstration on the side walk out side the store and had the radio blaring. My great grand father was promised he could get hymns on the radio and bought one. Then couldn't find a station with religious music. Pappy must have been a wild child. He kept working in the car industry for a while. When the depression hit, he became a PA Railroad Policeman, part of the private cadres of police responsible for clearing out homeless camps, hobos, etc. He did not have the stomach to treat people so violently and quit. Of all bizarre things, he was befriended by and old man, who sold him a tiny ice cream road side stand for $100 and lifetime free ice cream. He and grandma, built it up during the depression into a restaurant/gas station ice cream stand. They raised kids, and when the second world war ended, they were both growing tired of the long hours in the business. A guy from Sinclair Oil walked in one day and offered them more than they ever could imagine for the place. Said it would be ideal for their new concept of quick stop store gas station combos. So they sold. Packed up the LaSalle with daughters and spent 14 months touring all 48 continental states. While in California visiting relatives, he saw a television and marveled over the difference between listening to a ball game on the radio and watching it. He and the relative started looking into some crazy idea of vending televisions to put in homes that would turn on for 5 cents an hour. People could get TV without laying out the up front cash. While they were considering the idea, the jump in manufacturing them dropped the price to the point that they passed.
Pap said the difference they saw when they sold the business and left and when they returned 14 months later, there were new and better roads, bridges, housing developments spreading out into the countryside. In December 1940, they looked at a new GE refrigerator. He said it was only $20 less than a new Pontiac. Ten years later everybody could afford a frig. He saw a color TV during a trip to Philadelphia about 1956. And when he thought there couldn't be much else to come, saw a microwave oven at a restaurant trade show. They made cupcakes in 90 seconds. But folks in the crowd wouldn't eat them because they feared they might be radio active, Also, told me shoe stores back then often had x-ray machines. you put the shoes on, stood on the machine and looked through the viewer to see how cramped your toe bones were. dangerous as can be no lead shield. Cars with air conditioning, houses with air conditioning, little home microwave ovens, He still owned a business when he got electronic cash registers that did away with adding things up and pulling cranks, no worries about the amount of change to give etc. Now computers.
He had friends die of polio as a kid. Measles took his infant brother. By the time of our talk, vaccines were saving thousands from such disease. A heart transplant had been done 20 years earlier and Shelly's Frankenstein story about using dead body parts, at least for bone grafts was common place. His friends received new knees in time to dance at grandchildren's weddings. Heart valves were also a common operation for his neighbors in the retirement villas.
Then he looked at my kids playing in the yard and said "what miracles are they going to see.?"
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