Before They Were Mom and Dad

I’ve been watching The Waltons.

That may be partly responsible for sending me down this particular rabbit hole. Watching that family live through the Depression made me think about my own parents—not as Mom and Dad, but as children growing up in a world I can hardly imagine.  I remember stories about only being allowed to wear shoes to school or church.

My Dad was born in 1921 in Carbon Hill, Ohio, a tiny coal-mining community in Hocking County. His family had come a long way to get there … from Germany before immigrating to America and eventually settling in Ohio.

But genealogy gives you names and dates. It doesn't tell you what it felt like to be a little boy.  The following year's census gives us one of those cold little facts that suddenly feels anything but cold: Dad and his father were listed as boarders.

What was that like for an eight-year-old boy who had just lost his mother?  She died in childbirth and baby William was adopted into another family and disappeared from their everyday lives (although, wonderfully, he reconnected with the family many years later).

My mother's childhood wasn't exactly Leave It to Beaver, either.  She was one of eleven children (born in 1927) growing up in Columbus, Ohio. Her father was an alcoholic. On payday and  there was money to be had, Grandma sometimes sent one of the younger children down to the bar to get some of it from him before he drank it all. (He eventually died of cirrhosis of the liver).
And Mom carried another reminder of childhood right on her face. When she was about two years old, she put the hot end of an electrical iron cord in her mouth. It left her with a terrible scar near her mouth. I imagine that scar bothered her far more than it ever bothered my father.

Because after the war, Dad met her at a tiny diner enjoying a malted with her sister.  And he thought she was beautiful.

Of all the dates and names and census records in a 108-page family genealogy someone prepared for me years ago, that may be the piece of family history that matters most to me.

Two people came out of childhoods that were hard in ways their own children would never fully understand. One lost his mother when he was eight. One grew up in a house with ten siblings and an alcoholic father. Neither came from anything resembling the comfortable, protected childhoods we hope to give children today.

Yet somehow they got from there to me.

I can trace one branch of my family back to Germany and another to England. There are immigrants, farmers, soldiers, coal-country families and even a Revolutionary War captain tucked into those 108 pages.
That's interesting.

But I'm beginning to think family history isn't really about seeing how far backward we can go.  It's about going back just far enough to understand the people we actually knew.

I knew Mom and Dad.

I'm only now beginning to understand the children they once were.

Dad and Me and Mom 1953

Things That Quietly Disappeared

Nobody held a retirement party for the Rolodex.

There was no farewell ceremony for the telephone book. No final salute to the Fotomat, the road atlas or the newspaper TV listings.

One day these things were simply part of everyday life. Then, without our noticing, they weren't.

Think about it. When was the last time you used an address book? Called 411? Looked up a word in a dictionary? Wrote a check at the grocery store? Sent a postcard? Used a pay phone?

We once carried maps in the glove compartment and stopped at gas stations to ask directions. We clipped coupons with scissors, looked up movie times in the newspaper and called theaters to hear a recorded voice list the showtimes.

We had alarm clocks, wristwatches, wall calendars and recipe boxes filled with handwritten index cards. Pencils that needed sharpening. Shoe horns. Handkerchiefs. Bank deposit slips. Carbon paper. Typewriter correction fluid.

We took pictures with cameras, dropped the film off for developing and waited DAYS to find out we'd had our thumb over the lens.

And we knew phone numbers.

Lots of them.

I knew the numbers of family, friends, work, doctors and probably a favorite restaurant or two. Today, once I put someone in Contacts, I apparently give my brain permission to erase the number forever.

I've actually had several dreams in which there's an emergency and I need to call my late husband from a landline—but I can't remember his phone number.  Why would I? He was No. 1 in my Favorites.

Apparently some little corner of my brain remains concerned that someday I'll be stranded beside a perfectly functional telephone with absolutely nobody I can call.

We didn't decide to stop memorizing phone numbers. Nobody announced that this particular life skill was being discontinued. We just stopped needing it.

That's how most of these things disappeared.

The Sears catalog. Traveler's checks. Paper airline tickets. Library card catalogs. VCRs and “Be Kind, Rewind.” Cassette tapes repaired with a pencil. Photo albums. Slide projectors. Busy signals. Long-distance rates. Calling the operator. Writing down a phone message on the pad beside the kitchen telephone.

And remember when television actually ended for the night?

Some disappearances I don't mourn at all. Ashtrays everywhere? Good riddance. Carbon copies? Fine. And I have absolutely no desire to unfold a road map across the steering wheel while trying to figure out whether I missed Highway 26.

But I do wonder what we're losing along with all that convenience.

We don't have to remember phone numbers. We don't have to remember directions. We don't even have to remember what we need at the grocery store if we put it in an app.

Maybe that's progress.

Still, I kind of miss the satisfaction of knowing exactly how to get somewhere, exactly what someone's phone number was—and exactly where to find the bent paperclip in the junk drawer.

Of course, the junk drawer hasn't quietly disappeared.

Some things are apparently forever.

So many disappearances

Alarm clocks — clock radios with glowing red numbers.

Wall calendars — still around, but no longer running everyone's life.

Address books — actual little books with crossed-out addresses and people moved from Smith, Mary to Jones, Mary.

Checkbooks — and balancing one!

Paper grocery lists tucked into a purse.

Handwritten letters and thank-you notes.

Postcards from vacations.

Encyclopedias — an entire shelf of information that was already out of date by the time you finished paying for it.

Dictionaries and thesauruses sitting beside the desk.

Yellow Pages — and letting your fingers do the walking.

Telephone booths/pay phones.

Calling 411.

Calling the operator.

Busy signals. Kids may never experience the special irritation of knowing someone was talking on the phone for THREE HOURS.

Long-distance rates — waiting until evenings or Sundays to call.

Collect calls - well maybe prison calls

Telephone extension cords long enough to roam half the house.

Writing down phone messages on a pad beside the telephone.

VCRs and “Be Kind, Rewind.”

TV antennas and somebody standing there saying, “STOP! Right there!”

Getting up to change the TV channel.

TV test patterns/sign-offs — television actually ended for the night.

Saturday morning cartoons because you couldn't watch them whenever you wanted.

The Sears catalog.

Mail-order forms where you wrote the item number, size, color and quantity and mailed it with a check.

Catalog shopping by telephone.

Travel agents for ordinary vacations.

Traveler's checks.

Paper airline tickets.

Boarding passes you guarded with your life.

Road atlases and AAA TripTiks.

Stopping at a gas station to ask for directions.

Gas-station attendants checking your oil and cleaning the windshield. (Although Oregon held onto attendants much longer than most!)

Disposable cameras.

Film canisters. And saving them because they were useful little containers!

Photo albums with actual prints.

Slide projectors and vacation slides.

One-hour photo developing.

Typewriters and correction fluid.

Carbon copies.

Fax machines.

Floppy disks.

CD towers/racks.

Cassette tapes—and fixing one with a pencil!

Newspaper classified ads.

Newspaper movie listings.

Clipping coupons with scissors.

Recipe boxes filled with handwritten index cards.

Paper menus—QR codes haven't completely won, thank goodness.

Matches from restaurants.

Ashtrays everywhere. An excellent disappearance!

Hat-check rooms.

Handkerchiefs.

Aprons for everyday cooking.

Shoe horns and those little shoe-polishing kits.

Shoe repair shops—not gone, but much harder to find.

Pencils that needed sharpening and the wall-mounted crank sharpener.

Library card catalogs.

Overdue library stamps inside the book.

Writing checks at the grocery store while twelve people waited behind you.

Bank passbooks.

Deposit slips.

Getting a paycheck that was an actual check.

Keys! Slowly disappearing—cars, hotel rooms, houses...

Doorbells that just rang instead of recording you, identifying you and notifying three phones.

Printed instruction manuals. Now apparently we're expected to scan a QR code while lying upside down underneath the dishwasher.

UNDER THE KEYBOARD

Remember when passwords were simple?  You had one.  Maybe two if you were particularly security conscious. And where did you keep them? On a little piece of paper tucked under your keyboard, of course. For years, that seemed perfectly reasonable. We weren't protecting the nuclear codes. We were trying to get into AOL.

Then the internet grew up, and suddenly we needed passwords for EVERYTHING. Email. Amazon. The bank. The library. Facebook. Netflix. The pharmacy. The doctor's office. The electric company. Every store where we bought a pair of socks once in 2014.

Naturally, many of us used the same password for everything. That turned out to be a VERY BAD IDEA.

So the experts told us every account needed a different password. And not just any password. It needed an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a number, a symbol and presumably the maiden name of our third-grade teacher's hamster.

Eventually password managers arrived. I was a relatively early convert and now use 1Password. Instead of remembering dozens — okay, probably hundreds — of passwords, it remembers them for me. Progress!

Then came two-factor authentication. You enter your password. The website essentially says, "We don't believe you.” So it sends a six-digit number to your phone. You retrieve the number, go back to the website and type it in. "Fine," the website says. "You may enter." And now, just when I thought I understood the rules, apparently passwords themselves are on their way out.

Welcome to the age of the PASSKEY.

I read a fascinating NYT Wirecutter article about passwords and passkeys this week and discovered I've apparently already been using passkeys without giving them much thought.

Instead of typing a password, you prove you're you the same way you unlock your phone or computer — with your face, fingerprint or PIN.

I already use Face ID for all sorts of things, including Apple Cash. (I recently told Mr. 12 that when I die, he'd better hang onto my body for a while so he can keep holding my phone up to my face to send himself money). (He seemed remarkably untroubled by this plan).

Which brings us to passkeys.

Behind the scenes, some very clever cryptography takes place. I do not understand the clever cryptography. I do not NEED to understand the clever cryptography. This may be my favorite part.

The important thing is that a passkey is much harder for the bad guys to steal because there isn't a password for us to accidentally give them. And we don't have to remember anything.

Passkeys aren't everywhere yet, so for a while we're going to live in a strange hybrid world of passwords, password managers, verification codes, Face ID and passkeys.

But I like where this is headed. Think about the journey. We started with one password written on a scrap of paper under the keyboard. Then we needed 147 passwords no normal human could possibly remember.

So we invented software to remember them for us. Then we added another step to prove we were really us. And now we're inventing a system where we don't have to remember a password at all.

It only took about 30 years to get there.

Of course, I haven't thrown away 1Password. I'm not THAT brave. Besides, somewhere in America right now, there's still a website asking:

What was the name of your first pet?

And somewhere else there's probably still a little piece of paper under a keyboard.

Some technology dies harder than others.

Tiny Things

Life doesn't always require grand gestures.  Sometimes it's a greeting card saved for just the right moment. A text that simply asks “how are you doing today?” A heart emoji. A voicemail.

This week I mailed my sister a card that said, You're My Person. I don't even remember exactly what I wrote inside. Probably something about sharing life's good days and the hard ones, too.  A little background.  A few months ago they found a bug on the wall.  Took a pic and looked it up … termite!  An exterminator put up a plastic bag in the corner of the wall and the ceiling and every day another termite.

While the Bug Man was there, he noticed a carpenter ant. And there is never just one.  Apparently there was a leak around their chimney after it had been repaired following a lightening strike a couple of years ago. Millions men and workers and experts and continued bad news since.

A day later my phone buzzed with a photo of the card and one little ❤️.  Then came a voicemail. She told me she had been having one of those days when getting dressed felt like too much work. She didn't want to go outside. She didn't even want to cook. Then my card arrived.

It didn't solve any of her problems.  It didn't make anything magically better. But for a little while, it reminded her that she wasn't carrying them alone.

On Monday I texted my friend Linda, (who works the WLLO Office each week) and casually asked how her weekend was. Not so good.  Her little dog was attacked by a much larger dog while they were walking on Cannon Beach.  The big dog WAS leashed but pulled free, dragging his leash.  Scooby is an 8 lb love bug and usually joins our Zoom meetings.  He was mauled horribly with a vet visit every other day. Currently he is in the hospital.

Scooby is healing slowly and so is Linda.  She told me she prefers texting because talking still brings tears. But having someone ask each day...helps.

It struck me that none of these things took more than a minute. A card. A text. A voicemail.

Just a reminder that someone is thinking about you.

We sometimes wait until we have enough time to do something meaningful.  Maybe meaningful is usually much smaller than we imagine. Maybe the tiny things are the big things.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this...

You already know what to do.

P.S. 

We still had a yellow zucchini left from last week, so I used it to make a small zucchini bread (5"x5" casserole pan, recipe from OneDishKitchen) for my neighbors and a loaf pan size for us.