guess who did a lot of chopping wood?

[asakiyume]

I took my car to the mechanic's yesterday, all dressed in my running gear, because I planned to run a back route back to my house. The mechanic's dad drove up just as I was about to set off and offered me a ride home--he's such a gent; he's given me a ride home in the past. I told him no, this time I was going to get my exercise, but we chatted for a few minutes anyway. The mechanic is about my age (maybe slightly younger... everyone who is about my age is actually slightly younger), and his dad is about my dad's age--with many fewer teeth but more high spirits.

I love the dad--I love talking to him about his past in this town, when it was really a tiny rural farming community. I told him I'd seen a community TV interview with him about going to the one-room schoolhouse they used to have in town. "Oh yeah," he said. "No heat, no running water. Just a wood stove. If you were bad, you had to split the wood for it, so guess who had to split a lot of wood?"

He told me one time he put another kid's boot into the fire! ... Pranks are different when you have a wood stove in the mix!

I was thinking about how different his school experience was from my dad's. My dad went to school in Lexington, Massachusetts. Running water, heat in winter, no splitting wood, no outhouses. Same state, different worlds.

Comments

[zyzyly]

We had all the modern conveniences in my grade school classroom, but I was reminded today about one of my teachers who used to whack me in the head with a knuckle and say, "Think!"

[asakiyume]

Ouch!

In the video interview, he talks about being rapped with a ruler on the back of the hands.

[sovay]

I was thinking about how different his school experience was from my dad's. My dad went to school in Lexington, Massachusetts. Running water, heat in winter, no splitting wood, no outhouses. Same state, different worlds.

Thanks for telling—even a little bit of—their stories.

[khiemtran]

It's always interesting when you go to parts of a city that would have been "a trip to the country". It is quite clear that the rural area I grew up in is going the same way too. In fact, even the suburban area I live now is changing into an urban centre. I guess those types of conversations make you pay more attention to the things that surround you now - maybe in another thirty years, we'll be telling young people how we used to drive cars by ourselves and a mechanic was just another person.

[amaebi]

When I was twelve my mother was suddenly, severely and mysteriously ill and received fortunately-successfu exploratory surgery in hospital, after which she was in recovery but still very loopy from anaesthesia. At twelve I was permitted to visit with my father. My mother said, "IBM is patenting the one-room schoolhouse." I was terrified.

(My mother's youngest brother was an early IBM employee and made a bundle from it. In two childhood sojourns in the California desert my mother attended one-room schools.)

[ebourland]

This is lovely.

[asakiyume]

Thank you for being here for me to share them with.

[asakiyume]

It's especially strange if there's some item--a building or some other landmark--that holds that old time preserved. By a traffic light near our street--a traffic light by a supermarket, bank, strip of shops, and apartments--there's an old milestone marker from the eighteenth century:



(I've tried to enhance it to make the letters stand out; it's very hard to read, but it says 86 Miles from Boston To Nhampton, with the funny "s" in "Boston" that looks like an f.)

[asakiyume]

That sounds exactly like the sort of thing one says when one's still loopy from surgery. Mind you, I'm sure IBM would try if it thought there was money in it...

[asakiyume]

^_^

Thank you

[khiemtran]

That's very cool!

[amaebi]

About six years ago I was suddenly reminded of all the footpaths that used to be the main means of travel throughout New England, way way back, and how some are still present and marked. And I went all Chingachgook.

I'm pretty good about remembering earlier technologies and how they shaped life, but that had blown right by me....

[amaebi]

It definitely was. I wasn't used to delirium.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I was thrilled that the road I drive on all the time dates back to Way Back When.

[rimturse]

It's fascinating how you don't have to go that far back before everything was so different. I remember when I was a little girl and my old neighbour was telling how she was sent out to work as a maid on a farm when she was just 6 years old - only going home during weekends, and school was half day every second day. Difficult to imagine now.

[asakiyume]

Wow, six years old! And within living memory....