Technology was not part of the everyday world in the 1950s and 1960s. Our phone was attached to the wall. We had a party line. No celebration was involved. Several people shared the same line.
If you wanted to make a call, and someone else was busy discussing how terrible a neighbor looked with hair the color of an orange cat, you could interrupt or wait. Neither was a good choice.
When I needed to write a school paper, I went to the library and rummaged through the card catalogue. One row of drawers next to another. If the subject wasn’t boring, this task was!
The librarian found the research book I needed via the information on the card. Then I copied what I needed along with the reference onto my notebook.
Sometimes, the material was available in the World Book Encyclopedia. Our family bought a set from a door-to-door salesman. The series contained anything you wanted to know about aardvarks to zippers, provided you didn’t need in-depth information.
Typing the final result made Atlas’s job of carrying the Earth appear easy. I started with a manual typewriter. A sheet of carbon paper was placed between the original and the copy. Since the backspace didn’t provide an eraser, either the entire page needed to be retyped or the error needed to be covered with a white blob cover-up.
Erasable paper eventually came onto the scene. However, it smudged. And, of course, the biggest mistakes appeared at the bottom of the page. I didn’t keep track of the time needed to complete one five-page assignment. On my father’s Royal typewriter. In a basement corner.
It was a royal pain. The advantage? Only one I can see. I sure learned discipline. And gratitude.When the task was completed. Eventually.
The word b-r-e-a-t-h needs more than one syllable when an attack begins, air struggling to flow in and out, a sudden drying, shallow water.
I think about free ocean waves as a passage opens through my nose, out my mouth. A new power. Whispers could move mountains. The smallest birds embrace the sky. And I am grateful,
Two Canada geese settle into an angled parking space in a Wal-Mart lot. They take turns sharing shreds of bun left in a torn red McDonald’s box. One goose eats. The other stands watch for danger.
A car honks, its sound louder than any a goose could create. The noise interrupts their feast. Harsh and threatening human voices follow. The geese flee.
From their aerial perspective the birds agree— Excellent volume. Lacks style.
Everyone knows my name, face, and products. I appear on screens across the world. Wealth and I speak a coded language, encrypted inside green and silver. Luxury touches every corner of my existence. I touch no one. Distance keeps profits safe.
Then, for fun, I bet my associate, “If I walk through one of my factories in a central state and someone recognizes me, another layoff is possible. The workers are not watching what they are doing.”
I did.One of the older men on the line almost ran into me.
“Geesh, do you know who that is?” another man whispered. He was loud as thunder. “Quiet, Jake, his son was laid off last time around. He couldn’t feed eight kids no more. His baby died last week.”
I finished my check without adequate detail. I will send someone from my staff for the next inspection. Workers need to watch where they are going.
“Need help carrying groceries?” a young man calls from across the street. Wednesday evening and our trash cans are at the curb ready for weekly pickup. Our next-door neighbor moved them before he tended to his own.
I smile at gifts surrounding my husband and me, at the brown, black, and white faces that reveal hearts exploding with care.
Garbage exists inside and outside the population. Love moves it along.
terrypetersen 