Spectrum
Offbeat things I'm thankful for
Terri Andersen
Senior Moments
Most people are thankful for their health, their homes, their jobs (if they're lucky enough to have one these days), and especially their families. I'm thankful for all of those things, too (with the substitution of Social Security/retirement in place of a job), but I find myself being thankful for a few things that I imagine most people would consider a little odd. For instance, taking a shower in a nice heated bathroom, with privacy and plumbing that brings hot water right into the tub. When I was growing up, we didn't have a heated bathroom, and we didn't have hot water. We lived in a cold water flat with a tub in the kitchen (covered with a hinged board to make it look like something to sit on when no one was in the tub). In order to get hot water in the tub, one had to heat enough pots of cold water on the stove to have some to sit in while taking a quick bath before the water got cold again. Showers weren't even thought about. As for that other necessary bathroom facility that we sit on rather than in, that, too, is something I'm thankful for today, 'specially the flushing system. When we were with my parents “in the country,” we used either an outhouse (very cold in winter) or a chamber pot that was kept in the bedroom so one wouldn't have to go outside on cold winter nights. The outhouse was hard to keep from smelling terrible, and the pot was embarrassingly noisy, plus first thing in the morning it had to be emptied by whoever used it. Not very pleasant, so you see why today's flushing seems so wonderful to me. ~ Then there's the refrigerator instead of an icebox that produced a lot of water to mop up when the ice melted, and there's today's freezer to store food so you don't have to go grocery shopping every day. Frozen dinners to tide you over when you don't have time to cook or just don't feel like it are another wonderful thing to be thankful for. I'm trying to think what we did about ice cream in those days, but all I remember is going to the ice cream parlor for it. I don't think we ever kept any on hand in the house, like we do today. (It's so nice to have ice cream in the freezer anytime you want it!) How about computers as something to be thankful for? For those who remember how tedious it was to retype everything if a mistake was made on a typewriter, the computer with its ease in making corrections is a godsend, Also, if one needed copies of what was being typewritten, carbon paper had to be inserted between the pages, which made making corrections even more troublesome. When I got my first word processor, I thought I had died and went to heaven. But the computer even surpassed the word processor, in that one could change the fonts typeface. Computer users today probably have no idea how font changes were done on the 1970s typesetting machines, so allow me to let them know how lucky they are today. The typesetting equipment consisted of a keyboard and a big metal enclosure on the side which contained a large drum that accommodated two or three-foot filmstrips of a certain letter typeface. Every time one wanted to change a typeface the machine had to be shut off so the drum could come to a standstill and a new font film strip could be attached to it. If corrections had to be made after a piece was proofread, the process had to be repeated for every kind of different typeface that needed correction — very time-consuming and nerve wracking, especially on deadline day. Also, if one wanted to change the size of the lettering, it was necessary to make sure enough leading space was accounted for before the line was typed, otherwise the larger size letters would come out on top of the smaller ones. Each time a change was made, different instructions had to be given to the machine. Today, all one has to do is hit a few keys or mouse up and down and –voila! Even today's automobiles make me feel grateful that they're different from the earlier models, which didn't have heat or air conditioning. To keep warm in winter, one had to make sure there were some blankets in the car, and to cool off in summer one depended on a breeze from the open windows (as long as it wasn't raining). I remember the first time I dated a guy with a car that had heat in it. I couldn't get over not having to bundle up to keep warm. We even took off our coats, which was such a new sensation to me, I can still feel the thrill of not being cold in the car. (I almost got carried away enough to marry the guy, but I did come to my senses before doing anything so rash.) OK, so maybe I'm a little crazy, but for each memory I have of how things once were and how they are today, I can't help feeling thankful that I lived long enough to experience the differences.
Terri Andersen is a New Milford resident.
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