To know your dad, know the path he walked

Posted

To understand my father, I remember that as a kid he shoveled coal into a furnace to keep the family house warm. I see him today, our family elder at 95, and marvel that he grew up without a TV or a refrigerator or antibiotics; he came of age during the Great Depression and World War II. I love his story, and it touches me to see the boy in the old man.

Therefore, I try to explain the concept of a phone booth to my grandchildren, ages 11, 9, 7 and 5, so they can begin to understand their grandfather’s time in history, so they can appreciate his story. I don’t dare suggest they contemplate their great-granddad’s early life devoid of any screens; it might be traumatic.

To them, a phone booth is bizarre enough. What a concept: to walk into a tiny enclosure, put money into a slot and dial a huge rotary telephone that hangs on the wall.

What may seem stranger to them is that their grandfather and even their father walked around as kids without an electronic leash. They had freedom, wandering through town when they were 10 and 11, blissfully out of touch with any parents. Adventure was around the next corner, rather than on Minecraft.

To our forty-something children, the foods, automobiles, family life, medical care and devices of our era are “quaint.” To the grandkids, it’s all BCE. I tell my son that his father wore a tie and jacket when we dated, and he finds it very back-to-the-future. I tell my grandson that his grandpa had to hide under his desk during shelter drills, and I might as well tell him grandpa drove a chariot. But the kid listens, and I hope he begins to take the measure of the man.

How to explain Grandpa’s first TV? His parents toted the huge box into their bedroom, and Uncle Milty became a family event. There weren’t enough broadcasts to fill the programming hours, so sometimes they watched the test pattern. TV land for kids was innocent and benign. No smartass teenagers, no conflict, nothing but happy talk in the peanut gallery.

I always loved it when my grandparents talked about their lives, the iceman and the Drake’s horse-driven cake truck. So I imagine the grandkids would like to know that their grandfather didn’t have a computer until he was 35 years old. To write a letter, he actually rolled yellow paper into a typewriter and tapped out his note on keys that look very much like modern keyboards. But —and this is big — he couldn’t change what he wrote once it was on the paper unless he used Wite-Out correction fluid, and if he wanted more than one copy, he had to use carbon paper. Best ask someone over 50 about that.

To mail the letter, he had to roll the paper out of the typewriter, fold it, put it in an envelope and take it to a post office. Think of the planning and effort that went into a simple note.

On the medical front, the grandkids live now in the age of “owies” and Big Bird Band-Aids. I know this sounds like a when-he-was-your-age story, but when a kid screamed in grandpa’s day, a mom came running with Mercurochrome. It was a nasty, deep-orange antiseptic alternative to the dreaded iodine, which burned something terrible. No, when Grandpa grew up, there was no Neosporin, no antibiotics, no polio vaccine, no mumps vaccine and no fluoride.

When he wanted music, Grandpa plugged in the record player, a boxy machine with a turntable and an arm that held a needle. He placed a record, which was a large, grooved disk, on the turntable, lowered the arm and … there were tunes.

Grandpa listened the old-fashioned way, with his own built-in ear buds.

When he was a kid, the car had roll-up windows, which he had to wind up and down himself, and there was no radio, and no seatbelts. I know the thought of driving 15 minutes without an individual TV screen is frightening, but Grandpa and his parents drove back and forth to Florida with only conversation for entertainment.

I want the grandkids to know this history because it will help them understand why their elders get so cranky in super-noisy restaurants, why they want to look into the little ones’ eyes when they talk, why they prefer to get on an airplane and visit rather than settling for FaceTime.

I don’t know that one era is better than another. Doesn’t matter. But it might help the kids understand their grandpa better to realize this: If he had to carry with him all the thingies they carry on a modern smartphone, he would be dragging 75 books, a clock, a calendar, a telephone book, a calculator, a typewriter, a record player, a movie projector, a tape recorder, a weather station, a flashlight and a telephone. He was proficient with all these machines and tools and conveniences, and then they became obsolete.

So, kids, please be patient while he’s learning to text. Ask him about his life as a little boy. Learn about the kid who became the grandpa. To know him is to love him even more.

Copyright © 2014 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.