Jeanette Levellie
Dear Granddaughter:
Since you asked about “the olden days,” I thought you’d enjoy a written account of the primitive conditions in which Grandpa and I grew up.
Since Facebook hadn’t been invented, meeting people and making friends was a complicated process. It involved rituals like talking to someone, shaking their hand, and asking them questions about their interests.
We lowered and raised our car windows by cranking a handle attached to the inside door of the car. We opened the car doors with keys, and were forced to lock them by pushing a button down by hand!
Garage doors could only be opened and closed manually, with a handle on the front. We had to get out of the car, walk to the garage, and open or close it ourselves.
TVs in the dark ages had no remote controls. We got up from the couch and walked across the room to change the channel or turn the volume down with a knob attached to the front of the TV set. No couch potatoes existed in those days, either.
When we used telephones, we had to dial the other person by poking our finger into numbers into a round piece of plastic on the front of the phone. We even talked to the person on the other end.
We also sent messages to friends with items called “letters,” written with devices named “pens,” on sheets of paper and put them in a blue box on a street corner. They were sorted and sent in a truck to our friends’ houses. Sometimes they took days to arrive!
I know this has shocked you, and you’re amazed that we survived. But people in the olden days were tougher. Without Facebook, remotes and texting we had to be.
With love,
Your Savvy Grandma
For more hope and humor, visit jeanettelevellie.com.