How do we start a retro-techno-revolution?
Aug. 8 was a Tuesday and the Old Men of the Mountain met at Hillbelly’s in Westerlo. There was some fog and a menacing sky, but at least in the area the OMOTM traveled, nothing happened.
Last week, the column mentioned it’s a small world. Well, during the week it got even smaller.
One OF reported, after hearing the story about how a college friend’s daughter, not niece, worked at the Chuck Wagon when it was in Champaign, Illinois, another OF said he went to college in Urbana, Illinois, which is part of Champaign.
And, after the story of the Chuck Wagon was told, he said he met his wife at college there, so he too is part of this group of OMOTM and has spent some of his time in Champaign, Illinois. The world just becomes smaller and smaller.
Many of us have stories of how small the world is; this scribe sure has some very strange and unusual ones.
Frustrated fans
In this nefarious group are a contingent of Yankee fans who are completely frustrated with the Yankees waddling around in last place of the Eastern Division in the American League. Many are just fans as fans, but some are radical enough that they think they should be managing the Yankees, and the rest of us are sure they might do a better job.
There are fans of other clubs in the OMOTM, and others who don’t give a darn about any of that. They would just as soon fuss with their cars, trucks, and tractors; however, some do both.
The Yankees are, in some instances when brought up at the breakfast, a team that brings certain consternation and frustration because these guys are not playing up to the quality of ball all that money was supposed to have bought. Some of the OFs say they could play (and did play) better than these high paid professionals who are right now no better than a team of little leaguers.
One OF in an off-handed remark to defend the Yankees said that all the teams in the Eastern Division could be a division leader in any other division. To which the other OFs say, “So what”; these are the Yankees.
Foiling Google geniuses
Somehow one of the OFs mentioned the word “typewriter” in a sentence that was part of a normal statement and was not meant to mean much other than an adjective describing whatever — this scribe forgot what — but it started a conversation on today’s technology and how fast the OFs, at least this group of them, was falling out of the loop. One OF said “he was never in it.”
Most people, including many of the OFs, carry around in their pocket the instrument we called in the last column a phone, and many of these are connected to the search engine Google. This makes those from ages 5 to 105 automatic geniuses; all they need to know is what question to ask that device and click, there is the answer.
“But,” one OF said, “those of us over maybe 65 or 70 have it over them and we could have our own secret society and communicate back and forth and they would not have a clue what we were talking about, or for that matter planning.
“All we would have to do is reinstate a secure dial-phone service and the dial phone with letters and numbers like the forties and fifties. Re-introduce the typewriter, and carbon paper, and include the mimeograph as part of the hard-copy system, and the bonus would be all our written communications would be written in cursive. Any 16-year-old would be so befuddled, they wouldn’t know what was going on.”
The other OFs said, “Hey, this guy has a point. Now the question is: How do we start this retro-techno-revolution?”
Most important
job on this Earth
Last column, the discussion was on the weather and farming and basically how related the two are. One OF, who is still farming, spoke for many OFs who did farm.
Farming is hard work, both physically and mentally, plus the pay is low. Another aspect of this endeavor is that it is a blood job.
Blood on the outside and on the inside; farming gets in your blood with the realization that, if the farmer did not do his job, everyone would die. It takes a farmer so you and everyone else can live. There is no more important job on this Earth than being a farmer.
Then the OFs discussed farming back when it was done with horses. The OFs mentioned how intelligent these animals are.
The horse seems to know what they are here for. They are here to serve and today people seem to be losing that insight.
No better lesson to show this, as one OF put it, is to hear him tell his 7-year-old to go and get the horses. (This is not a statement to illustrate a story but an actual sentence told to one of the OFs more than once.) The little tyke would trot off and come back leading two huge draft horses with a couple of ropes and for the most part these ropes would be slack.
Here you have a 50-pound kid leading 2 tons of horse with ½-inch ropes and the horses are going to be leathered up to go to work, and the horses actually seem to be smiling.
Child labor baloney, respect and love from adult to child to animal.
The Old Men of the Mountain who made it from horse to three-hundred horse-powered cars used to get to Hillbelly’s Restaurant in Westerlo for breakfast were: Miner Stevens, Rich LaGrange, Ed Goff, John Muller, Frank Fuss, Wally Guest, Harold Guest, Bill Lichliter (with guests Daniel Lichliter and Elissa Lichliter, here getting away from the heat; they actually called it like winter), Marty Herzog, Jake Herzog, Gerry Chartier, Pete Whitbeck, Warren Willsey, Russ Pokorny, Frank Dees, Paul Whitbeck, David Hodgetts, Bob Donnelly, Rich Vanderbilt, Elwood Vanderbilt, Rev. Jay Francis, Henry Whipple, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Dick Dexter, Herb Bahrmann, Paul Guiton, and me.