Daily Archives: February 16, 2021

Living Through the Decades

I’ve been around a while. I was born smack dab in the middle of the Twentieth Century. A very eventful century to be sure.  One that has a lot of memorable newsworthy events in it. We went from the horse and buggy to the space rocket in that century.  We watched Davy Crockett, The Mickey Mouse Club and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  We went from having milk and bread delivered to big box stores that carried everything.  We had our feet measured before we tried on shoes, sometime our feet were even X-rayed beforehand.  Now, no one helps you with your shoes.  Gas went from 21 cents a gallon to over two dollars a gallon and during the Obama administration in the 21st century, gas almost went to five dollars a gallon.

Of course, back in the earlier part of the twentieth century salaries were much lower. When David and I got married, we were making about five thousands dollars a year.  If someone had told me we would be making what we are making now I would have told them they were talking crazy, but with inflation, salaries rose also.  Government intervention rose also which made a lot of things cost more, like college. When I went to college it cost me $130 a quarter.  I made enough waitressing to pay for my first year in college. Then government started offering “free” Pell grants and other things to “help” us and college tuition went up into the low to high thousands per year.  Don’t tell me government doesn’t cost us money in everything.

I knew people who were born in the nineteenth century. Who were alive when horses and buggies were the norm.  These same people lived through two world wars and the Great Depression.   David’s Grandmother learned how to be frugal after that and she was frugal the rest of her life.  She saved everything.  My mother also lived during the roaring twenties, through two world wars, the Great Depression and the Viet Nam war and saw the first man to walk on the moon.  David’s grandmother lived to be 93 years old. She saw a lot of change in her lifetime, some good, some not so good.  My mother and daddy were married at the very beginning of the Great Depression, but my daddy was a farmer so they never went hungry and wanted for nothing.  It certainly wasn’t easy for them, but they made it through and raised six children through the thirties and into the seventies when their last son graduated from high school.  I wish my mother had had a blog back then so I could read more about her life. When you are a kid, you don’t think about asking your parents about their lives.

Now I am the grandmother of five grandchildren.  One born in the twentieth century and the rest in the twenty-first century.  If they live long enough, they could see the twenty-second century.   When I was young, I never thought I would become this old, but I did and pretty quickly, too.  Young people think think they will be young all their lives. I remember thinking that. I also remember thinking maybe my children would not grow up. I really did think that. That I would get to keep my children little forever. Well, it doesn’t and didn’t work out that way and now they are the age I think I am or would like to be.   In all honesty, though, I would not want to have to repeat all those years again.

What will my grandchildren see in their lifetime?  I hope they don’t see their country turn into a socialist one or worse a communist one. It seems at the time we have an administration who would like nothing better than to take away our rights given to us by our Creator. I fear for my grandchildren more and more and pray every day that things will change.  Things seem all upside down. What’s wrong is called right, what’s right is called wrong. Then I wonder if that is how my parents felt, how my grandparents felt in their day about the direction the country was going.  Maybe it’s a generational thing. I just want my grandchildren to know I fought as hard as I could to keep the country our founders began way back centuries ago. Wise men wrote the Constitution and gave us the Bill of Rights and if we are a moral and good country, we may be able to keep it. At least that is what one of the founders said at the signing.

I do wonder what is in the future.  What will people be using as fuel since the powers that be want to get rid of gas and oil products.  What will people be driving at the end of this century?  Will the pandemic still be going on? It seems like it’s gone on forever. I’m to the point I don’t want to participate any longer. Throw all masks away and take my risks. The school children are getting the worse end of the deal. They are losing their childhood experiences having school every day and being with children their age.  The not the  president says he will open schools one day a week!  What good is that?  Couldn’t one catch the virus on that one day as well as on five?  It’s really confusing what we hear from government. I don’t think they know what they are doing and are throwing stuff on the wall hoping it sticks.  I really miss President Trump because he always had a plan and he knew what he was doing.

Yes, things have changed through the years.  Remember when you had to get up off your seat and go change the channel on your television set?  Or you had to be within a couple of feet of your phone because the cord was too short to go far?  I remember dinners around the table every evening. My mother was the best cook and you didn’t want to miss one of her meals. I’m really hoping that this pandemic has brought families closer together and they are eating at the table with each other again.  Maybe this pandemic has taught us to slow down a bit.  Maybe God thought our lives were getting too hectic and we were losing our way.  We needed to have time for one another.  I hope so. 

I won’t see another century, but I know some people who probably will.   What have you seen in your lifetime?   We all are put here at certain times for a reason or a time like this as Esther in the Bible was.  She had one job God gave her and she accomplished it.  If she hadn’t many Jews would have been killed.  Are you ready for such a time as this?  I hope I am.  I pray I am.  Bye.