Going Going Gone

After dropping off Jane at school yesterday I notice something was missing from the view as I turned onto a nearby highway. The phone booth at the gas station on the corner is gone. Sigh...it was the last working phone booth in the area and a signal to me that the death of the public phone booth is almost a reality. Haha the Queen gets another "I hate cell phones mail today". But this one is indirect. I know those cell phones killed the phone booth. Just about everyone has those tools of addiction now. It's almost a birthright for a person to become addicted to them. But not I! I will never get a cell phone, fordoing so is to agree to join the age of rudeness.
Anyway, now that I am pronouncing the death of the working public phone booth I should continue and reflect a bit. This phone situation is merely one of many deaths in society. Most are because of "technological advancements" like those awful cell phones. Yes, as the technology improves it kills a small part of the humanity still left in society. What a trade off that is. Kind of sad in a way. But life does involve changes for better or worse. I think most of the improvements are better technologically and make us less human spiritually. They consume us and make us less thinkers and more doers. maybe you disagree?
So as Edgar Allen Poe once wrote, "as I ponder weak and weary" about the loss of those little things that may have been less convenient but better for us I offer a few more things that have disappeared in the past few years or are about to. What about...
* full service gas stations- The days in which a guy in an oily jump suit and monogrammed service station logo-ed cap pumped your gas, checked the oil and did minor mechanical jobs on the spot....gone! And I remember the days before self service gas stations when the gas station gave away pretty decorated drinking glasses, calendars and other goodies as thank a you for filling up their. Ha! Now they make you pump your own gas and charge you a fortune to do it.
* black and white TV's- I know they are inferior. But when you watched a program in black and white it always seemed more real and less Hollywood enhanced. Black and white pictures held no special effects miracles or other gimmicks. What you saw is what you got. HD color TV is Paris Hilton. Black and white TV was Jack Benny. It's crass versus class.
* VCR- No long ago a VCR was a major innovation, but DVD and Tivo have taken over. If you have million kid movie tapes (the Disney classics for a start) or your family video on a VCR you better be resigned to the fact that you'll have to spend a fortune to "upgrade" to the newer technology. It's just another example of why technology changes so fast now. In changing the technology quickly companies make you spend twice for the same product, all in the name of "Improved".
* Vinyl records- Anyone with a record collection knows they are just for show now. It's impossible to find a record player today. Records used to be treasured and cared for, since they were easily damaged with so much as a scratch and would wear out over time. Today we have ipods and a thousand other music storage devices for our music. I miss seeing those arty album covers and think that holding an album in one's hand and looking at the cover and jacket words inside made the music sound a little more personal.
I could go on about many more, but you are snoring now. So let me just list a few and ask you to tell me some you may remember from the past. How about the loss of the: metal lunch box, typewriter, am/fm transistor radios, handles on car windows that had to be used to roll up the windows, carbon paper, canvas tennis shoe, manners (I had to slip that one in for the cell addicts), harmonicas and accordions, blenders. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, personal responesibility (for everyone who feels the government is mommy and daddy and must take care of them), sports free from drugs and scandals, Elvis sorry..I forgot he's still alive), juke boxes, drive in movie theaters, slow food (the pre McDonald's slow food was better), the cold war (seems more pleasant than the Muslim extremist jihad against we infidels), malt shops, hippies and peacniks, 35 mm cameras (I still have and use mine)............
And now, the one thing you most want to disappear...ME. Enough reminiscing, you are free to leave.