OPINION: In just one lifetime

It’s been said there’s more advancement in science, technology and communications during the last ten years, than during the previous 100 years combined. Considering what’s been accomplished just in my own lifetime, the progress that’s been made is almost beyond comprehension.

Our lives today can be complicated, but simply dealing with the basic needs of a family used to be far more complicated than now. We have it pretty easy compared to just a few decades ago.

We can see the differences by watching TV commercials that show the amazing devices and services available to make our lives easier. We can do almost everything just by using our sophisticated phones and tablets. We have all kinds of labor-saving tools, and even replacement automobiles and prepared foods delivered to our door.

Most people today cannot imagine the amount of work that was required in the past simply to put a meal on the table.

During my own lifetime, one of the most extraordinary inventions that changed my life was electricity. As a little girl, I actually learned to read by kerosene lamp. I can only imagine how primitive that must sound to young people today. My mother baked and cooked every meal, every day on a kitchen stove that burned wood and corn cobs. We took our weekly baths by heating water on the wood stove because we didn’t have running water in the house. No faucets, no toilets, no showers. I can still see my dad digging the trench by hand to pipe water from the well to make our house “modern.”

I remember waiting for the REA (Rural Electric Association) to arrive at our farm as it traveled across rural Iowa installing electricity for the first time. Our new light fixtures were positioned in the middle of the floor in each room of our house ready to be installed. Imagine how exciting it was to be able to turn on a switch and illuminate an entire room. We could now discard our battery radio. Heat from the oil burner could be circulated to all corners of the room during the winter, and electric fans could cool the air coming in open windows during the summer.

It was pure luxury having lightbulbs in the barn to replace the lanterns we were using while milking the cows.

The period in history I lived as a child was not the pioneer days, but I suspect today’s young people would think it was. Automobiles had been around for a while; in fact, I have a picture of my grandfather proudly posing with his first car, a Model T Ford. My family drove Chevrolets as far back as I can remember, but I also recall neighbors living a mile east of us driving to town in a wagon pulled by a team of horses. The road by our house had never been graveled and when it rained, it was impassable.

In fact, when it rained, we had to leave our own car at the corner of the farm-to-market road. My dad kept some sort of vehicle he called a “puddle jumper” to drive through the pasture to get to the hard-surfaced road.

Although tractors had been around for a few years, when I was young Dad still had a team of black horses he farmed with. We were overjoyed when he purchased our first Allis Chalmers tractor.

It’s pretty amazing to have lived through the period of television progressing from tiny black-and-white screens on huge heavy consoles in the 1950s, to enormous full-color screens now hanging on walls; and to see computers advance from filling up an entire room, to taking up the whole top of a desk, to our current small hand-held instruments.

To go from party-line phones hung on the wall, to small devices carried in our pockets that enable us to communicate with people around the world, is nothing short of miraculous.

I’ve lived from a time neighbors traveled in wagons pulled by a team of horses, to seeing astronauts travel through space to live for months and years on a “station in the sky.” It’s still beyond my imagination. While others are now becoming familiar with artificial intelligence (AI), I’m still trying to figure out what iCloud is.

Experiencing all these changes throughout my one short lifetime has been challenging, but oh, so remarkable!