Remember when electric typewriters were cutting edge technology?

At the ripe old age of 61, I often feel as though technology is trying to leave me behind.  I am typing this post on a laptop computer, something that is fast becoming a museum piece.  And I thought I was a technologic hipster, having moved up from a desk top just a few years ago.  Nope, I am mired in the old ways.  Ipads and smart phones are now the devices that most folks use anymore.  And those are probably on the verge of getting dumped into the technological dust bin of history.

It seems like yesterday that I took typing class in 8th grade, where I and another guy were the only males in a class of 30 females. That's why I took the class. I was not particularly good at typing, only having achieved maybe 20 WPM after 8th grade, and getting C's in the class.  I re-took typing in 9th grade (again, two dudes and all girls; best kept secret in 9th grade), and wound up typing about 35 WPM (with 4 mistakes).  On a mechanical Underwood typewriter.  

Typewriters.  Nobody remembers those things.  The mechanical units such as Underwoods took effort to work.  You really had to use some oomph on the pinky fingers to get those keys to work well enough to get some ink on the paper for P's and Q's.  I then joined the U.S. Army as an intelligence analyst, and had to use typewriters to write up reports: they had IBM Selectric units...electric typewriters!  Boy, those babies were the bees knees.  They had that little golf ball with all the letters embossed on it everywhere, and a magic erase key that corrected a mistake by simply pushing a button....wow, they will never top this, or so I said at the time.  Wrong.

And how about cars these days?  Just get in a brand new Nissan, and you can drive it 110 mph all day right off the show room floor, and never change the oil in it if you don't want to, and it will still run for 200,000 miles.  Not so back in my day, by crackee.

You bought a new car, and you had to 'break it in.'  No driving it faster than 45 mph for the first 200 miles.  Then no faster than 55 for the next 100 miles.  And you had to use special 'break-in oil,' which had to be changed after this break in period of around 300 or so miles.  That was in 1966 or so.  I was 11, but I remember my dad 'breaking-in' his brand new 1966 Chevrolet Caprice station wagon (with the fake wood on the side).  9 passenger, nice.

The rear seat of that station wagon faced backwards, and as kids my brother and I would make a sign that said 'help, we are being kidnapped' and hold it against the window at stop lights.  Ha ha, such fun.  Imagine what kind of reaction you would get nowadays doing this.  Your parents would spend the next two weeks in jail before the prank got sorted out.  

Yeah, things are moving along so fast sometimes, I sometimes pine away for those old Underwood typewriters.  You know, just to slow things down a smidge.

By crackee....