"Things Our Grandchildren Will Never Know"

The attached photo (not a particularly good one) is of four generations of Williams’, taken in 1967: my grandmother, my father, me and our oldest son. This essay was a joy to write, remembering long-ago days, places, and things. It is short – 413 words – so should not tax your patience.?

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It is fitting to send this essay today, as my wife and I leave later this morning for my 65th?high school reunion in Easthampton, MA – then home to Williston Academy, now the Williston Northampton School.

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Sydney M. Williams?

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More Essays from Essex

“Things Our Grandchildren Will Never Know”

June 7, 2024

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“…one way or another we forge ahead,?

picking up wisdom along the way…”

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Geoffrey Moore (1946-)

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????The Infinite Staircase, 2020

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Whether wisdom is garnered as generations advance over time, I leave to the more learned, people like Geoffrey Moore whose book was worth the $26.95 cost. What I do know is that technological advancements have been remarkable, at least since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. My paternal grandmother, born in November 1875, was 18 when the Duryea brothers introduced the first American-made gasoline-powered car. She was 93 in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin strolled on the moon – an event inconceivable to her as a child.

Nevertheless, the past is always present, a whiff of nostalgia for things we once knew – things that our grandchildren will only read about in books or see in museums:

?Dial telephones??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

?Cloth diapers??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

??Ice trays??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

??Super 8 film?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

??Clothes lines??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

TV aerials/rabbit ears??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Ash trays

Hand-cranked windows in cars?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

????Road maps ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Re-treaded tires

?????Manual gear shifts

Suspenders

Galoshes

Fedoras??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

????????Elevator attendants??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

????????Typewriters/carbon paper

?????????Adding Machines

??????????Switchboards????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Will our children and grandchildren ever make a call from a phone booth, dance to a jukebox, lace up ski boots, play tennis with a wooden racquet, listen to records on a victrola, or fly on a DC-3? Will they ever see one of these ads that were once ubiquitous on country roads?

“If you

Don’t know

Whose signs

These are

You can’t have?

Driven very far

Burma Shave”

The list is incomplete, as memory fails. I did not, as I could have, include the ice box or wood stove in my parents’ kitchen, or the hand-cranked phone in the hall. Some people keep the past.

Most of us – certainly I do – lack the imagination to foresee how the future will unfold. We – or at least I do – talk unintelligibly of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, but most of us think, as Will Parker sang in?Oklahoma, “They’ve gone about as fer as they can go.” Seven stories was tall for a building in 1906 Kansas City. And Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 160 stories, seems about as high as a building ought to be. But aren’t records made to be broken? Creative destruction is all around us, alive and well.