Change in the Plan

10/09/2009

I finished up early in Wisconsin, much earlier than expected, so I caught an earlier flight and am heading home over Lake “Big” – I should know off-hand which Great Lake borders Wisconsin, but I don’t, or perhaps I do and don’t care.  The lake is very blue and very hopefully far more below me than it looks.  Flying to Baltimore from Milwaukee takes a mere eighty-nine minutes.

Tempus fugit…I was reading in the Air Tran magazine a little bit ago about ghost towns in Colorado.  One, Caribou, was an “arduous two-day mule ride” from Denver back in the 1850’s, and today it is but a 50-minute drive.  Miraculous!  These days we think nothing of boarding a plane on the east coast and five hours later landing in Los Angeles or San Diego.

Just think of the advances mankind has made in machines and technology over the past fifty years, provided you have any concept of what was going on fifty years ago.  It is truly mind boggling.  These days, computers are nearly outdated before they ever hit the market, and it is that way with most electronics.  Computer science is advancing every day at an incredible rate.  Soon, “Beam me up, Scotty” may be as common a cell phone call.  Hell, you may even be able to beam yourself through your cell phone some day?  Who knows what is in store for us, especially kids under five.  I am envious of the little guys for what they will see, and scared for them as to what they might see.

I think back to when I was a kid.  Sixty years ago most commercial planes had prop engines, not jet engines.  Yet when jet aircraft came on the scene, seemingly within a few years the prop planes were relegated to short flights to smaller cities like Utica, New York.  Cars had AM radios, though my mom and dad never had one in a car – they didn’t view a radio in the car as much use.  The first car I remember was a 1946 Plymouth, and Dad had to wind down his window to make turn signals with his left arm and hand hanging out of it.  TVs had round screens and three channels that showed programs in glorious black and white only five to six hours a day.  We didn’t have a steam iron or an electric dryer.  The washer had a hand-cranked ringer. 

Time has certainly changed a lot of things in a lot of ways.  Makes one wonder where we are going, and leaves some of us wondering what we will miss out on in another fifty years?  I do know down life’s road, Lord willing, I will have a whole more to take for granted.

And that is all I have to say about that…