What Were the Old Days Like?

All the Cousins on Grandma and Grandpa's Hill

I must be looking my age--at least on some days. Recently, one much younger woman asked me what it was like in the old days. I gave her a quick one word answer. I told her it was different. She thought it must have been nice. Truthfully, it was nice--sometimes. However, it most definitely was different. 

In the photo above are my cousins on my mother's side of the family along with my sisters, my brother, and me. I'm the tall girl with the dark hair. My brother is the other tall kid. We are all in my grandparents yard in Pennsylvania. My parents drove out to Pennsylvania once a year so my mother could see all her relatives. Sometimes, we went into Ohio to see more of the relatives. We drove in the summertime and we did not have air conditioning in the car. My father had a two-week vacation, so we had a time limit. 

The rest of the year, my mother wrote to her family. Only in the most extreme cases did anyone ever talk on the phone because long-distance calls were expensive. So, unlike today, communication in the old days with distant relatives was limited. 

We didn't travel by plane because that was too expensive as well. Once, when my grandfather had a heart attack, I went out to Pennsylvania with my mother on a bus. Fortunately, my grandfather recuperated. But I learned that I didn't particularly like long bus rides. 

There was television but the channels were quite limited. There was radio, but when we were driving through the mountains of Pennsylvania we couldn't always pull in any stations. So, we sang. 

Nevertheless, it was great fun seeing my cousins, my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They all had wonderful stories to tell. Listening to everyone talk was the best part of the trip. It was as if they made up for a year of not seeing each other for all the time they spent talking. 

For my family, that was our vacation. We didn't go to any amusement parks. We simply spent time with the relatives. That was good enough and we were happy to see them. We weren't bored either. 

Things were different, but it was fine with us. 

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