Spent the past week in Chicago working, and then, for a variety of reasons, stayed for part (most) of the weekend before returning home Sunday afternoon/evening.
Before driving back to Ames from Des Moines, though, I stopped to see Mom and Dad and Grandma out at Grandma's place in Pleasant Hill. While there, we had several interesting discussions hearkening back to days of yore...
(insert time travel music and don special effects glasses that make your vision go all wavy and fade from color to black and white)
We were talking about computers (well - Dad and I were) and we kept saying the word Software - and so Grandma asked what that was. I tried explaining that anything you run on your computer - like the programs that we use to show her pictures or videos - is software. "So it isn't really soft then?" To explain why it's called software, it seemed like a good idea to explain what hardware is. And then that software is this flexible, relatively easy to change thing that allows us to get a computer to behave in different ways without swapping out its physical parts or redesigning the way it's put together (like they did in the way olden days - back in the 50's) .
But alas - it just didn't seem like I was getting through. Then I remembered that Grandma used to work as a switchboard operator for the phone company back in Onaga before she got married to Grandpa Falk - back in the days when you had to plug wires into sockets to connect one person with another person. I told her that the switchboard was a kind of hardware that she would "re-assemble" to get it to behave differently (by changing which person's phone line was connected with which other person's phone line). And that today, all that is handled by software (although I'm not entirely certain all switching equipment is solid state as opposed to having something mechanical going on inside, even if it is actually automated).
Grandma looked like she might possibly have made a little headway with that (and maybe she really did) and then she started talking about how she used to earn $30 per month working for the phone company (which I'd heard before - some of you may have too), and - get this - how they used to listen in on people's calls when they were bored (they actually had to check the line periodically to see if it was still in use). Most of the time they'd check and people would still be on the line talking about very uninteresting things. Occasionally they'd be a bit more interesting - talking about money or some guy had called some girl or woman he wasn't supposed to be talking to (cause he had a wife or girlfriend already). I guess it could get a little dull hanging out at the phone company some nights when Grandma was working, and so listening just a little longer when the conversation on the line wasn't completely boring livened things up or perhaps just made the time pass a little faster. They were definitely not supposed to do it, though, and would have been fired if the wrong person found out.
The $30 per month reminded Dad that he and his brother used to make $1 a day driving a stacker team for their uncles. That was how they earned enough money to buy their first bike - for a staggering sum of $40 at that time. This would have been when Dad was about 10 or so. He and Leon (but not Leroy - too young) were so excited when the bike came that they didn't wait for Grandpa to help them put it together - they just did it themselves. And in their excitement, they didn't get all the fasteners on tightly (and maybe even had a few parts left over?). So when they were trying to ride the bike, it was pretty wobbly with the tires flopping and rubbing against the forks and fenders.
They used to take the bike and ride it out to Hwy 16 - all the way around the square mile for a total of four miles - on the sand roads they had at the time. Sand roads, as you might imagine, were challenging to ride a bike on. Plus, they had these big sand ridges along the sides from being graded frequently to even out the traffic induced ruts and ridges in the road. Ridges too big to just ride your bike over to get out of the way when cars came down the road. At least, not without wiping out most of the time. So they would have to stop the bike and pull it off the road when a car or truck came by.
When Dad was 15 or so (Sophomore in High School), they put plumbing in at home there in Duluth. He and Leon were busy digging the pit for a septic tank. This was the same time Hwy 16 was turned into an oiled road. They were pretty excited about riding the bike on a nice smooth oiled road after years of riding on sand roads. In fact, they were so excited about it that when sister Laurel took off on the bike (presumably while they were digging the hole for the septic tank) and got to be the first one to ride it on the oiled road, it made the boys pretty mad!
Going back to the the bit about driving stacker teams - it turns out Grandma used to drive a stacker team for Grandpa and Great Uncle Oscar, too. We had a discussion about "traces" and "trees" and other components of the hardware used to attach the horses to the wagons. The traces hung down pretty close to the ground and sometimes the horses would step outside their traces or get them tangled between their legs and Grandpa or Oscar would have to come deal with that because the horses scared Grandma.
Dad talked about how at the end of the day, the horses, knowing it was time to go home, and very ready to get there, could be a little hard to control once they were free of the thing they'd been hauling around all day. Especially hard to control for a young dad and his even younger brother, attempting to keep the horses from dragging them across fields made slick by the prairie hay leavings that didn't make it into the piles they'd been there "stacking" all day....
(You can turn off that goofy music and remove those cool effects glasses now if you want. Actually - you don't look half bad in the glasses. Very chic.)
It was starting to get late for Mom and Dad and Grandma - and Mom and Dad were about to leave, and I hadn't been home in almost a week. So it seemed like a good time to wrap up the visit and the time traveling discussions and I headed back to Ames...
- Peace, Todd
Before driving back to Ames from Des Moines, though, I stopped to see Mom and Dad and Grandma out at Grandma's place in Pleasant Hill. While there, we had several interesting discussions hearkening back to days of yore...
(insert time travel music and don special effects glasses that make your vision go all wavy and fade from color to black and white)
We were talking about computers (well - Dad and I were) and we kept saying the word Software - and so Grandma asked what that was. I tried explaining that anything you run on your computer - like the programs that we use to show her pictures or videos - is software. "So it isn't really soft then?" To explain why it's called software, it seemed like a good idea to explain what hardware is. And then that software is this flexible, relatively easy to change thing that allows us to get a computer to behave in different ways without swapping out its physical parts or redesigning the way it's put together (like they did in the way olden days - back in the 50's) .
But alas - it just didn't seem like I was getting through. Then I remembered that Grandma used to work as a switchboard operator for the phone company back in Onaga before she got married to Grandpa Falk - back in the days when you had to plug wires into sockets to connect one person with another person. I told her that the switchboard was a kind of hardware that she would "re-assemble" to get it to behave differently (by changing which person's phone line was connected with which other person's phone line). And that today, all that is handled by software (although I'm not entirely certain all switching equipment is solid state as opposed to having something mechanical going on inside, even if it is actually automated).
Grandma looked like she might possibly have made a little headway with that (and maybe she really did) and then she started talking about how she used to earn $30 per month working for the phone company (which I'd heard before - some of you may have too), and - get this - how they used to listen in on people's calls when they were bored (they actually had to check the line periodically to see if it was still in use). Most of the time they'd check and people would still be on the line talking about very uninteresting things. Occasionally they'd be a bit more interesting - talking about money or some guy had called some girl or woman he wasn't supposed to be talking to (cause he had a wife or girlfriend already). I guess it could get a little dull hanging out at the phone company some nights when Grandma was working, and so listening just a little longer when the conversation on the line wasn't completely boring livened things up or perhaps just made the time pass a little faster. They were definitely not supposed to do it, though, and would have been fired if the wrong person found out.
The $30 per month reminded Dad that he and his brother used to make $1 a day driving a stacker team for their uncles. That was how they earned enough money to buy their first bike - for a staggering sum of $40 at that time. This would have been when Dad was about 10 or so. He and Leon (but not Leroy - too young) were so excited when the bike came that they didn't wait for Grandpa to help them put it together - they just did it themselves. And in their excitement, they didn't get all the fasteners on tightly (and maybe even had a few parts left over?). So when they were trying to ride the bike, it was pretty wobbly with the tires flopping and rubbing against the forks and fenders.
They used to take the bike and ride it out to Hwy 16 - all the way around the square mile for a total of four miles - on the sand roads they had at the time. Sand roads, as you might imagine, were challenging to ride a bike on. Plus, they had these big sand ridges along the sides from being graded frequently to even out the traffic induced ruts and ridges in the road. Ridges too big to just ride your bike over to get out of the way when cars came down the road. At least, not without wiping out most of the time. So they would have to stop the bike and pull it off the road when a car or truck came by.
When Dad was 15 or so (Sophomore in High School), they put plumbing in at home there in Duluth. He and Leon were busy digging the pit for a septic tank. This was the same time Hwy 16 was turned into an oiled road. They were pretty excited about riding the bike on a nice smooth oiled road after years of riding on sand roads. In fact, they were so excited about it that when sister Laurel took off on the bike (presumably while they were digging the hole for the septic tank) and got to be the first one to ride it on the oiled road, it made the boys pretty mad!
Going back to the the bit about driving stacker teams - it turns out Grandma used to drive a stacker team for Grandpa and Great Uncle Oscar, too. We had a discussion about "traces" and "trees" and other components of the hardware used to attach the horses to the wagons. The traces hung down pretty close to the ground and sometimes the horses would step outside their traces or get them tangled between their legs and Grandpa or Oscar would have to come deal with that because the horses scared Grandma.
Dad talked about how at the end of the day, the horses, knowing it was time to go home, and very ready to get there, could be a little hard to control once they were free of the thing they'd been hauling around all day. Especially hard to control for a young dad and his even younger brother, attempting to keep the horses from dragging them across fields made slick by the prairie hay leavings that didn't make it into the piles they'd been there "stacking" all day....
(You can turn off that goofy music and remove those cool effects glasses now if you want. Actually - you don't look half bad in the glasses. Very chic.)
It was starting to get late for Mom and Dad and Grandma - and Mom and Dad were about to leave, and I hadn't been home in almost a week. So it seemed like a good time to wrap up the visit and the time traveling discussions and I headed back to Ames...
- Peace, Todd
