Time and Technology
When I grew up in the 1950’s my bedroom was in the attic of our house. My sisters each got a bedroom on the main floor as did my parents of course. Their, master bedroom was strategically placed off of the kitchen. The house had been designed by a farmer from the Eastern Block so as you can imagine was not filled with aesthetic embellishments. It stands to reason my brother and I would be delegated to the attic, but in the end a place we cherished. It afforded us space. Our room, although shared, took up a third of the floor space of the attic once converted and insulated.
It also gave us our own private entrance and exit, mind you it was through a window, across the porch roof down a plum tree, to ground zero in the back yard. The only consideration or danger point in using this exit strategy was that the descent via the tree took us past the kitchen window which was my mother’s domain. Knowing my mother’s position within the house at any given time made our movements safe and secure. I’m not saying we were bad kids or up to mischief, but its always better to play it safe. Suffice it to say, we were never caught and by writing this some 65 years later I have likely past any reasonable statute of limitations. We did of course, with friends, roam the neighbourhood at night with a sense of adventure, no harm was done and no people or pets were ever harmed.
My brother and I did not have a radio, that didn’t come until the next decade when transistors became available. I’m not saying we were poor but we did however have an upright, Edison Diamond Disk Sheraton Model 1919, Phonograph player. With this we had about 50 to 60 vinyl disks, about a quarter of an inch in thickness with all of the hottest hits from 1910 through to 1920. My brother, or I would crank the handle on the side of the cabinet in order to get the disk up to speed, so we could listen to songs popular some thirty to forty years before we were born. “What’ll I Do” by Lewis James, “It Ain’t Gonna Rain NoMo” Wendell Hall, “I’ve Had 57 Varieties of Sweethearts” by Bill Jones, the list goes on. We also had a wide selection of Hawaiian music, and dance music. It’s all in the Library of Congress.
Another unique musical feature we had in our house growing up, and ours is not a musical family, was an upright player piano. Ours was built sometime after World War I and ironically went out of popularity because of the Edison Phonograph player, the same standing in my bedroom. In 1924 over 200 000 player pianos were sold during peak popularity. Ours was a Baldwin and I have to say in enriched my fantasy world of becoming a world class pianist yet never inspired me to actually learn how to play for real. I did however develop amazing calf muscles from the constant pedalling required to keep up the air pressure to make the music. In a way the rolls of music with their many perforations was a premature type of computer programming. The position of each slot in the roll of paper signals a flow of air which than triggers one of the 88 keys on the key board. One becomes an expert in minutes.
Sadly, having these modern miracles at my finger tips as a child did not turn me into a musical prodigy. I never could hold a tune or play an instrument, but I do appreciate music. I enjoy history and the progression of technology over time. It raises the question what do young people have in their bedrooms today? What lessons are they learning from their various monitors. I guess only time will tell. TIC TOC.
