Installment # 66

I have used the word “Google” as a verb in some cases here, as in “to Google” something.  In case that has no meaning to some future reader, please note that the company, Google, created an Internet search engine that was the favorite of most users for many years, so to look something up on the Internet was to Google it.  But I have lived long enough to know how brand names can fall into disuse.  As I was growing up the refrigerator was often called “the Frigidaire” because that was by far the most common brand in people’s homes – at least in the working class homes.  The record player was referred to as the Victrola.  The premier photo-copy machine for many years was made by a company named Xerox. For many years after it was no longer the best or most common machine, to photocopy something was still to “Xerox” it, and a photocopy was a Xerox copy.  I think chesterfield and davenport are still types of couches, but even as a young adult I would still routinely hear couches of all kinds referred to as “the chesterfield.”

Mom and Dad often referred to the refrigerator as the ice box, because in their day people didn’t have an ice unit attached to a refrigerator.  I remember reading the instructions on the side of a package that said, “refrigerate…do not freeze” and asking how that made sense.  Didn’t it mean the same thing?  Once it was explained to me I no longer used the terms refrigerator and freezer interchangeably as I had heard my parents and others doing.  We hear jokes about the milk man or the ice man, and young people may wonder where that comes from.  I guess there is still home delivery of milk in parts of the country where it is difficult to get to the store in the winter time, but back in my parents’ day it was common everywhere.  Milk didn’t have a long enough shelf life for it to sit on the grocer’s shelf until the consumer came and bought it, and then to stay fresh at home until consumed.  And once a mother stopped nursing, a fresh supply of milk was vital for the baby. Ice, of course, was delivered to help keep things cold or frozen when the average household had very limited-capacity appliances or no such appliances at all.  I do remember watching a man in a warm uniform, with hat and gloves, coming up to the house carrying a large block of ice, using a giant set of tongs.  It was not a job for the old or the weak.

Reflecting on other things that have changed over the years, we used to call the TV repairman to come to the house and fix the television.  The television was called a “set” because it consisted of a bewildering collection of tubes and buttons that were accessed from the back by removing the cover.  Many of the tubes had warnings about not touching them under one circumstance or another for fear of doing worse damage.  That may have been seen as a challenge for the most mechanically inclined, but you can bet it served as a deterrent for me.  Now of course we have what I call “solid state” technology, which may be a misnomer on my part, by which I mean that the TV is not designed of manufactured in such a way as to permit the untrained, non-specialist to troubleshoot and/or possibly fix a problem.  Problems are not mechanical, but electronic.  So now we take the TV down to where we bought it and either leave it to be fixed or, more likely, receive a replacement.  If it is out of warranty, there will be a charge, or we may find that it is more sensible to just buy a new TV.  The latter is true because in the space of the 2 or 3 years time that the TV lasted, the technology has advanced such that it just makes more sense to get a new one.

The occupation of TV repairman has gone the way of the guy who fixed small motors, such as lawn mowers, chain saws, sewing machines, kitchen appliances and the like.  Not only are these machines “solid state” or whatever the correct term is, but they are relatively less expensive than in the past, and they become obsolete quickly.  It just makes more sense to buy a new one, with state-of-the-art technology and features, than to try to repair or replace the old one.  This has led some to refer to a “throw away” society.  It does not concern me that we have better and better stuff for less and less money, but it is true that we have a growing disposal issue.  Where are we dumping all the throw- aways?  It is no wonder that recycling has become a major issue and topic of conversation these days.  Another consequence of all this is the importance of education and training.  The people who can keep up with the technology and succeed in an electronics environment, as opposed to the old, slow-changing mechanical environment, need a demonstrated ability to learn and grow in their chosen fields.

The high school dropout is increasingly a workforce “dropout” who can do little better than minimum wage, so has little incentive to work.  My personal theory is that this, along with a seemingly bewildering income tax code, is creating an “underground economy” of people working for cash “under the table,” to coin a phrase, and not reporting taxable income.  Their employers are often sole proprietors who likewise report minimal revenues and do not need the wage deductions on their tax returns.  (The money they save in employer payroll taxes, workers’ compensation insurance and benefits, W-2 reporting and related bookkeeping, etc, more than make up for the minor-if any-benefit of the tax deductions).

Another interesting transition Sandy and I have lived through is from the girdle to pantyhose to bare legs.  During the first few years of marriage Sandy and all her contemporaries needed to wear girdles in order to attach fasteners to the tops of their stockings.  You couldn’t wear stockings without wearing a girdle, because you couldn’t hold them up.  I guess there were less cumbersome garter belts or something, but the women also liked the way the girdle flattered their figures.  The transition to pantyhose was accompanied by widespread concern (no pun intended) that a woman would go bouncing along, revealing too much of her ample attributes.  We men didn’t mind at all, though it is true that a woman without a girdle confirmed whatever we may have suspected about her figure.  I think the early pantyhose had “control tops” or similar construction that attempted to keep things from jiggling, but over time women just accepted that they weren’t fooling anyone and should just let it go, so to speak.  The transition to bare legs was a slow process, or else I was just slow to notice.  I remember one guy reflecting back on the pantyhose days describing watching his wife struggle and squirm into her pantyhose as: “Did you ever try to stuff a marsh mellow into a piggy bank?”

Along with “letting it go,” the social stigma attached to being an overweight woman has diminished a lot.  While weight loss programs and products are more popular than ever, we also see a great deal of acceptance and withholding of judgment towards women who are now what we call “plus size.”  Some of the celebrities, like Adele and Queen Latifah have helped in this regard, along with the sheer number of women who we see out and about who are huge and seemingly unconcerned about it.  Having learned to accept the fat celebrities, it is perhaps easier to accept and not judge the rest of the obese population.  As mentioned elsewhere, the fast food industry has probably contributed to the rising incidence of obesity and type two diabetes (adult onset diabetes, as opposed to type one - genetic inheritance of diabetes).