Checking Your Personal Landscape

As I approach my 70^th year on this earth I am continually amazed at how “things” have evolved and changed since I was a child. Can you say plastic? Look around you at your personal space and the world you exist in every day. What things exist in your present world that weren’t there when you were say ten? What things are missing?

Plastic, of course, is probably the biggest invention that affects our daily lives. Whatever you remember being contained in metal, glass, paper, wood, or even cardboard, is now contained in plastic. Think about those small containers of aspirin that had a slide out lid. Now plastic. Think about the Sucrets container. Most of our liquids are contained in plastic. In fact most everything you can think of that once was made from another material, is now plastic. “Things” used to be made of real cloth, real wood, and real metal. Now they are made of plastic, particleboard and many times, plastic.

These old things that we remember are now called “retro” products and are collected by lovers of old things at prices maybe several times what they were originally worth. I am one of those people. In my mobile home I reproduced a real old-fashioned 50s diner to serve as my dining room. The booths I had, and still have, are plastic, with the old Chevy half triangle they used to have in the old diners. They would have been leather then, however. I have a replica diner table with metal trim and two bar stools to match my booths. In the mobile home I had the walls covered with metal to look as close to an old diner as possible. I had lights on the wall and on the ceiling that were retro also.  I have included a picture of it here. I saved the booths, table and stools, clock and sign. One day I will reproduce that room the way it was originally.

When I belonged to a theater group up in Connecticut, years ago, I was once assigned the title, “Set Dresser” for a play called “Most Happy Fella.” I was charged with finding and supplying the scenes in the show with authentic pieces for the actors to use on stage. These were not props, which were often carried on and off the stage, but rather part of the permanent set. I remember that I had to find an old car door which they used to carry someone on stage with and which then became part of the set. I also supplied hay bales and antique farm tools, which I found and borrowed from my uncle’s farm in Bremen, Maine. That experience was an eye-opener into how many things had disappeared from my world at that time.

Although I am not an antique collector, I do appreciate and love the workmanship that went into their design and manufacture, which were often made by hand. Think of the work that went into caning chairs or the work my great-aunt May put into her needlework pieces.  I think of all the lacy things my grandmother, Ida Tolman, crocheted. You don’t see these things in your daily lives very much anymore.

How many of these things do you remember seeing in your daily lives when you were growing up? How many of them have disappeared from your own “Personal Landscape?” How many other things can you add to this list?

Thinking of your mother’s or grandmother’s house, do you remember seeing these things: oilcloths; lacy tablecloths;  sprinkler bottles; pressure cookers; doilies; bureau cloths that ran across the top of bureaus to prevent scratches; fancy paper shelf paper for the kitchen cabinets with a scalloped piece to tack onto the edge; cloth and rope-like electrical cords; moth balls; starch; decal transfers; fly paper; darning molds to darn socks with; soap flakes for washing clothes; wax paper; those paper-like, envelope-type sandwich bags we took our sandwiches to school in; hatpins; hats with fruit and feathers and whatnot on top of them.

As kids these things were part of our landscape too: metal and wooden toys; penny candy; kaleidoscopes; those sketch pads with the wooden stylus and film that you could draw on, erase, and draw on again; crazy 8 balls; viewmasters; hand-held games that had a maze and metal balls you had to wiggle along to the end; parchessi sets, ink pens that you actually dipped in ink to use; grograin ribbons we used in our tap shoes. Some of these things still exist as "retro" products. Tell me what ever happened to paper and wooden kites and wooden plane and boat models and model glue. I do know that glue sniffing became a bad thing; but I also remember how many hours of pleasure model building gave to my two big brothers when I was growing up.

Here are a few other things I can think of that have disappeared from my own personal landscape. There used to be boardwalks leading up to houses to prevent the tracking in of mud in the spring. Along with the walks also came a “mud room.” Diners are fast disappearing. You still have Moody’s up there, but the closest thing we have to a diner down here is the Waffle House chain. What diners we do have fall into the “retro” diners category. They charge outrageous prices just to take in the “ambience” of the old diner atmosphere. Drive-in movies have all but disappeared too.

Being involved in the printing business I have also seen tremendous changes in the way we print things today. There are no more linotypes or “hot lead” in today’s printing process. Even the “offset” printing I remember in which film and plates were used in place of actual lead type, has mostly disappeared, to be replaced by “digital printing” produced by a computer.

What will the future hold for our next generation? Speaking of landscapes, how long do you think it will take before grandparents will point out the site of the old Thomaston State Prison as they drive past with their grandkids and the kids will say, “What prison?”

Thanks for listening.