Thoughts and Frustrations

 The 'frustration' part comes from having my Internet going away for a few days.  There is such a thing as YouTube Withdrawl.  :)

I have had the same Internet provider for years, through my phone company.  All I wanted was to send back my modem and have them send me a replacement.  We have done this before.  Have you tried to reach a real person at the telephone company lately?  Not likely to happen.  Several phone calls and a rising blood pressure later, the best I could do was schedule repair work for tomorrow.

And after all of that, my modem decided it had been asleep long enough and it is now working.  Go figure!

We talked some time back about how so many now get all upset if Starbucks closes.  So many haven't a clue how to fix most anything.  I wonder how they would survive today under the same conditions as my Grandparents.

The 'thoughts' part comes from a conversation I had with one of my kids.  He was asking about my memories of my Grandparents.  My paternal Grandparents lived in northern Minnesota.  When I was a kid, they had electricity in the house, and they had one of those old wooden telephones on the wall.  And that was about all there was for amenities.  

Cooking and baking and canning was done on a wood burning, cast iron stove.  Heat in the winter came from a wood burning furnace in the basement.  Wood to burn in both was cut, split and dried by the family.  Nobody called anyone to have wood delivered.

Food was kept cool in a wooden ice box.  The cool part happened because the men in the family cut blocks of ice from a local frozen lake, hauled it home on a horse drawn wagon and stacked it, packing it in straw for insulation, in their underground root cellar that they had dug out themselves.  The blocks were brought inside one at a time and set in the ice box.  No electricity plugs there.

Water came from a hand pump located a few feet from the back door of the house.  Drinking water was in a bucket with a dipper in it for drinking.  The bucket was on a stool next to the back door.

Water for cooking and cleaning was hauled in from the pump in buckets.  Water to take a bath came into the house the same way.  Needed hot water?  Pour it into a large kettle and set the kettle on top of the wood stove.

Need to use a bathroom?  Go find the outhouse out back.

Need milk?  Go out to the barn and milk a cow.  Want a pork chop?  Kill a pig.  Same with chickens.  Want vegetables?  Grow a garden.  Need butter?  Separate the milk from the cow to get the cream and churn the butter.

Got the idea?  I'm guessing that those of us who are frightenly close to our expiration date are probably familiar with most of these things.  The kids?  Not so much.  

Perhaps learning the old ways might serve us well.  Just sayin'.