Step in the Ring

In response to 2008 vs. 1908

My grandmother used to wax nostalgic about ‘the good old days, way back when’, which seemed to me to encompass any time period before the Vietnam War. When I was a kid, I never quite understood what she meant. I couldn’t figure out what was so good about the years that brought us the Great Depression, World War II, and the atom bomb.

But looking back now, I suspect she was talking about life long before that–her youth, especially her childhood. She would have been about to start school in 1908, one of the most notable and exciting years of the 20th century.

She was one of the first generation to see automobiles become popular, thanks to the invention of the assembly line that year, and with it the Model T. She was one of the first to actually see man take flight, something scoffed at as fantasy for so long, and a hundred years later taken for granted by most of the population. She was one of the first to see a movie. In 1908, the invention of the television was still twenty years away.

Photograph by Randen Pederson. Some rights reserved.

A hundred years ago we already had electricity and a subway, trains, trolleys, telephones, corn flakes, and even some soft drinks that are still popular today. But turning on the radio at the end of the year and hearing about Wilbur Wright’s two-hour and twenty-minute flight must have been a life-changing moment for many. When I think of it in those terms, I see why she looked back so fondly on that time. People must have felt every day as if America was really coming into its own, maturing, and that mankind was making huge strides. And we were.

But America was still twelve years from allowing a woman to vote. ‘White Only’ and ‘Colored Only’ signs were popular. Lawlessness ran rampant, as farmers were forced from their lands by violent protests over tobacco prices, and arson and lynchings were not uncommon. Infectious diseases easily reached epidemic proportions, though 1908 did see the first use of chlorine in the water supply, marking a decline in diseases like cholera and dysentery. Poor children didn’t go to school, but worked alongside their parents twelve to fourteen hours a day in cotton mills and coal mines, or on farms. Some states tried to crack down on child labor by making the limit only ten hours a day, but that was rarely enforced.

Any one of those points alone is enough for me to be glad I’m part of this generation, and not that one.

Yet, times were simpler then. People got together over Sunday dinner or tea on a porch, face to face, instead of sending text messages and emails. The rush-hour commute and the frustration of trying to use a cell phone in a “no service” area were the stuff of science fiction. And maybe that’s the appeal to those who still talk about the good old days, whether they’re talking about 1908 or 1948. Life just went by more slowly. Every hour wasn’t filled with ringing phones, beeping horns, or the drone of a television that’s always on one of 200 channels.

Children worked on the farm where my grandmother grew up. I have pictures of my grandfather’s family, poor farm workers, some of them younger than my daughter. No one can argue that times were better when little kids labored all day instead of learning. But when everything still seemed unique, when they were amazed at what existed, and excited over what was yet to be discovered, the good must have seemed wonderful.

Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon the year I was born. As a child, footage of that event mesmerized me. I can still tear up when I think back on how awed I felt when I saw it for the first time. People must surely have felt like that in 1908, filled with a strong sense of pride in all that they had achieved, and optimism for the future. I try to imagine what it must have been like to live a hundred years ago and be amazed by horseless carriages, electric washing machines, and silent films. Wilbur Wright’s sustained flight at the end of the year must have seemed like magic to some, sorcery to others, and a modern miracle to most.

Today, with so much technology and such fast-paced lives, we’ve lost some of that hope and wonder, and have grown blasé about new advancements. Our youngest generations do not know what it’s like to live without computers and cell phones, and no more than five or six television channels. Impressing them with something new is difficult, and I think most of us have fallen into that same bored complacency with all that we have. We’ve stopped seeing ourselves as pioneers and dreamers, and instead just struggle to get through each hectic day without a computer crash or a traffic jam.

I wouldn’t want to live in 1908. But if I could hop in a time machine and go back for a short visit, I would, and I’d take as many people as I could along with me. We’d marvel at how far we’ve come from the days when women could not vote or own property, and no one was appalled at the name of the Alabama Hospital for the Colored Insane. We’d be encouraged at how far medicine has advanced since the days of polio, tuberculosis, small pox and typhus.

But I’d urge us to look at the Model T and the airplane with the eyes of a child. I’d try to bring back the sense of amazement people must have felt–the awe in human ingenuity that has already brought us this far, and will surely have people in 2108 taking for granted the new inventions and discoveries of a hundred years before.

Shelley Ontis lives in Illinois, surrounded by corn, cows and pick-up trucks. She claims it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.

The Opinions | RSS 2.0 | Comment it , or trackback this post.