Before Facebook
by Julie Carter
Picking up a newspaper a hundred years ago offered a somewhat more personal kind of reading that was written in a conversational manner.
That new horse Albert Lewis is driving in the delivery wagon is a dandy. He gives us a little exhibition of circus performing every day.
The snow-fall at Starlight Lake this winter and spring is right close to the 35-foot mark. Water for irrigation? We should see record-breaking crops.
People loved reading what was happening in their geographical locale, right down to the details you never see in print today.
The birth and baptism of a child right up to the event of someone building a new porch endeared readers to the “news” collected by a writer. Lost pets, meetings and even a little government reporting filled the pages of a community paper in an era that lives only in memories and somewhere in archived print.
The following was published exactly this way 100 years ago:
We hear it talked that Silver Cliff has two candidates for mayor. The regularly nominated one should be re-elected.
Laundry business must be flourishing. Lew Key has just bought the lot adjoining his premises on the east of Silver Cliff.
We humans still have a need to stay connected to the people and events around us on a personal level. In today’s world, for millions, it’s called Facebook. And the need for personal communication with people is proven in its global popularity.
We’ve long ago moved past note cards and tea on the veranda to share our lives. We now text and type. We write to catch the eye of an attention-deficit generation and use a new shortcut language that relies on phonetics for interpretation. I know “u hv cn it.”
In memory, I can recall a little matronly woman in a floral dress, hair in a tight bun, sitting at a lace tablecloth-covered table putting notes on a tablet with a lead pencil.
She had called Myrtle down at the telephone office for her news. Standing before her wall phone, she gave it one quick crank. Myrtle answered and Thelma greeted her with a "Mornin' Myrtle," before asking to be connected to 511.
This happened only after Myrtle made polite inquiries about the family. Thelma assured her all was well except for that touch of arthritis that hitches her git-along from time to time.
Thelma spent the afternoon sipping tea and contacting her regulars for the week's news. Who hosted Thanksgiving dinner and with whom, what kind of cake was served at the Sherry Harper baby shower, and where did the card and domino players gather this week? Thelma could make news out of no news.
When readers finally got a glimpse at Thelma's story, they felt like they had a visit from those mentioned throughout. With a warm feeling in their hearts, they went back to their daily lives that didn't include an iPod, flat screen TV, computers, faxes, scanners and cell phones.
Perhaps they sat on the porch that evening, recalling those events they hadn't attended and those people they hadn't seen. With all their lack of technology, they were able to personally connect to the lives of people around them that they actually knew personally.
Maybe Facebook wasn’t such a new concept after all. It is simply the modernized version of what once was “face time.”
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com or, of course, Facebook.com
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