By: Angela Gillaspie © March 2007

My kids just don't know how good they have it. They ride to school with a hip mom in the luxury of a 1990-something model Chevy. I suffered through the embarrassment of either riding the bus or worse - being carried to school in a primer-colored-door-less-missing-mufflered Ford pickup truck with an un-cool dad.

Nowadays, my kids have the Internet to quickly find everything you could possibly want to know about the life cycle of a toad. Me? I had to use the library for actual research (instead of hair care gossip), and at home there was no computer, but a wall of musty books including a set of Encyclopedia Britannica with a search time taking much longer than 0.15 seconds.

Today's technology has simplified my life and it is really easy to take these new-fangled doo-dads for granted. This is an amazing time living in a cell-phone-talking, web-blogging, Internet-ready, GPS-loaded, microwave-able, Restrictor-plated, remote-controlled world. And just when you get used to the easy way of doing things - BOOM! The warranty expires, the power goes out, batteries die, phone lines go down, Mark Martin retires and you're thrust back into the Polyester Ages when men were men and we women washed dishes by hand!

Growing up during the low-tech-big-hair years of the 1970s to 1980s wasn't just unfashionable, but downright dangerous in that Ford-Pinto-rear-gas-tank kind of way. I actually had to hike - uphill both ways - through the jungle of shag carpet, around the pet rocks and unsolved Rubik's cubes in order to turn the dial on our three-stationed Zenith television set. And yes, there were real dials and knobs on the front of our TV along with rabbit ear antennas set on top.

We lived up in the hills, so we needed an additional monstrous 100-foot TV antenna behind the house that had to be manually adjusted to get good reception of *Hee Haw. (*Hee Haw was a wildly popular long-running country variety show.)

I was always the chosen one to go outside and turn the antenna because my younger sister Traci was always too young or too cute and my older sister Sherri was constantly on the phone or conveniently away brushing her Farrah hair when it was antenna-turning time. Every cold hike I made to turn that ice-cold pole had been burned into my memory. Knowing that the first (or fourth or seventeenth) turn usually didn't work, I learned to holler before going back into the house, "Oka-ay! How's tha-at?"

"Deep burn nit I really can sing for a buck!" was what I thought I heard through the closed living room window far above my head.

"WHAT?" I screamed at the cedar siding of our house.

Sherri opened the window, stuck her head against the screen and slowly yelled, "Keep! Turning! It! I! Still! Can't! See! *Roy! Or! Buck!" (*Roy Clark and Buck Owens were the two hosts of Hee Haw.)

After 47 or so turns and hollers, I got the reception clear enough to watch Conway Twitty belt out, "Hello Darlin' ..."

One of the most terrible things my kids have to go through regarding the TV is locating one of our bazillion remote controls - or worse - have the cable go out preventing them from watching the Cartoon Network. Poor babies. Me? I only had cartoons once a week, from 7am until 10:30am on Saturdays.

Another of today's technological goodies is central heating and air. One quick adjustment and the temperature of the house will rise or fall. Back in my time throughout the cold months, we used about a half dozen electric space heaters around the house, the fireplace downstairs, and a big wood heater in the den. Granny Whaley had some kind of fuel-burning heater that looked like a vintage cigarette machine. I loved watching the small blue flames grow into bright yellow-orange flames. The heater made these hypnotic clicking noises as it cranked out the heat it and before long, I was dozing on Granny's homemade mat.

The big energy crisis of the early seventies curbed our electricity usage. To conserve, we heated the house with the wood stove and fireplace, plus Momma sometimes used the top of the wood stove to cook a big pot of pinto beans and bake some taters, while Daddy threw a metal grate in the fireplace and grilled some steaks.

I don't see how we could have an energy crisis nowadays when everything is battery-operated and wireless. However, I bet there could be a battery shortage because my kids go through batteries like Elvis went through fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

In one way, I guess I'm glad that we have the technology to defeat odor-causing bacteria, conveniently shop from home, and to find out my teenager's latest gossip by reading her web page. It's a good thing I'm such a hip mom, or I might have to take away a bunch of the kids' technology, leaving them to visit the library to look up information, go without cartoons until Saturday, walk from the couch to the TV to change the channel, and possibly be driven to school by Grand Pappy in his vintage Ford pickup truck.

Stay tuned for more of Southern Angel's fun memoirs!