Discover Smith Mountain Lake
SPRING 2016
31
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Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry has often been quoted as saying,
“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in
the country.”
That’s sort of the way I view old age. Outside the aches and pains, getting
old isn’t that big a deal - not as long as you keep up with technology.
Turning 80 on March 1st certainly qualifies me as being old. If I were a
car, I’d have a rumble seat and running boards. I graduated high school
before Ray Kroc founded McDonalds. I saw the birth of plastics, and
the death of the milkman. I even remember when car tires had inner
tubes, and we had never heard of cholesterol. When I was growing up,
everyone over the age of 14, including doctors and especially movie
stars, smoked cigarettes or a pipe. Our air conditioning system
was an electric fan or a folded newspaper. If you wanted to stay
warm, you fed or shoveled coal into a cast iron stove or a furnace.
Calculators were our brains and our fingers. If you worked in retail,
you had to actually figure out and count back (aloud) how much
change a person had coming.
We had one phone. It was wooden, about 18 inches long, and likely
weighed 25 lbs. It was attached, like a growth, to the dining room
wall, right beside the front door. No one ever talked on it more than
a minute or two, because the cord was only 3 feet long, requiring you
to stand in one spot during the whole conversation, and on tiptoes if
you were short. Mom taught each of us kids how to use that phone,
which had a little crank on the side for calling the operator, and then
forbade us to go near it, except in dire emergencies. The operator was
our 911 system.
By the time I was in sixth grade, we got a black cradle phone that
you dialed. It sat on a table next to the sofa, which meant now we
could sit down and talk. It, too, weighed about 25 lbs. We even got an
extension for the kitchen. We shared our phone line with four or six
other families, but felt like we were in high clover – two phones and all.
Don’t Bank On
Getting a
FACE-LIFT
By Kate Hofstetter
540-297-LOVE (5683)
1035 Mercantile Stre
Suite #101
Moneta, VA 24121
* corporate gifting
* gift baskets
* private event space
* catering
• Gourmet Chocolate
• Espresso Bar & Speciality
Co ees
• Tea & Kombucha
• Pastries
• Cakes & Pies
• Meeting Space
• Birthday & Paint Parties
• Full Service Catering
• Corporate & Personal
Gifting
1035 Mercantile Street • Suite 101 • Moneta, VA 24121
(540) 297-LOVE (5683)
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BE T
OFSMITHMOUNTAINLAKE
Area’s Largest Selection of
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Complete Outdoor Furnishings
Dining seats, Seating Groups, Barstools,
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3112 Melrose Ave., Roanoke, VA • 540 345.7665 •
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