Spilt Milk...

I should have known when I posted that about the hotel not having Internet service that it was an omen of things to come. The beach was beautiful. There was only one cold day when the kids couldn't wear their bikinis and play in the outdoor pool or even wade in the ocean and that was the last day they were there so no complaints in that area. BUT the Internet service was absolutely horrible. I'd planned to throw a hissy on this site but other than the Internet the whole two weeks was amazing so I decided that maybe I'd best not cry over spilt milk.

So that said, I will move on and talk about a visit we had to an antique store many years ago, back before Internet and when phones still had a cord that went from the base to the receiver. Hey, how many of  you remember those soft padded things that you could stick to the back of the receiver and it would rest on your shoulder while you did the dishes or flipped through the new Sear's catalog?

Well, it was during those days and we'd finished the huge job of turning our garage into a living room, the living room into a dining room and knocking out walls so that those two plus the kitchen would then be a great room.

That was the day we discovered that we needed something to put the telephone on since it all had to be plugged it and we didn't have a thing to set it on in our brand new beautiful room--except the card board box the texturing mud came in.

Even then neither of us were able to plop down in the floor and visit on the phone. Well, we were able to plop down and stick the phone to our ear or prop it on our shoulder since my sister had gotten me a phone rest for Christmas, but it was the getting up that was the problem. There were just so many cranes in town and they were in constant demand.

We could find modern looking tables to put our phone on but none of those matched our early attic/rustic red neck theme we had going on in the new room so we went looking in antique shops.

We found a little brass topped table from the '50's in the first shop we visited and we didn't even have to take out a loan to buy the thing. But we'd had so much fun looking around for it that we decided to stop at a few more antique shops on the way home.

First stop was at an old motel that had been renovated and turned into an antique gallery. Rooms and rooms of old stuff that was totally priceless even if I didn't have a clue what some of it was. We looked at things that our ancestors pitched in the attic because it was outdated. I found a whole collection of drinking glasses that were priced at two bucks each--and they were empty!! My Poppa bought them for a quarter and they were filled to the brim with Levi Garrett snuff. But they are antiques now, right along with depression glass that they used to put in oatmeal and give away at carnivals.

In one place I recognized an old chrome kitchen table with a bright yellow top. My mother danced a jig when she got a new wood table and threw a yellow topped one just like that one in the back yard to use as a vegetable prep table. And to think my grandchildren will probably pawn their fancy phones to buy such an antique for their new apartments.

We left with our little brass topped telephone table that day but today I'm wondering about the antique shops in another twenty years...will they have lap tops with the original Internet service on it that you have to type in commands? And our grand children will shake their heads in wonder at such an "old" device. By then all they will have moved past the idea of speaking a command and presto, there it was on a little screen they held in their hand. They will be in the era when all they have to do is think the command and there it is on the screen which has been embedded in the back of their eyelids.

Crazy idea, huh? (Raising hand and standing up, here)

I, Carolyn Brown, said that computers would never be small enough to sit on a table top. I, Carolyn Brown, said that phones could never be carried around from room to room and out in the back yard and still hear the person on the other end. I, Carolyn Brown, said that old yellow topped chrome table was worthless and told Mama to throw it out in the back yard.

'Nuff said!

What have you said would never come to pass and it did?