[upchuck]

I can barely imagine how sweeping these changes have been for the generation before mine; they remember when not every home even had a telephone at all, or when people shared party lines with their neighbors or used a switchboard to get a line out of their towns.

Ouch!! Mr. DeLeo hit me right between the eyes :-)

[GreyHoundSailor]

This guy was born two years after me and I remember our party-line phones - we were ‘two long and one short’. Neighbors of ours, in their 80’s at the time, had a pump for water on the kitchen sink, and a three-hole outhouse. Those were the days when kids knew how to plant a garden and keep it weeded, shovel snow before Dad came home, and walk to school.
The first year I put meat on our Thanksgiving table was when I was 12 and brought home four partridge taken with my single-shot 20 gauge. Most of us had venison for Christmas. Many of my friends in grade school did the same.

Mr. Di Leo should have gotten around more - he missed the most precious parts of life.