My father was born in 1906 too. He grew up in rural NW Ohio. (He was A LOT older than me, by the way!:-)). I wish he were still around to hear some of his stories. I do remember him talking about being out in a field, hearing a loud noise, and wishing and hoping that it was a plane he was hearing. It turned out that it was! He was very excited! I know that his family had a car and that at the age of 7 or 9 he drove himself to the dentist in the next town to have a tooth pulled. Life was different then. He was a math teacher. When the first calculators came out, he was amazed that this box, the size of a typewriter, could do what we now consider just the basic mathematic functions: + - × ÷.
I can remember my grandfather proudly showing me his first hand-held calculator (they'd just come on the market). He, too, marveled at that small device. I was a young teen, and thought he was a genius for just knowing how to work the thing :-)