What a great telling of your childhood memories! You have an excellent talent for creating the image with your words.
I was a kid in the ‘40s-’50s, so have very similar memories.
So many things seem to have been better, back then.
I have always been a little suspicious of the reality of ‘progress’. In many ways, it seems we don’t progress so much as we ‘trade-off’.
Back in those land-line days, a telephone call was an EVENT; and the phone didn’t ring very often. Now, I can carry my phone around with me - but that seems like a noisy way to live, and so far I’ve only used my first smartphone to listen to Art Bell at night ;-)
Back then, you had to plan to watch your favorite TV show, and it was a family event. Now everyone is huddled in a room apart, doing their own thing on their own electronics.
My first car, a used 1963 Impala, was simple enough that even I could do minor repairs on it - my sewing machine, too - which gave a certain confidence, a feeling of control of some essentials. Now I wouldn’t open either one up, or understand them if I did.
On the other hand, to someone like me the advent of WordPerfect was tantamount to the discovery of penicillin or the invention of the light bulb ;-)
I guess I wouldn’t give up the modern things; I just wish we were wiser in how we allow them to affect us and impact our priorities. And I often wonder if people today truly ENJOY life as much as we did...
-JT