Outhouses and Sears Catalogs

These two icons of American life have something in common. One’s on the environmentalist’s endangered species list and the other is deep-sixed. Is there a correlation?

**********

Change is coming so fast we don’t even like to look in the mirror. We have a love-hate relationship with it. Things become obsolete, compost for landfills. Survivors are recycled as art.

E-bay sells old Sears catalogs. The 1909 catalog of 1,100 pages was a pricy $99.00…expensive paper that was once outhouse wipes. Outside privies are now pop art. The $359 Amish model is a perfect conversation piece for any front yard.

Art is a relative term. Like clean, it’s a matter of personal taste. Things are born to die. Humans are creative with that concept…money can be made even on dead things.

Obsolescence and technology…a correlation? Look around…what hasn’t changed? Some changes slip up on us; others smack us in the face. The past never dies. We recycle, repackage and resell everything. Novelty is ephemeral. We frantically search for the next new thing.

Cell phones were once mobile phones. I had an ‘attaché’ phone. It was tucked away in a briefcase. It impressed people. Impression is a big deal to 20-year old upstarts. But after hippies and double knits, attitudes changed. Externals lost their luster with the old crowd’s attitude of ‘who-gives-a-rip.’

I got tired of toting the briefcase so I bought a black ‘car’ phone. It was the size of a basketball. It bolted to the floorboard of my car, smack between the bench seats. You remember bench seats, right? A lot of ‘accidents’ occurred on bench seats. Especially at night in pickups.

Mothers of high school girls helped develop technology that took all the fun out of drive-in movies. Bench seats were ripped out and replaced with bucket seats and Berlin Wall consoles. It resulted in the death of outdoor theaters. Change morphed to Netflix and sofas. Is there a correlation?

The first car phones were essentially mobile party lines. The world listened in, especially after midnight when tongues of tanked-up tycoons turned loose. While not quite as good as listening to “John R” or “Hoss” Allen on WLAC, Nashville, it was close. Today, party lines are replaced by NSA’s silent surveillance. Somebody’s always listening!

My father was into art…fishing art. Before he died we cleaned out the dusty tool shed. Ancient fishing rods, stiff as steel wire, hung limply from the walls.

“Daddy, get over to Walmart and replace this junk with graphite rods,” I told him. He told me back, “Son, rods don’t catch fish – fishermen do. It’s an art.”

After he died I found a tackle box full of old fishing lures kept from his youth. They were well-used and worn. I pawned them off on my nephew for a pittance. He later sold them as art for something approaching the price of a new boat. Art’s in the eye of the beholder, folks. I was blind.

Even nomenclature has changed. When did dinner become lunch, or supper become dinner? Or beauty parlors become salons? What’s happened to stamp lickin’, cotton pickin’ and pea shellin’? Pocketbooks are now handbags. Life is confusing.

Barbers have become hair stylists, a horrible ending to a venerable profession. Crew cuts were once cool. Later, ‘butch’ cuts were the rave. Bald was an embarrassment old men disguised with ‘comb-overs.’ Now everything goes, except the nickname of ‘Butch.’ Totally uncool.

Who dials phones now? Voice recognition does. Nobody gets up to change the TV channels, all 5,000 of them. Remotes do that. Rabbit ears are replaced by cables and satellites.

Technology makes human interaction irrelevant. Smart phones and thumbs book airline tickets, pay Georgia Power or charge Church pledges on Visa. Where’s it all going? The sky’s the limit.

Human nature is never satisfied. The psyche embraces the future. We’re dreamers. The poet, Dylan Thomas, once wrote, “The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it’s when it tries to invent a heaven that it shows itself cloddish.”

Ah, a heaven. Maybe that’s what we’re after…and our hearts are restless until we attain it.

**********

Dreaming transcends the boundaries of technology. Americans say, “We are free, so we can dream.” But perhaps it’s best said, “We dream, so we can be free.” Is there a correlation?

So long to Outhouses and Sears catalogs. I’m not looking back…you?


Bud Hearn
November 1, 2013