52 Ancestors Week 12: Technology

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 12

The theme for Week 12 is "Technology." When we think of technology today, we often think of computers, genetics, or the Internet. But technology for our ancestors would have been something we take for granted today, like electricity or indoor plumbing. How did technology affect the life of one of your ancestors?

Lost in Cyberspace

    These days the technology we have all around us can be taken for granted because a hundred or so years ago a lot of what we use today was in its infancy. The telephone was still a relatively new invention and people living in the 1920s could only dream of staying in constant contact with loved ones on the other side of the planet. Instead, they wrote to them and prayed that those letters reached their final destination. If we were to go back in time to 1924, we would see an incredibly different world.  A lot can happen in a century and it makes you wonder just how someone born in those days could've adapted to the constant changes in their world.

    Take my grandfather Robert Hamel for instance. I'd like to think that he did alright for himself adapting to all the changes in his lifetime. He was born in 1925 and lived through multiple technological revolutions. Though, for the life of me, me and my cousins never really understood why he drove the type of car for decades OR why he watched golf with the television on mute. Someone please tell me that those were just normal "grandpa" things. PLEASE!

    All kidding aside Robert adjusted to technology pretty reasonably well. He'd call me on my birthday when he and my grandmother moved to Florida and whenever he got a new television he'd see if he could find whatever channel was playing golf. You might say that was his favorite sport! The box we have in the basement full of golf magazines is proof of that at least.

    However, the one thing he was never really a master of was the use of the Internet and sending emails. That is until we got him a computer.

    I should probably take that back. It wasn't so much a computer as it was a glorified typewriter with a monitor and a modem attached to it. All it did was send emails to friends and family. That was it! There were no games. No....anything. It was just used for e-mails and that was it. At least he couldn't have gotten a virus that way! 

Not much to look at.

    Technically the device is called a "mailstation" and I'm not going to knock it. It was a useful device that allowed him to remain in contact with his family while he was living in Florida. Everyone was scattered all across the continent and Robert wanted a way to keep in touch with everyone without raking up a huge phone bill. By the Christmas of 2001, my aunt Linda set him up with a mailstation and it was an interesting ride ever since.

    I did my best to try and keep in touch with my grandfather. It wasn't always easy because I had school and everything. Still, I made the effort to email him and sometimes weeks would go by without a reply. At first he was slow to respond. But, at least he got the hang of it and the e-mails steadily became more frequent.

Gee. I wonder where I got my razor wit from....

        Sadly, there were limitations to emailing someone using a mailstation. I couldn't send long e-mails. I definitely couldn't send a picture. I remember one time I tried to send him a picture and he said:

"As you can see the msg you sent was tooooo long for my E mail to receive. Did you also try to send me a picture?"

    I facepalmed hard. At the time I was using Yahoo Mail which for all its faults still allowed you to attach images and write messages at any length. You could also link people to websites. I was so perplexed because I wanted to show him so many things like my very first family tree on Ancestry!

    I asked him if he could switch over to Yahoo so I could show him what I made and if he could offer some pointers. He said no because he had just gotten used to the mailstation. All isn't lost! I eventually did show him my very first family tree. I finally showed him it on one of the first generation iPads in 2010 and he was impressed.

    My grandfather continued to use the mailstation up until his death in 2017. While I do wish that he could have gotten an upgrade over the years to a laptop or even his own iPad, it's still good that he used the mailstation to its fullest. It may not have been the best or coolest device on the planet. But, it still allowed him to communicate with everyone save for a few hiccups here and there. So, it wasn't all bad. It definitely made his life better!

    With it, he:

* Was invited to several graduations.

* Found out he was going to be a great-grandfather several times.

* Kept up on the latest news in the family and more.

    All in all, he did "not bad for an old man" as he used to say.

    I guess an old dog can learn new albeit very limited tricks!

See ya next time!

P.S.

For his 90th birthday he Facetimed with my brother and his family in Virginia. His exact words were "I didn't know you could do that!" when we started chatting with them. He talked to his great-grandson and had a great time.