November 21, 2018. Eureka Springs, AR. Communication

When I was growing up, I remember the ease with which we could communicate with each other. There was the telephone with an Operator who would say "number, please" and we could give her the phone number of who we wanted to talk to. We could call "person-to person, or call collect or just say "reverse the charges". There were pay phones we could use to call someone when we were traveling, or in the lobby of a hotel or office building. I remember when our phone number was 4091J and we moved to another house and our number changed to 4091W.
We could send a telegram, or a money order with Western Union. In our town, when there was a fire, the siren would sound a series of long or short blasts and we could find out where the fire was by looking up the "pattern" in the local phone book. There was a thing called a fax machine where a copy of a document could be sent (mysteriously) to another fax machine.
It seemed that lawyers used this way of communicating quite often. The mailman brought mail to the house twice a day and there was a post card which cost a penny to send. To let people know where we were on vacation, we would even have a post card with a pretty picture on the front. All these ways to communicate were "modern marvels". And then we had dial phones, push-button phones and no more "party lines". Technology was pretty cool.
The other day, I needed to renew our motorhome license tag. I was able to print two Colorado forms from the Internet, scan the forms on a copy machine, attach the forms to an e-mail and send it to the Larimer County DMV from Arkansas. I called the DMV on my cell phone to confirm that they had received the forms and they pulled up the forms on their computer, asked for a correction to one of the forms (which I then scanned and e-mailed), called the DMV again and talked to a different clerk, who confirmed the correction and said she would send the forms to the Denver DMV and they would issue our new tags in 2 to 3 weeks. All of this took place on November 13, in less than an hour.
Karen's sister received an envelope from the Larimer DMV addressed to us on November 14, snail-mailed it to us the next day and on Monday, November 19, our renewal tag arrived. In less than a week, using "modern marvels" the process was completed. A Verizon phone representative told me the other day, that if we think things are fast and efficient now, wait until their 5g system goes into broader distribution. I guess we ain't seen nothin', yet.


Sent from my iPad