Valley News – Column: Always in pursuit of the time train

When we were little boys during the war, we rarely missed going to the Washington Avenue Armory in Albany when we heard there was going to be a gathering of new recruits. As the young men walked down vigorously past the State Capitol, briefly turned right onto Eagle Street, then walked down the long hill of State Street toward the station, we ran past them in the hopes of get a commission for running for a packet of chewing gum or cigarettes, or an orange or an apple. It was a lucrative racket; I would often come home with a candy bar or a cartoon.

At the station, we stood fascinated next to the whistling train – all those faces at the windows and steams from the brakes – and watched the cars slowly begin to move south. We wondered, as the doors went faster and faster, when they finally went too fast for us to run and jump on. The last car disappeared in the Hudson, leaving us still calculating.

Today, almost 80 years later, this experience comes back to me often; because, having managed to live in what is often called “the golden years”, I stand again on this scorching platform, looking at younger faces in the window, and wondering if I can. still manage to run and jump before the most a complicated opportunity to participate has passed out of sight.

I have a dear old friend – she and I were in love in the early 1950s, and still are – whose life clearly demonstrates the dilemma. She has abandoned her computer, no longer uses her old typewriter and communicates through handwritten letters. Despite the nostalgia created by the sight of this long-remembered writing, I respond in kind, by post, but with large letters produced by my (usually) loyal printer. The privacy of our original letters remains – mine burned in a fire on his ranch, and his entered my furnace after my marriage – but I wish I could sit down whenever the spirit moves and send him an email with photos.

Meanwhile, my own struggle continues. There are so many things I don’t know that seem to be common knowledge among children, I feel like a man whose hearing aid died before the story ends.

Email was easy to learn, and Facebook was too easy. Submitting manuscripts electronically is a dream come true. Even Venmo, now that I’ve used it a few times, is less threatening. But there are so many other things! Someone is calling me on my cell phone. I answer and find out it’s a FaceTime call when he says, “You hold your phone to your ear and all I can see is the rim of your glasses.” Damn it !

Just as the cleaning of a lot of the extra stuff in my house has been accomplished by my children (who I hope will one day come back to bail out some more), it is the younger generations who are paving the way for solutions that do not. do not occur to them. us old people. I needed a new blazer. An Internet check did not reveal any tailors or haberdasheries in, of any location, my state capital. I mentioned this in one of the bi-weekly Zoom calls (there’s another one!) With my kids in Arkansas. “What size?” my son asked, and four days later a perfectly fitted blazer arrived via FedEx. Then my daughter-in-law with a quick phone search saved my old quilt from the rag bag. It reminds me of Stringbean, the banjo player from Grand Old Opry: “Lawd, I feel so useless!

I managed to take pictures with my cell phone, send them to myself and store them electronically. But my kids do videos and drone shots. They ask me what music I would like to hear on another app named Spotify, and the next thing I know is Vernon Dalhart or Jimmie Rodgers singing to me from my car audio (more called radio).

My little bedside alarm clock has become unpredictable. No problem, say the children. Use your iPhone. OK ! How? ‘Or’ What? So now I know. I changed it from a barking dog, which had Kiki’s feet all over my face, to a sound of Gerald McBoing-Boing. Much better. If I knew how, this would be the opening of The Marriage of Figaro, a guaranteed awakening. I finally managed to trust Maps, grab the address I want to go to and confidently follow the lady’s instructions (someone gave her an Irish accent). I can make a call from my iPhone, but I’ve kind of lost my chat relationship with Siri, so I can’t just ask her to do it for me. But I’ll get it back. There’s no way I’ll give up the fight – yet. It’s the first week that I’ve discovered how to light my way to bed with my phone!

Willem Lange can be contacted at [email protected].