Blog 3

Blog 3 

I made the decision to talk to my parents for this blog and the reason is because they are the best people I knew of to tell about stories about the past that were about were in the area were my parents. I didn't know what exactly to ask about or what kind of stories I wanted to hear so I simply asked if they had any stories about her past.

My parents (2015)  

She talked a lot about when she was kid and how different everything was and what it was like to live in New Phila back then and on a farm. She focused comparing on then and now. She put heavy emphasis on how connected people were to their community members. She told how when she was young and lived in town every day she would go around with the other kids to the park or to the store or to each other’s house. She said “one mom was everybody's mom”, “any mom would spank you or tell you what to do.” She told how nobody had fences and how everybody sat on their porches and talked to their neighbors. Not everybody was independent and keeping to themselves. In addition to that everybody tended to have their own gardens even in the city and do whatever they could to support themselves for free. When she was young and lived in New Phila they still had a milkman that would bring milk in a horse drawn carriage and she said, “All the kids would run out to pet Dewie (the horse) every time he came.”

I really like all that she told me, and it made me really think of possible ways to make our current communities more connected like they once were.  The kids and the adults. Kids today in towns and cities do connect and hang out in groups but there isn't a special sense of community between families and neighbors like there once was.

My dad told similar stories though his were a lot more mischievous. He told stories about the things he did with his friends when he was young. Things like playing stickball in the street and playing the cards on the bus to school. There were also things like hiding and throwing tomatoes at cars driving by at night. Things that would have surely gotten them in trouble had their parents found out. He also told a story about the small jobs he would do in the summer. Lawn mowing was something he did and between each yard he would push the lawn mower to the gas station and fill it up for the next lawn. One year to pay for a vacation he and his brothers spent months collecting thrown out bottles and cashing them in for the few cents they were worth.

The stories from both are similar and paint the same picture of how much more connected everyone was in the past and committed functioned with far less outside help. I think these stories are important because, yes, we live in a different world today but that doesn't mean it can’t have the good aspects from ways of the past. I know that I would've liked to grow up in a hybrid society of then and now but I didn't but that doesn't mean my future children can’t. I hope one day we can again achieve a community with much more communication.