WIRED

Wired

The internet has brought the world together, for good or bad.  I met my first husband on Prodigy, an early-1990s competitor to AOL.  Despite this, I continue to use the internet daily. 

It isn’t all bad. I reunited with John through an email.  Somewhere on the internet, there is a video of Elvis walking me down the aisle, while John waits at the altar.  Our beautiful daughter singing and dancing along with Elvis after the ceremony is my favorite part of the YouTube clip. 

It was a technological world that Lilly had been born into and knew. Preschool Lilly was constantly thinking of ways to “one-up” her mother.  She was born with the motto “trust but verify” and would frequently call bullshit on anything that didn’t make sense to her.

“You said you were poor when you were little, but you had a cellphone, so you weren’t really poor.”  She announced it one day as we drove home.

“Cell phones hadn’t been invented when I was little; people had phones that plugged into the wall called landlines.  But we were so poor, we didn’t even have a telephone when I was your age.”

“You didn’t have a telephone?  You had to be in the same room to talk to people?” She exclaimed in horror.

“Not only that, but we had to write letters and send them in the mail and then wait weeks until we got a letter back from them.”

“How did you know anything?” Lilly was amazed, imagining her mother living in a cave, wearing animal hides, and dancing around a campfire.

Oh, sweet innocent child, we had ways of knowing everything.  We had something better than cell phones or the internet.  We had neighbors and visitors.  All the news we needed to know was delivered to our doorstep, and for the price of a cup of coffee and a homemade donut, we were subscribed.

We knew who had gotten drunk and driven into the ditch again. How angry their parents were about it, and how long they were being punished.  As a sidebar, I would often get to overhear how that “kid came by it naturally”, as old stories of the delinquency of my elders were spiced and bandied about.

   We knew the people (outsiders) who bought Cousin Louis’ house thought it was haunted.  I suggested, “Buy a bottle of whiskey and leave it on the table at night,” which my mother shushed as the old men laughed.  

We knew who was considering a vote for a Democrat and who was on welfare. We knew who had gotten a job, hated their job, or quit. The air above the kitchen table was filled with cigarette smoke, and the laughter at the latest get-rich-quick schemes of naïve neighbors.  

Lilly had the world coming into her living room for her entire life.  When I brought my four-pound infant home from the hospital, I left the TV on for the Jerry Springer show.  The frequent beeps, buzzes, and sudden shouts soothed her to sleep.  To her, it must have sounded like she was back at the NICU.  News, movies, shows, and cartoons were all served up to her as a buffet of experiences on the TV screen.  I was fortunate; the TV was nothing but background noise to Lilly. She generally ignored the TV except for our morning routine. 

Each morning, before work, I would sit on the couch with Lilly and drink my coffee.  Together we watched the morning news show. 

“Did you watch the news in the morning with your mom?” Lilly was changing her tactic now, since I was telling some whoppers about telephones.

“We never had time to watch the morning news; we had chores to do.  But we always watched the evening news.  And we couldn’t talk, because Grandpa Reuben was watching the news.”

“Did you watch the NASA channel?”

“There was no NASA channel.  So, I watched the people walking on the moon on the regular news.  We only had one channel to watch, NBC, when I was little.”

“One channel?  So, you could only see one channel?  What was on the other channels?

“There was a knob to change the channels, but there wasn’t anything on the other channels, just a blank screen.”

“It is because they hadn’t invented channels?  What if you didn’t like what was on the TV?”

“We didn’t watch it.”

The poor child was flummoxed.  I couldn’t explain to Lilly at that age how we had channels.  Just not TV channels.  But, depending on who visited, we got a different view of the news.

From east of Butler, and up past Patsy’s place and the Red Eye River to Hillview, we had Aunt Evelyn.  Aunt Evelyn was a large woman, morbidly obese, who was mostly housebound apart from occasional visits.  Aunt Evelyn felt inclined to provide dieting tips to her young nieces. 

First, Evelyn had been on every diet known to man; if anyone had life experience on what works and what doesn’t, it was Evelyn.  Secondly, she was proof that I could achieve what Mom told me I would never be able to do.  Evelyn was married and had a family.  Someone loved her even if she was fat. And most importantly, Evelyn seemed happy.

 Somehow, despite her physical limitations, Evelyn knew all the news of her little piece of the world.  I always wondered if she was one of the people who call it as they see it, and if they don’t see it, they call it any damn way they please.

From the west, past the old Evergreen store, we had Cousin Lowell.  Sometimes he brought his mother, Alice, along to visit.  Lowell was descended from my father’s uncle’s side of the family and kept us updated on what was happening there.  Alice was ancient, quiet, and sweet as she visited Mom. Lowell was loud and overwhelming to me as a child.  I had a tough time keeping my great-uncle’s children straight; they were older than my dad, and some of them had adult children and grandchildren.  It seemed like there were hundreds of them, and even today, I have difficulty following the family lineage.

To the north of our run-down farm in Butler Township was Aunt Hazel and Uncle Erick and Aunt June and Uncle Eino, on the outskirts of Wolf Lake.  Uncle Erick was a favorite, always filling his overalls with candy to hand out to kids, and always willing to bounce a baby on his knee.  Hazel was dressed like a town wife, although not to the extreme of Aunt Violet.  Hazel knew all the older relatives who were the children of her and Dad’s oldest sisters. 

Hazel knew what the rich relatives were up to, the grandchildren of her sister.  They would visit her often, paying homage to the keeper of the family secrets. Aunt June and Hazel together could go on for hours, weaving tales from the past, combined with the latest in hot neighborhood news.

Aunt Violet and Uncle Bill came from New York Mills to keep us up to date.  Aunt Violet was the epitome of a city wife.  She kept the plastic on her living room furniture.  She had tiny little soaps just for “look at”.  Her news always came across more like an editorial statement.

For the local news, we had Eddie Schmidt, Uncle Lester, Carl and Irma, Ronnie and Virgie, Grandma Brown, and Lyle and Mary.   Somewhere in the bunch of visitors would be a new story and new adventures daily. 

“That damn boy of Ronnie’s is getting to be nothing but trouble.  Little shit was throwing snowballs at cars on the road.  I saw him get out of the ditch to throw one, and I stopped my damn car and got out.  I went over to the ditch and gave him a beating his worthless ass deserved.”  Eddie told us one day.

Everyone agreed that Ronnie’s boy was more inclined to be a problem than useful.  I was secretly delighted. Older than us, he often bullied his little sister and me whenever the adults weren’t looking.

Unruly children were often the topic of discussion.  Childless or a parent, grandparent, neighbor, or relative, everyone had an opinion on child-rearing. 

Lazy child who wouldn’t do their chores?  “A swift kick in the ass is what that kid needs.”

Talking back to their parents?  “Slap the snottiness right out of their face!”  Aunt Hazel preferred the “soap-in-the-mouth” version for both profanity and a “smart mouth.”

(A piece of advice: Zest is so perfumy that it numbs the taste buds for hours. Lava is gritty and leaves a nasty residue on your tongue.  If possible, stick to Ivory or Palmolive, a light, airy blend with little aftertaste)

Not doing well in school? “Kick his ass and make him work a real job for a while, he will find out he likes school then”. 

Getting into trouble at home, school, or church?  “He needs a good ass beating.”

Stealing? Lying? Shoplifting?  All of that could be cured with a “good ass whipping.”

NNN (Neighborhood News Network) was a violent channel. It made an impression on my cousins and me as we eavesdropped. We knew the whole group of adults would stand firm against us kids, and no one would rescue us from a “whipping” or other corporal punishment. 

Repeating anything we had heard on the NNN during visiting was forbidden.  Long before HIPAA came along to protect personal information, as children, we knew that “gossiping” or “talking about people behind their back” would get us a “good whipping”.  As opposed to a “bad whipping”?   We had a wealth of information, with nowhere to take it. 

There was no insider trading in rural Minnesota.  It wasn’t like we could go out and buy stock in the commodity market when we learned Lyle was thinking of milking cows instead of raising pigs. 

No one outside of our community cared that Aunt Evelyn had carefully worked the numbers, and the latest baby born was “three months premature and eight pounds at birth”. But it would be the leading story for weeks around the kitchen tables.

Knowledge is power.  We couldn’t use the power or even assume to demonstrate our knowledge. But by eavesdropping, we were in on the “secrets” that not everyone knew.  Like a conspiracy theory, it made my cousins and me feel special.  No matter how outlandish the story is, we knew something others didn’t.  Even when the stories were transparently wrong, we couldn’t correct them with our version from the NNN.  But we held that knowledge closely and felt superior.

“My brother was driving home, and his car overheated. He opened the hood to check the radiator, and when he opened the cap, steam blew out and burned his face and arms.  Now he’s in the hospital for at least a year because the burns are so bad.”

Careful to maintain a straight face, I compared that story to what I had overheard.  “So and so’s boy got stopped for selling marijuana; he had a trunkful of it in his car when the cops got him.  Turns out they had been watching him, waiting to find out who the big guys behind it were, and get them.  But since it was his first time getting caught and he told the cops all the names he knew, he only got 18 months.  With the six months already served waiting for trial, he should be out in a year.”

Even now, when all the main characters have departed this mortal realm, I have a phobia about naming anyone in the story.  Knowledge may be power, but I’m not risking a “good ass whipping”.

We had one TV station, one radio station, no telephone, and no internet. Today’s social media and twenty-four-hour news stations pale in comparison to the NNN.  We were wired long before the rest of the world.

“You wanna know something else? If we really needed to make a phone call,” I told Lilly, “We walked over to the neighbor’s farm to borrow their telephone.”  We didn’t do that very often, though. Mom never wanted to be a nuisance.  Besides, we never had anybody to call.  And if we called anyone who didn’t live near us, it would cost a lot of money.”

“You walked!”  Lilly was amazed by the idea of the physical effort required to make telephone calls.  Never mind the part about costing money to make a phone call; that was a blatant exaggeration in her mind.

“Yes, we walked.  It wasn’t that far. We went through the farmyard, past the barn, through our field, the woods that separated the farms, and then through their field to their barnyard and the house. It would have been a waste of gas to take the car if it had started.” 

“Why didn’t you just get a telephone?”

“We were poor, Lilly. We couldn’t pay for the telephone wires to be run to our house or for a monthly telephone bill. A lot of people who lived in the country when I was a kid didn’t have telephones.”

“Nobody is that poor except on Little House on the Prairie, and they got a telephone.  Mrs. Olson had a telephone job.”

                The kid wasn’t buying it.  There was no way in the world her mother could be that old or that poor to not have had a telephone.  Yet one day, while helping me with laundry, she commented that I would have had to carry the dirty clothes to the river when I was a kid.  What I had here was a failure to communicate.  It was entertaining, though.  I had one more ace up my sleeve. 

                “Sometimes, if your Grandma Pearl had to make a telephone call, Grandpa would drive us up to visit Aunt Hazel and Uncle Erick.  They had a party line telephone.”

                “Party line?”  Lilly perked up at that thought.  Somehow, back through the shadows of time, far back in the dark ages, there was a telephone devoted only to parties.  Parties at her age consisted of clowns, cake, games, and goodie bags.  Once more proof to her that her mother exaggerated and told big, whopping stories full of lies.

                “Party lines meant that all the neighbors used one telephone line for their calls.  You had to wait until your neighbors were done talking on the telephone so you could use it to call someone.  If you picked up the telephone and your neighbors were on the phone, you could listen to them talking.  When we were little, my cousins and I liked to listen on the phone to other people talking.”

                “That’s against the law!” Lilly scolded.

                By the time she was in preschool, Lilly had been at work with me often enough to know about HIPAA.   The rules were simple: you don’t listen to what the nurses are talking about, don’t listen to what the residents are talking about, and never, ever repeat anything you might hear at work.  There was an additional rule: if you cry when it's time to leave work, you can’t come back.   After all, if my staff didn’t cry because they had to leave work, then she couldn’t either.  I enforced the rules by dressing Lilly in custom-made nursing scrubs and a name badge.  Lilly took HIPAA seriously. 

                For the little girl who carried my old nursing license around the building, announcing, “My a nurse” while flashing her name badge, this was horrific news.  Her mother, who should have known better, had listened to others’ conversations.

                “Honey, everybody knew that people listened in on the party lines.  No one told any secrets on the telephone.  It was just farmers' wives talking about their chickens, cows, and gardens.  It was boring.”

                What I really wanted to say was this: If you wanted to expand your world, learn true-life lessons, and develop a sense of identity, you needed Neighborhood News Network. Besides being our first choice for all the news that was news, the NNN taught the cousins and me valuable lessons.  It gave us the structure and set up the expectations for us as children and adults.

                We learned, playing on the floor near the kitchen table, below the level of the cigarette smoke.  No one wanted an ass-kicking or an ass-whipping, or even a bar of soap in our mouth. Never embarrass your parents so severely that you end up on the NNN next week was lesson number one.

                “Don’t be lazy or unambitious" was the second big lesson.  A parent or any adult relative would toss you up like a sacrificial lamb for the NNN. 

                “I don’t know what’s gotten into that boy lately. I took him out hunting last weekend, and he said he was ‘tired’ and wanted me to carry his goddamn deer rifle!  And he wants to go into the army! Does he think I’m going to carry his gun while he marches?”

                “Something is going on with my oldest girl.  I keep asking her if she is smoking that whacky tobaccy, but she says she isn’t.  She’s so boy crazy; I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gotten herself hooked up with some hippy.”

                We would cringe and duck lower, while keeping our ears swiveled to hear the gossip.  It was painful to hear, but there was a certain glee in the degradation of our older cousins. Being low on the pecking order, we were surviving by the good graces of being at the cute and funny age.  The big kids, who acted like they had a right to boss us around, were getting their comeuppance.  We couldn’t talk about it, but we had a big secret now!

                The best lesson of all, the one rarely imparted but so desperately needed, was to hear our parents brag about us. It was a lesson in modesty and yet in pride, not to get “above your raising” but also to know your own worth.  

                “Kristy is such a good little mother.  She lines up her dolls, dresses them up, and carries them around constantly.”

                “Pooch ain’t scared of any animal.  If a bear walked in the yard right now, she would be out petting it.  And the bear would let her.  Never seen a kid like her.  If we don’t keep an eye on her, she will have a houseful of animals.”

                “You would swear Jody was all grown up the way she bosses around the other kids.  She makes them toe the line, too.  I don’t have to worry about what they are getting into. But they sure give her a hard time.”

                “Brenda is too smart for her own good.  She’s always trying to teach Joey something, and he doesn’t care.  He just runs off, and she gets so mad!”

                “Trudy is so good with Wade.  I don’t know what I would do without her help.  She can be a little stinker, though; she’s got a temper!  Sometimes they fight like cats and dogs.”

                The only opportunity to brag about your kids was to complain about your kids. It was the original “humble brag,” the only type of bragging allowed in rural Minnesota.  Was it true?  It had to be true, or they wouldn’t have it on the Neighborhood News Network.

                Lilly tabled the discussion and never brought it up again.  If her mother was willing to make up such lies about it, she would never get anywhere.  I had admitted to a washing machine instead of a rock and a river, yet I denied having a telephone.  I was strict about privacy, but I admitted to listening in on strangers' telephone conversations. None of it made any sense at all.  If I was willing to walk through two fields and some woods to use a telephone, why did she need to find the remote control for me?