Simple Tools

There are some modern conveniences I appreciate. Some I wouldn't want to abandon. Like the computer, for example. I enjoy the way I can learn, study, communicate, and play on it.

However, there are a 'lot' of modern conveniences that we simply don't use. I am grateful for the time I spent in England. It seemed we didn't depend on things like seems to be the norm in the US.

For one, I rarely drove over there. We had a great public transport system. It was needed, with gas three times the price that it is over here, and people were not as remote (trading off privacy for convenience, same as in cities over here). But more people bicycled. More people walked. I didn't think anything of walking 6 miles a day (mile and a half to work, mile and a half home at lunch time to walk the dog, mile and a half back to work, mile and a half home). Some days I caught the tram (streetcar), but most days, rain or shine, I walked.

Shopping was different, too. We had a great market about half a mile away that opened Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. I'd go once a week to the grocery store to get the tinned goods and staples, but the majority of the rest of my shopping I did at the market on a Saturday morning. Here I could buy fresh baked breads and pies, home made jams and preserves, fresh farm eggs (hen, duck, and even goose) and fresh farm poultry for the Sunday roast, fresh fish, fresh vegetables, and fresh fruit. I bought my knitting yarn, my household tools, my dried herbs, and many other items from the market, usually in two trips. The first trip was the groceries and I would hurry home and put them away. The second trip was the other, more leisurely shopping.

With all that running around it is no wonder I gained weight when we moved back to the US!

We had little in the way of 'modern conveniences' over there. It seemed that people respected what they had more. We didn't have storm windows, or central heating, or air conditioning. We heated the house with a fireplace in the living room on one end of the house and a coal fired cook stove in the kitchen in the other end of the house. That cook stove was such a comfort on cold mornings.

The refrigerator we had was only about the size of what people call a 'dorm' fridge over here, but it was enough. We had no freezer. Mostly we had a pantry. It was usually several degrees cooler in the pantry than in the rest of the house, and this was where butter, eggs, milk, and cold meats were kept apart from in the very hottest of weather.

I never had a clothes dryer. In the winter I would wash the clothes in the evening and then put them on the 'clothes dolly' in front of the fireplace before retiring to bed (one of my luxuries that I wouldn't like to lose is the electric blanket; I don't care how cold the room is as long as the bed is warm). They would be dry in the morning, and I would fold the clothes dolly and put it away, and start laying the fire for the next day. In nicer weather, everything was hung outside.

I am very grateful much of this has stayed with me even though I have moved back to the US. I still use an outside clothes line when I can. I rarely use an air conditioner. I still mend jeans and darn socks like my mother-in-law taught me. I knit all our own sweaters and crochet all our own lap blankets. I'm looking forward to revising my canning and jamming skills. And even though I adore living in the country, I really do wish I didn't have to drive everywhere. I miss being able to walk to the shops or the market with my wicker basket over my arm. And I do miss my fireplaces and my coal fired cook stove.

I'm acutely aware of how a gasoline crisis would grind this country to a halt. With no gasoline, many people would not be able to get to work. My family would be in that number. With no work, there would be no money for staples like milk or flour, never mind funds with which to pay for internet access or electricity. Most people are very unprepared, feeling 'it would never happen to me'. I realize the bind in which I would find myself. I have plans to build an outdoor cook stove, and I'm busy planting fruit trees. I want to be planting trees on the day I die.

In the words of Joni Mitchell, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone..."