March 1968: Social distance in its original form

Small town life in the 1960's meant farming, clean air and inevitable social distancing.

Eden, New York is and has long been a small town. The size of the population -- about 7800 today -- has changed not at all since we moved there in 1958. Today there are more one- and two-person households, few large families, and the number of students in each grade is about a third of what it was at Eden's peak. A class of 240 or so is now eighty.

In 1958, Eden at one street light, at the Rockwell-is center of town, at the cross roads of Main Street and Church Street, north and south, east and west, respectively. Of course, there was no Internet, no smart phones, no personal computers, no cable television. Two-way synchronous communication was almost exclusively via land line telephones, some of them still on 'party lines,' shared with neighbors. There was no call waiting, no answering machines, no re-dial, and thee phones and service all cam from AT&T, at a pretty reasonable price -- until you tried to call someone outside your 'calling zone,' and then the charges could skyrocket. A call to the north side of Buffalo, maybe thirty miles, cost money. A long distance call was a luxury. There were collect calls and person-to-person calls, some both. In any case, the phone was nothing like the social connector that today's wireless phones and services offer.

As a teenager that spring -- I turned 17 later that year, at the start of my senior year in high school, school was the primary social interaction, and primarily through the class day and with some extracurriculars, primarily sports for boys. Girls had few after school options.

The rural nature of the small town also meant that once home, I was pretty much socially distanced from my classmates. Two things kept me in touch: the radio and the phone. Radio was very big back then, but it was all one-directional. I could feel part of a teenage community in western New York but I could not easily communicate with them spontaneously. The phone was limited. With ten kids in the family and single line that had to be kept open for potential calls from dad at work or elsewhere meant that the standard 'rule' was to limit cals to three minutes. My parents even tried an egg timer to monitor us, but we were able to hide from most monitoring if we used the extension in the back upper bedroom, my bedroom. I would often be on the phone for 20 minutes, often more, usually with Sandi Agle, who was mu guide and confidant in my preliminary, faux-romantic interactions with other girls. She was year older than me, not a potential girlfriend. The greatest embarrassment would be to have a sibling interrupt you or, worse, have mom pick up the phone and tell me to get off immediately.

So the radio was the voice of my generation and the best tool to help me to keep socially connected to mt teen cohort across the region. And this was the peak of The Beatles, whose 1963-1969 dominance perfectly coincided with my junior-senior high school years (although we rarely used the junior or senior designation other than to describe those a year from graduation and those about to graduate).

Winters ran long in Eden. School closings were rare -- the road crew in town was a hardy bunch -- but the weather could really limit discretionary travel while also creating a real sense of 'cabin fever'. In my younger days, 'playing outside' in the winter was significant undertaking, to dress, fight the cold and snow, and then deal with the aftermath of cold, wet clothing. As a 16 year old, the only 'playing outside' I did would be to practice basketball in the unheated barn.

At the time I probably felt unlucky, isolated, and socially inept. Looking back, it was involuntary social distance -- to use topical parlance -- but I )or we) had no other option. And it was not that we were poor, but there were twelve of us on one income. There were few or no luxuries beyond those provided by the perks of Ed's job, where salesmen showered him with trips, meals, gold club sets. One of my 'little luxuries' would be to reheat the doggie bag beef mom would bring home from one of those business dinners. That was my reward for babysitting seven younger siblings.

The social world for a16 year old today is so different that trying to detail more differences than what I have highlighted here would require a book and a level of insight that my age alone won't provide. For the record, those were glorious years, glorious times. They were simpler, less expensive. I had few responsibilities outside some farm chores and my studies. Life today is full of more things, more dollars, more options, more responsibilities. Does 'more' mean 'better'? I have no answer other than to say life changes constantly, and maintaining consistency on key, productive things -- like one's values and practices -- can be the greatest source of joy while experiencing the challenge and delights of my current life. The joy of family is permanent.