Flashback Friday....Once upon a time, in a land before the iphone...

My recent ramblings about technology made me go looking for evidence that once upon a time we actually had to write, type, lick, stamp, mail, dial, talk, load, click, wind, rewind, carry, develop, project, flip (the record), record, dub, mix, burn and actually learn how to do this all and gasp, be talented to make things read, look and sound good.

The Proof is in the Archives:

Before Texting,  Shelby's Great Grandma wrote letters:

 Before there was the quick email...we dropped a post card:

And for the really important news, there was this, the grandfather of instant messaging:

To get to where we were going we used a map:

then we had "girls":

now we never have to stop for directions:

and if you can't just get in the car and go?
No problem, bridge the miles using the world wide web.

These two were experts, long before FaceTime:

Cody's Grandma and mom learned on this:

and then he learned on this:

And do you think Drew's love for video games 

was inherited from Jeremy and the boys?

 Think again.

Here we see who really is behind Drew's love of Super Mario:

another future Vander in-law shows his Game Boy grin:

Pre-pod:

Josh and the Hi-fi

Sister Susie and the Brownie:

Dave and the Single Lens Reflex:

Nancy and the trusty AE-1:

Patty and the Digital SLR

Susie making 8mm home movies:

(note the 126 insta-matic on the console television)

Verna reporting the news with portable VHS camera:

 Darold lightens the load with the camcorder:

Susie with the smaller VHS-C

Mike using the 8mm handi-cam:

Jeremy and the mini-dvd camcorder:

dance with nance and the mini-dv camera:

Pre-imovie and Dance with Nance:
Paragon Productions - 12 projector multi-image presentations:

Dance with Nance gets an upgrade to DLP projection:

Dance with Nance gets another (temporary) upgrade:

Janet and the Rotary Phone:

Susie on the 696-0662 Landline:

Junior on the cordless portable:

Mike moves to the Flip phone:

Shel rocks the camera flip phone

Erik show us how we used to take a picture on our camera and make a phone call on our cell:

Now we take a picture with our cell and and let Facebook make the calls:

And I'm okay with that. 

I feel much more up to date and connected to friends and family than I ever have.

It's really amazing to see how our lives have changed just in the past 10-15 years. It's hard to imagine how much farther we can go with this thing called technology...but I have a feeling that the next 10 years are gonna make this blog post look like ancient history.

Directions to here:

Oh and if you decide to call my landline? (Yep. I still have an old school landline).  You'll be happy to know that I'm still rockin' that 696-0662 phone pictured above.

(could not find a picture of anyone using their "car" phones, two ways, or walkmans. And sadly, our collection is really missing anything on vinyl. Feel free to send me pics to add, if you have any).