A Time Less Precise

By G.E. Shuman

My wife Lorna works evenings. She leaves the house at about dinnertime, and gets back home by eleven or so. It’s not a perfect schedule for a lot of people, but works well for us. I’m here with the kids when she’s at work. One effect of this schedule is that I have pretty much taken over preparing the evening meals for our family. Many nights I make the kids their food, and make something different for Lorna and myself to have when she gets home. I know, I know, we should not be eating that late at night. Don’t shake your finger at me, or I’ll put an onion ring on it.

I have been surprised by a few things about becoming the chief cook and bottle washer at our home. The first is that I usually enjoy making the dinners. (I did say: “usually”.) I think I have developed a pretty good handle on how to make meals the kids enjoy. I know I know how to make certain things Lorna and I enjoy. A big part of the enjoyment in making the food is that I have decided recipe books are for sissies. They just are. I have tried them, and they don’t work. Period. Why in the world would I want some stranger telling me how much of something should go into my food? I know what tastes good to us, and we are the ones who will be eating it, right? The other night I was shaking salt into my palm, (I own a really nice blood pressure meter.) to add to a big beef stew I was making, and realized that I probably cook a lot like my mom does, but not nearly as well, of course. Mom will stand at the stove or counter and just add some of this and some of that, and her meals always come out tasting wonderful, or wonderfully, depending on if you use proper English or not. She even has names for the ‘some-of’ quantities she uses, and those names are actually written on cookie-dough-and-vanilla stained old, worn recipe cards she used when I was a child, and probably still has. I remember three of those ‘very precise’ measuring units were referred to as a pinch, a smidgen and a dite. You know, the recipe would say: Add a pinch of salt, a smidgen of cinnamon and just a dite of nutmeg; something like that.

I believe that these less than scientific units of measure came into being for a reason. You see, when my parents were young adults, and I was a child, things were simpler. Measurements and many other things were just less precise than now, and I’m pretty sure we were exactly as well off with that less-preciseness. No one cared if your apple pie had half a smidgen more or less cinnamon than mine. No one expected a high definition picture from their TV, either. Yes, we had TVs back then, (we called them TV ‘sets’) and we felt lucky to get a picture on them at all. Measurements were not done in microns, and pictures were not measured in pixels. Absolute precision was not that important, I guess. We didn’t live for it. That time was one in which human integrity was high and technological integrity somewhat lower. Pretty much the opposite of the way things are today. A major business deal really could be struck on a handshake, and a meeting could begin ‘after lunchtime’, not at one fifteen pm, precisely. No one cared if Sunday afternoon company stayed late. Do you remember even HAVING Sunday afternoon company? No one cared because no one managed their Sunday evening by what time the show came on. I take that back. Lassie and The Wonderful World of Disney were exceptions. There are always exceptions. My dad’s first brand new car, a nineteen sixty Chevy was also very simple by today’s automotive standards. It had few options, but loads of space, even under the hood. You could actually get your whole body down beside the engine to change the spark plugs. But I guess no one changes spark plugs anymore. If they do, they must need surgical tools to reach them.

Further back, when my dad was a boy, things were even less precise than in my boyhood time. I remember him telling me that there were no electric meters on homes then, for instance. No one had yet thought of charging customers by the quantity of electrical charge they used. That came later on, closer to our current age of precision in measuring current. You just paid a set amount to the power company each month for having the stuff wired into your house. And everyone could drive a car when they turned sixteen back then. Did you know that? Did you even want to know that? No one had a license, so no one needed to go get one. Your dad taught you the rules of the road. That was easier, although less precise than now, as there were fewer rules then, than now.

Only hours before I began writing this column, one of my super duper, wonderful, fancy, plastic electronic marvels, (my computer) notified me that 45,000 Americans lost their jobs, today. Think of that. I said, today. All of our gadgets, gizmos, and precise measuring devices didn’t stop that. Our Ipods and Blackberries, our cell phones and organizers, had not the vaguest idea or the slightest care that those men and women were becoming unemployed. Google couldn’t have cared less, if Google is capable of caring at all. Our immense compilation of knowledge and computing power didn’t prevent those massive layoffs, or even see them coming. Neither will it prevent possible future ones. How far have we actually come since the great depression?
About the only good thing I can think of that comes from economic recession is an eventual, probably inevitable, settling down, followed by rebuilding. People tend to simplify their lives in times like these. They turn to family, friends, and best of all to God when all else is failing them. We go back to basics, when basics are all we have left. Don’t we? Somehow, all that doesn’t seem so bad.

You know, between you and me, I was born a generation or two, too late. I’m not much for big boy toys, complex, time-robbing gadgets with huge instruction manuals, or, as I said, even recipes. I like things simpler than that. Here’s a thought. Maybe it’s time we stopped sharing data, and started sharing beef stew and biscuits again. Since no one seems to know where we’re going, we might consider slowing our headlong rush into the future, just a dite.