The suspect’s car disappeared around a corner, and the police – slowed by a backing dump truck that momentarily jutted into traffic – lost sight just long enough to end the chase.
“Over there,” said the officer riding shotgun. “We’re out of our jurisdiction. Better call it in.”
The car had barely stopped rolling when he threw open the door and trotted over to the phone booth, jerked the handset off the hook, and slammed a quarter into the slot.
Phone booth?
Dr. Who fans will recognize the “callbox” but there are plenty of folks who have grown up as dinosaur technology has gone extinct. I was reading a book by suspense novelist Sue Grafton – the first in her long-running series – and was taken aback by the prehistoric references. The novel was written in the 1980s. Some things have changed a little. Some things have changed a LOT.
I should have gone into it understanding that it was historical fiction at this point. The forensic pathologist (and I think Ms Grafton was a little ahead of her CSI-time back then) and her associates had to share a behemoth computer that squatted on a desk like an elephant. There was a point where, if I remember correctly, the police DID have to pull the patrol car over to make a phone call.
It was before cell phones were in wide enough usage for readers to be familiar with the terms.
John Nance writes fiction set in the airline industry and one of his early works has the pilot comfortably smoking in the open-door cockpit as the passengers are boarding. Airline-related stories are certainly among the most-dated. The rules of flying changed dramatically post-911.
Tom McBride and Ron Nief have put together a collection of generational ‘Normals’ and called it the Mindset Lists of American History. They don’t list every year, but skip five to seven years in documenting what was important to graduating classes in their own diploma-year. For example, the Class of 1983 were mostly born in 1965, and include comedian Chris Rock and actor Robert Downey Jr. For this class, Malcom X, Alan Freed, and Nat King Cole were already historical figures.
There was no armed forces draft, the ecology movement had been around forever. Radio ads for cigarettes were long gone. Separate-but-equal facilities for different races were a thing of the past. Those of the class of 1983 never did and never will see the Beatles in a live performance. They never saw a slide rule in a classroom, and did not have to wait until age 21 to vote.
Plenty of things that I considered ‘normal’ are completely unheard of by younger groups. Rotary-dial telephones. CB radios. 8-Track tapes.
It seemed like it was only yesterday that the corner grocery offered S&H Green Stamps with every purchase, to be pasted in a book and saved until redeemed for some frivolous purchase at the ‘Stamp Store.’ Now, it seems that even US postage stamps are threatened.
The authors make some bold predictions for future classes as well, including an outbreak of ‘carpel thumb syndrome’ brought on by excessive texting.
We’ll have to see how that turns out. Meanwhile, I’ll keep tapping away on the massive laptop that my son-in-law makes fun of, the one with the Cinemascope-sized screen and fonts the size of billboard lettering. You know – something big enough for me to see.
