Taking a century by the book

Editor's note: This column originally was published Aug. 1, 1999.

It took me more than half a year to read an account of the major happenings of the past 100 years. Put that way, it doesn't seem I'm such a slow reader. The book, "The Century," by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster was a Christmas gift from Steve and Viney. They wrote on the front flyleaf, "You have witnessed much of the century and been an important contribution to it, in a very a positive way." Wow! Important contribution? Double wow! One thing that took me so long to read the book was its weight. Hard bound, with 616 thick pages, it weighs 5 pounds. So you don't lean back in an easy chair and hold this book up at a proper reading angle. You lay it in your lap or prop it on the arm of a chair or table top and bend over it, adjusting a light so that it doesn't reflect on the slick paper.

Another thing that slowed me was that after each topic touched on by the writers, I would stop and say, "Yes, yes. I remember it well," and then add something of my own. For example, when the authors say, "The latter half of the century's second decade was marked by a war so brutal and so unnecessary it would give new meaning to the word, 'absurd,'"

I would add, "And there were the brown biscuits made of something resembling bran we fed our cows. And every one of us in the family, seven in all, were in bed at the same time with influenza."

When the chapter of Lindberg's crossing the Atlantic came up, I said, "Sure, I flew with him. I slapped him in the face to keep him awake, opened the window for air. The whole thirty-three and a half hour trip was exciting and excruciating." All this vicariously, of course, as, seated around the kitchen table, Dad read to all of us, over and over, the accounts of the event from the St. Louis newspapers. We could all read, but it was good to have us all experiencing the account at the same time.

When Jennings wrote of Martin Luther King Jr.'s saying, "I have a dream!" I stopped to echo, "I have that same dream, Martin. But, oh, it is so slow in coming."

I was there when Neil Armstrong set that booted foot on the moon. I stood up, across from the television and saluted, with eyes misty with pride.

In the whole weighty book there are only two things that I can't relate to. One is the Levittowns. I'd never heard of them before. It seems that following World War II, William Levitt and his brother, Alfred, conceived the idea of building small affordable houses on what could be called an assembly line. The foundation team came one day, the Sheetrock team the next, etc. Thirty houses, all alike, could be assembled in one day. Like a row of dominoes they stood on tracts of land in suburbs. No, not exactly like dominoes, which have varying white dots; the Levittown houses all had the exact number of windows and doors, all placed alike.

Louis Mumford, social critic, decried Levittowns. He viewed it as an attack on individuality, a place where the spirit would languish.

The nearest I could relate to Levittowns was a row of little unpainted houses, all alike, built somewhere in the Bootheel for sharecroppers. I think they are all gone now.

The second thing I haven't quite related to is a device that has caused to come into our language such terms as mouse, modem, ROM, RAM, MHz, KB, DOS.

Oh, there's faint relation. I know the mice that lived in our barn and ROM and RAM call to mind Romulus and Remus, the twin lads cared for by a she-wolf until a shepherd found them. But the century isn't over yet. Maybe I'll catch up with these terms and acronyms. I doubt it, though, since there are only153 days left before the new millennium. Some say 518.

I keep going back to read that flyleaf inscription. Even such a biased opinion calms my fluttering heart over being so far behind.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.