JOY ALONG THE WAY: MAKE YOUR OWN DIVISIONS OF THE CENTURY

The decade is half over. The century wanes. We all wane with it. Some will have experienced most of the hundred years. Some, all of it and a few, all of it and more.

For those who have lived through most of it there will be different ways of summing it up, or dividing it into sections such as career changes, different home places, or merely childhood, adulthood and old age.

One way I'm going to divide it is by inventions. First there was the cream separator salesman. We called him Mr. DeLaval, and stood around the model machine in open-eyed, open-mouthed wonder. We bought the machine and even the youngest of us, me, learned how to put it together. There was the big milk bowl, the spigot, the floater, the spouts, screws, gaskets and numerous discs. THE DELAVAL ERA.

Next came the Burroughs adding machine. It was not nearly so difficult to operate. You just punched the numbered buttons you wanted, pulled a lever, watched the numbers pop up on a roll of paper, went on to the next numbered buttons, pulling the lever each time until you were ready to add. Then you pushed the red button, pulled the lever and up came the total. We didn't trust it at first and did many pencil and paper additions to check it out. THE BURROUGHS ERA.

Then came the radio. We never quite believed it. The fact that we could, on a remote Ozark farm, hear the Grand Ole Opera at the same moment it was happening was beyond our comprehension. But we accepted all unbelievable gifts. The ATWATER-KENT-DELCO ERA. Why Delco added to the name of the radio? Because we had to have that other inventive battery construction to make electricity for us, courtesy of a Mr. Delco we assumed.

If we didn't believe radio, what do you think we thought of television? You just don't try to check it out, know how it is done, explain the process. Something that can gather up all those little atoms manifested say as Jordan, Pippen, Longley, Rodman, etc, in action, push them through some little unseen funnels into the airways, run them along wires that spill out the pictures through a piece of furniture right in front of you -- well, you just don't examine the teeth of a horse that has been given you. You accept. THE TELEVISION ERA.

Now as I wane along with the 20th century, I'm thinking of making a 90-degree turn off the slow lane and accessing something called the Information Super Highway. For all I know it might be a 10-lane highway that has a lot of information posted along the side easements -- Next Exit 15 miles, Mile Post 89, McDonald's, Holiday Inn Next Exit, Slick When Wet, Deer Crossing, Burma Shave (Burma Shave!).

I've gone so far as to check out a book on the subject and, like I do with many books, I checked the last part first.

There's a kind of laundry list of things you have to have or need to know about before you make this turn, such as Mouse, RAM, Word Processor. I already have or can get these, I tell myself. Remember the mouse between the walls? I could get a ram up near Fredericktown. See some every time I go that way. Word Processor? Tell me about it. I've been processing words for half a century. Then there is a Cursor and a Byte. This is just a little old paperback book I have. You can expect it to have some misspelled words.

This last division of the century may be labeled by some as "The Information Super Highway," but for me, I think, unless I progress rapidly, I'll have to digress from my inventive method of dividing the century and call it RAN OUT OF GAS ON THE ACCESS ERA.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.