Which changes would I miss most?

I’m often thinking about the changes that have taken place over my lifetime. Some of the changes have been very welcome, some not so welcome, and of course there are always some that are good in certain ways and not in others. I have been an advocate of some of the changes, pretty negative about some others, and in regard to others I am still on the fence.

I am right positive about the better roads that have been developed across Arkansas over the past 60 to 70 years. We have gone from a time when gravel roads, often wash-boardy and pot-hole afflicted, were the norm, to a time when the gravel roads are something of an oddity. It is still amazing to me to take Hayden Road north of Pea Ridge and to drive 50 to 60 miles per hour in some stretches. In the earlier times that would have you slinging rocks noisily under your car and rattling your brains when you hit the potholes and other bumps. On the downside, the faster-moving traffic means that when we pull out of our farm driveway we need to accelerate quickly or someone may pop around the north corner doing 50 miles an hour while we are doing 20. We look, and all is clear, so far as we can see, but sometimes we pull out and someone suddenly appears with the hammer down and we are in the way. Oh well!

It is interesting to me that we still have with us certain of the old-type roads as reminders of the way things used to be. As one example, I’m thinking of The Old Wire Road which runs through the Pea Ridge National Military Park. That old road was at one time the major highway into northwest Arkansas from St. Louis or Springfield and other populated places to the north and east. Yet even today, stretches of Old Wire are still gravel surfaces, much as the road would have been during the Pony Express days or the days of the stage coaches that used to stop at inns like our Elkhorn Inn and Tavern, or the McClanahan Station at what became Rogers, or the Fitzhugh Station farther south.

At Pea Ridge, while roads like Arkansas Highway 94 and Hwy. 72 are paved, shaped with improved gradual curves and other niceties, and even streets like McIntosh, Davis, McCulloch, Weston and Carr are paved, we still have some leftover historic reminders of earlier times. I’m thinking of Ryan Road, which used to be State Hwy. 94 to Rogers or Sugar Creek Road along Little Sugar Creek, one of the oldest roads in this part of the country, or the western stretch of Hazelton Road, or Mariano Road.

I even occasionally drive my old school bus route for old times sake, That includes Lucas Lane, Gates Lane, White Oak Hollow, and so on. It is fun to remember, and to marvel a bit — even Loony Road is paved and Commonwealth is getting up in the world!

Some of the most impactful changes during my lifetime have been in the area of electronics. Electronics were off to a good start when I was born in 1940, but radio was king in those days. I recall when many of our hardware stores had radio tube display racks and tube testers standing by. Customers could bring in the glass tubes from their faltering radio units and check which tubes were still good and which ones were bad. The really good radios had many tubes to refine the sound and improve the reception. Most of our farmhouses had a radio antenna reaching out across the lawn. The early TV sets of the 1950s also had gangs of tubes to handle the video and audio signals. The appearance of color TV of course added to this complication, and many TV sets were heavy and awkward to handle. Of course, some years later the space program and the invention of transistors radically changed the world of electronics, bringing about the phenomenon of miniaturization and opening up many new possibilities, such as hand-held calculators, tiny radios, and of course eventually the development of personal computers, cell phones and smart phones. The development of electronic devices has been phenomenal, amazing and helpful in many ways. It also seems to have introduced numerous new problems to our personal and communal worlds, things like data hacking, robo calls, phishing schemes, computer viruses, privacy invasions, identity theft and others.

In thinking of the changes I would miss most if they had not taken place, I come down to the medical advances that many of us have benefited from. I remember that one of my Dad’s cousins died of a heart attack in the 1950s, a death which probably would not happen today, with our better equipped cardiac physicians, readily available hospitals, advanced ambulance service, and so on. I recall the time when heart surgeries were a new thing, and you needed to go to Oklahoma City or to Dallas to have heart surgery.

It was an interesting time when advanced cardiac care began developing in northwest Arkansas. My own brother-in-law, Dr. Charles Inlow, was much involved as a cardiologist in the Springdale Hospital and the development of heart care clinics related to that hospital. I have had some heart episodes myself, beginning with a heart attack in 2001. Then later I had a heart shut-down while singing at church. That was before Pea Ridge had the advanced cardiac care ambulance service. I later benefited personally from that service when I passed out at the Blackhawk Grill at breakfast time one morning. So, I think the medical advances are the changes I would miss most if they hadn’t happened.

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