Some of us are strollin’ to the future

J.D. Clampett was ponderin’ on it. Ol’ Jed did not yet know the full ramifications of what it meant to go from shootin’ for some food one minute to bein’ a millionaire the next. He was wonderin’ whether the oil man from Tulsa was right.

“He said he reckoned I’d be movin’ away from here soon,” Jed allowed to cousin Pearl Bodine, who was strugglin’ to help the Ozark mountain man understand just what had befallen him and all his kin.

“What do you think, Pearl? Do you think I ought to move?”

Jethro’s mama was plumb perplexed.

“Jed, how can you even ask? Look around you,” she said, sputterin’ but her thick Ozark brogue risin’.

“You’re 8 miles from your nearest neighbor. You’re overrun with skonks’n possums, coyotes’n bobcats! You use kerosene lamps for light! You cook on a wood stove — summer and winter! You’re drinkin’ homemade moonshine! Washin’ with homemade lye soap! And your bathroom is 50 feet from the house! And you ask should you move!?”

After a few long seconds, it was purt’ near like one of them faincy electric light bulb contraptions lit up over Jed’s head.

“Yeeaah, I reckon you’re right. A man would be a dang fool to leave all this,” he said.

And Pearl like to fell plumb out!

And I laughed like I haven’t in a long time, from stumblin’ across the very first episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” on YouTube.

Perfect timin’ it turned out, what with Cox Communications out tourin’ the country braggin’ on its Smart Home as the (switch on the echo chamber) HOME-Home-home of the FUTURE-Future-future.

Homes of the future always get folks like me and Jed Clampett to squirmin’ and ponderin’. What in tarnation’s

wrong with the house we’ve got? We don’t need none of them newfangled contraptions!

We’re not Luddites. We come from Baptists, mostly. And we’re just not early adopters, thank y’all very much. We like to sit’n ponder’n whittle a spell before we go jumpin’ on the next broadband wagon.

Which is weird, because my parents were quick to try the newest thing: plowing with a tractor instead of a mule way, way, way, way back; electric milking machines way, way, way back; color TV way, way back; microwave oven, way back.

Daddy would be 103, and Mama would be 95, if they were still with us. When it comes to adaptin’ to new technology, I come well armed with family tradition and experience.

We haven’t had a landline at the house for at least 10 years. I’ve been texting for about as long. I haven’t used a desktop computer for just about as long.

But I own my very own microfilm reader. They will take my books when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers. I miss C.B. radios. The last, and only, video games I owned were by Atari. I sing from a hymnal, not a big screen, and go to church in person.

According to Cox, my house is not very smart. We’re behind the curve.

The home of the future — the near future, the year 2020 — will have 50 devices connected to broadband internet, Cox says.

The average home of now has 10 connected devices, many or most controlled by smartphone or tablet apps.

My home has one, I think: a router. But I’m writin’ this on a laptop. So does that make two? My wife and I have smartphones. Do they count? I don’t rightly know, without ponderin’ on it some.

Internet devices in some homes of now can lock and unlock the door, turn a slow cooker on, feed one of Elly May’s critters, or do any number of other things.

To which ol’ Jed and I are liable to reply: I’ll keep my keys, the handson cooker switch and our manual feed bowls, thank y’all very much. Aww, I’m just funnin’. In a story the other day by our Abby Bitterman, Cox allowed as to how they’ve done spent $15 billion over the past 10 years on their network — that’s with a “B,” Jed, who replied, “Weeelll, doggies!” And Cox’ll spend another $10 billion over the next five years.

It won’t be wasted on me or the likes of me. Just don’t go sayin’ “froggy jump” expectin’ us to go faster. We’re adopters. Not early adopters. Sometimes, slow-as- cold-molasses adopters.

We do adopt. But we’ll be sittin’ and ponderin’ and whittlin’ a spell before we go jump.