MODERN TIMES

As I write I’ve got a plumber here replacing the bottom seal on a toilet.  It apparently had been leaking into a small room in our basement for a while. Now “we” need to do mold remediation and fix the wall.  Not a big deal, but it made me think.

How many trades are modern people dependent on for their homes?  Plumbers, electricians, HVAC guys, and roofers?  And that doesn’t include people we need for transportation and eating, like mechanics and farmers.

Humans have been around for 200,000 years.  Just five hundred years ago, the average person would not have even a house, especially one with running water or anything other than maybe a crude fireplace.  Except for the few city dwellers, most people grew their own food.

One of the greatest inventions is refrigeration (and its predecessor, the icebox)  – without it, the constant hunt for food would consume one’s day.  But worse than that was the fear of frequent surprise attacks by pillaging invaders.  The only consolation was having no expectation that life could be any different

I also wonder what I’d look like without modern medicine:  I’d have no teeth, couldn’t hear, and couldn’t see past a few feet. 

What it would like to be to go back in time five hundred years and see where and how my ancestors were living without the expectations of a 21st-Century life and what did they have to complain about?!