Week 41—Changes—What My Grandmother Saw in a Hundred Years

In the nearly one hundred years that my grandmother, Pansy Louise (Lancaster) Johnston, lived, she experienced great technological change.

Born in 1913 and died just two months short of her hundredth birthday in 2013, many technical advances happened in her lifetime.

Growing up on a farm in Erath County, Texas, transportation was likely horse and wagon into town, and walking on her own two feet to school. Later, they lived in the town of Stephenville and her father was a self-taught auto mechanic.

In her lifetime, planes progressed to jets, and her brother, R.D., was an Air Force pilot in World War II and Korea. Her husband, Tom, and her younger brother, Wayne, served in the Navy.

Pansy was independent and drove a car up until the last decade of her life, when a minor heart attack put a stop to her driving.

Their family did not have a radio in 1930, but it was likely they soon had one. Once television was widely available, the Johnston family had one, as I have heard stories of watching the first episodes of “I Love Lucy.” Advances progressed over the years from small-screened black and white televisions to modern color flat-screen TVs.

Many household appliances changed over the years. She was a seamstress, starting out with a treadle machine and moving up to electric machines. Washer machines changed from wringer attachments to internal wringers. Old ice boxes advanced to modern refrigerators with automatic ice makers. Instead of percolating coffee on top of the stove, coffee makers made coffee on the counter. Washing dishes by hand advanced to automatic dishwashers.

One thing she did not keep up with were computers. They never really interested her. My brother tried setting up a computer for her, but she just didn’t have interest. She like talking on the telephone or having visits in person. So, no modern communication devices for her besides a portable telephone.

In my grandmother’s life-time, she witnessed many great technological advances in medicine (received a pacemaker), technology (television, space flight, micro-electronics), transportation (automobiles, BART trains, and jets). What will the next hundred years bring?

Mam-ma with a dishwasher

Mam-ma with her car

This is my fourth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.


Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

Comments

  1. Marian B. WoodOctober 20, 2021 at 1:51 PM

    Lots of context for thinking about your grandmother's life. She really lived through a period of significant technological change!

    ReplyDelete

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