It wasn’t until just now….when I wrote the post title …..that I realized just how appropriate Sprint’s name is.

This post has nothing directly to do with Sprint either. It has to do with change….the speed of change….and a little bit about how it’s affecting us poor ole truckers.

Lemme ’splain.

Flashback…….early eighties.

My wife , son and I (how odd I look then…so slim) are walking thru a mall. We pass a bookstore and I just GOT to stop. She nods her head in a patronizing manner and says that she and the kiddo will mosey along….maybe stop at the Pet Shop (they occasionally have some Strange pets). More time than I anticipated passes and I leave the bookstore….head for the Pet Shop….and they ain’t there. The rest of the afternoon is spent in trying to “re-connect”……..mild panic ensues on occasion. 

Now (2007)……the wife and I are walking thru a mall. She wants to stop at the Hardware Store. (don’t ask) I decide to continue on….there’s an electronics place just up the way that has advertised cheap giga-byte sized san-disks. A little bit latter my cell phone rings and she says she’s thru and for me to come “get her”….in other words help carry the loot.

Flashback: early nineties.

I’m a driver trainee for Werner back when. It’s about ten in the morning and it’s time for a “check-call”. My trainer and I are on a “high population rural” two lane road in New Jersey …..and we’re looking for a pay phone.

(”Pay phone” asks today’s young driver”….what’s that?”

My trainer sees a likely site and I pull the truck into it, get out of the truck and go inside to make the call. When I get back to the truck a cop has just finished writing us a ticket for illegal parking.

Today I call dispatch and other’s , dozens of times a day. I have two cell phone services…when one doesn’t work the other one might. In addittion I have two cellular wireless computer cards….when one doesn’t work the other one might. Staying in touch is important.

And by the way….when’s the last time you even SAW a payphone? As a public service they look like this..

payphone

Flashback….sometime in the nineties.

I enter a restaurant. Drivers are lined up along the walls waiting for a seat even though there are several tables available. What they’re waiting for is a table with a “table phone”.

Flashback.. still the nineties but not so far back.

Same as above but drivers are waiting for a table with a data terminal for their laptop.

As you can see…change happens.

My father in law’s mother was 89 when she passed on in the late seventies or early eighties. As a newly wed she rode out to her new home through unbroken prairie with her new husband…….in a wagon pulled by a team of horses.

They were fairly well-to-do but had none of the things that my grand daughter thinks are absolute necessities…..like nintendo. Indeed….imagine even explaining what a video game IS to someone from last century. (oops…I mean the century before…this IS the 21’st now….I forget)

Change happens….and it’s happening at a faster and faster rate..