Transient

I was thinking old thoughts Sunday after reading the newspaper. I was putting it to go out for the recycle bin. I recalled as a child our newspapers. At that point in time, most all the single family homes and building from a generation or more earlier, had a coal shed.  In America coal was the ubiquitous fuel. Everyone had a coal stove up until that time or a coal fired boiler. Therefore a requirement was that homes have a place to store coal. Commercial buildings usually had a coal chute and coal was kept in the basement. Periodically a coal truck would squeeze down our shared driveway and dump coal in a shed.

The switch was on to heating oil by the time I was a child. My family were one of the early converters. Our shed had ceased to be used for coal some years earlier.  Instead it had become a repository of old newspapers and discarded items.  The newspapers were stacked about 4 feet high, 7 feet across and maybe several feet deep. There was no door on the shed. It had a wide opening. The weather had mildewed the newspapers and mold was prominent.

I do not know how it happened, but my Mother guided me and my two brothers in a clean up activity. We took those wet musty newspapers out of the shed to the front street. It was a several day’s effort for us pre-teens. My Father got somebody to collect the newspapers and take them away. The shed filled with other stuff. Years later it was torn down.

Our perspective of things is relatively narrow. We tend to forget what seems to have an indomitable presence today will likely vanish. I would never have taken a bet on the extent to which coal as a universal heating source would change. I guess just like people would never have taken a bet for the demise of horses as the primary means of locomotion or the great European powers being so relegated in significance.

Perhaps the lesson for us today is that the two big “A”s of America and Apple are transient. They too will pass.