Car Repair

I posted about my 2017 Prius Prime being damaged by a parking space berm on my way back from the Missouri Department of Conservation Partners Roundtable. It is now fixed and looking great again – nothing dragging, no shredded plastic tire well. My insurance provided a rental car for the 5 days it was in the shop.

It has been a very long time (maybe 20 years) since I had a car repair that required replacing part of the body and paint. It seems that this time was more efficient and a shorter time in the shop. Of course, the online claim to my insurance and text messages providing status were something new. We are paying more for insurance now, but the out-of-pocket expense was probably about the same.

As I was driving the rental car, I realized that don’t drive rental cars as often as it did pre-Covid (when I would sometimes fly to Dallas and rent a car to visit my parents) and certainly not as often as during the later part of my career when I was traveling frequently for work. The rental car felt awkward to me – about the same size as my Prius Prime but without the same power; I didn’t get used to it in the short time I had it!

In the end – I am relieved that my car is back in the garage and ready for my next road trip to Dallas.

Then and Now – Communicating with Family and Friends

As I was growing up, letter writing was the primary way people communicated long distance. Telephone calls were still comparatively expensive – primarily for emergency type communication. Letter writing was something we learned in school and I had at least one long distance friend to hone my skills….and I wrote to my parents when I was away (at camp, for example). Postcards were less expensive that letters, but I usually wrote letters.

For local type communication, the telephone was the main path. Most of our phones had rotary dials although the push button phones began to take over during the 60s; they were all ‘land lines,’ of course. There was only one phone in our house for most of my growing up years, so there was no privacy for conversations; that became troublesome during my teens.

These days we no longer have a land line. Almost all people (except young children) have their own cell phone. The devices are still phones…but there is a lot of communication via text (and occasionally email) using the same device. I have stopped sending letters and cards entirely.  Some of the multi-person type communication (like my neighborhood or my high school class) is done through social media groups rather than mailed newsletters.

There are times I wonder if non-profits have kept up with these shifts…there are a few that still send note cards as an incentive to contribute. I have been putting them in a donate pile…but maybe they should go in recycle instead.

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