Technology has changed how the world works today

Sometimes, when you stop to think about it, the pace of changing technology is overwhelming, especially to older people. I used to reflect on my Grandmother Hall’s life span and what she was able to witness during her 94 years on this planet. She saw covered wagons in the 1890s and a rocket put a man on the moon in 1969. She rode in wagons that used buggy whips to increase the speed and in automobiles that used a pedal on the floor to increase the speed. In the early days of the 20th century, it took all day to make a trip to any of the four towns around Lake Martin: Dadeville, Alexander City, Tallassee or Wetumpka. Of course there was no Lake Martin in those days and it might not have taken the whole day to go to some of them. Today you can go to all four towns and be home for lunch.

These days I reflect on the changes in technology I have experienced and find myself amazed at the pace in which things have changed. I understand Gordon Griffith had the first phone in Red Hill in the mid-1940s. My cousin, Sellers Hall, had joined the USAF and wanted to call his mother on Mr. Gordon’s phone. His mother had to walk from where the rock house on Castaway Island Road is just down below the vet’s office, to 4068 Red Hill Rd. where Mr. Gordon then lived to receive the call, which is just over a mile. Prior to Mr. Gordon getting the first phone, Mr. Palmer Taylor had sold his grocery business across from the Red Hill School and moved to Eclectic so he could get phone service for his new petroleum products distribution business.