Getting the lights
The sun is setting. I really should go and turn on the lights. A simple task. We have fancy switches that you press I know, time to take and look, the lights are on. It was not always that simple. I am the oldest of the siblings and I can remember when you had to get the lamp out and make sure there is oil and trim the wick and remove the chimney and light that wick and put the chimney back and put everything away safely. All for a single flame, I have been told that it was better than a candle but not by much. And it required that someone took the time to go to the store and buy a can of oil as well. Kerosene. Something like what we used to make jets planes fly. Anyhow when I tell my younger sisters they learned to read by lamplight they think that I am joking. Making up the kind of stories that only an older child could tell. But I remember when we got the lights as expression went when polls came down the road and they strung wires and transformers and moved a community from the last century to the present one. A pretty big deal because it meant school could go on past sunset and a church could be lit up for service and you could get a TV. Life was more than lamplight. Now as I usually do, I took the time to watch a video on the technology of the kerosene lamp. Developments that were necessary a century ago. I have seen a lighthouse that had a row of oil lamps around the tower. That too in its time was modern technology. Let the record show that I do not own a kerosene lamp. Too much trouble when we live in a world where even a simple flashlight gives more light. I am not someone that waxes nostalgic for the good old days. As they say I have been there and done that. Growing up by the railway we still had oil lamps on all the switches. Just enough light to show whether the switch was red or green. And someone still had to go out and fill the switch lamps. That all went away when I was still young. Of course so did the railway. Something else that my siblings have missed.
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