My other half and child provided me with a present for Christmas. The gift came covered in vacation paper.
It was a tablet.Now, a few of
you of my vintage may think about the word “tablet” as an item made up of a number of pages (some of them came lined) on which you would do your schoolwork.
My very first memory of a tablet was one that my mother tucked inside my tote bag as I headed off to Lincoln # 2 country school. The tablet included a heavy red paper cover with the image of a splendid Native American chief shown. I thought it rather remarkable.
That’s not the sort of tablet my wife and daughter bestowed on me.
My new tablet holds a computer system chip that comes covered in a case of plastic. The size is similar to that old country school paper tablet, however what it does far goes beyond anything I ever accomplished with pen and paper.
This tablet could probably fly me to the moon if I knew the correct keystrokes.I’ve been believing
of all the important things that have changed our world between the time of that paper tablet to the plastic thing I now hold in my hands. In the area of my lifetime I have gone from viewing my father open a cornfield by handpicking completion rows with me in the wagon pulled by horses to a time now where integrates travel across the landscape without any human occupant at the steering wheel.My very first experience in plowing ground discovered my daddy put behind me on the WD Allis Chalmers tractor seat and instructing me how to rake a straight furrow.” Drop the plow and after that put the radiator cap on that far fence post and keep it there all the way throughout the
field,”he stated. I was nervous knowing that I would be graded on how straight that furrow ended up to be. However, I must have
passed muster as after two trips across the 20-acre field, he leapt off the tractor and informed me to end up the job. I felt a sense of overall liveliness behind that steering wheel! Today’s contemporary tractors feature my tablet’s innovation as a matter of course
. The operator, if there is one, sits above the soil and watches several screens that provide all the information needed to seed, fertilize and treat the ground the tractor travels over. I went to a nationwide machinery show in Louisville a number of years earlier and stood dumbfounded as the innovation being installed in the machinery was shown to those mouth-gaping farmers standing in front of the machines.On the drawback, now it is practically impossible to fix or repair these popular pieces of equipment without calling a service center someplace who-knows-where and having some remote mechanic figure out what’s wrong. That is a far cry from the day when if a tool stopped working on the farm, the farmer either fixed it themselves or gotten in touch with a neighbor who understood how to repair the machine.I hear there are efforts afoot to at least enable
farmers to work on some of their own pieces of equipment, however there is cash to be made in repair work; hence, it is still to be seen if that effort ever pertains to pass.I’ve been having a good time with my new tablet. I have downloaded applications that enable me to see what the weather resembles in bright Arizona, checked out the most recent political hubbub at the Capitol, check on my blood pressure, follow the exploits of the Minnesota Vikings and discover why our cucumbers didn’t do so well in last year’s garden. I think I can do about anything on the dang thing. My brand-new tablet does whatever other than spit!But, my tablet still didn’t come with a heavy red paper cover with the image of that magnificent Native American chief revealing on the front of the box. Perhaps some advertising expert will develop that idea.
I think it would sell. See you next time. Okay? John Wetrosky( 2022)