Where I grew up, in the Fraser Valley of B.C., most young people spent their summers picking strawberries. It was an age before allowances and picking berries and baby-sitting were the main avenues for earning a few dollars.
I don’t remember what the going rate for baby- sitting was, but I know I made enough picking berries to help pay for my school book rentals. My widowed mother needed all the help she could get to raise her three little girls.
Picking berries meant getting up early and getting a ride in an old truck at 8 a.m. or pedaling your bike if you lived close enough. It was a long, hot day in the sun on your hands and knees and your fingers were stained for weeks afterwards.
Before the Japanese berry farmers were moved into Alberta (I believe) during the war years, they operated the most magnificent berry farms in the Valley.
I remember at the end of the day, hauling my berries to the collection area and there the Japanese owner would weigh them and count out my earnings on a strange little board called an Abacus. It had strings of beads and he would swiftly move them from one side to the other, coming up with an amount that was satisfying to both of us.
When I think of that Abacus and the methods of computing now a days, I realize that life has certainly changed…at that matter I wonder at times if I have inadvertently stepped off Earth into another planet.
I love all these new things that are available to us nowadays. There is so much hope, excitement and challenge in this new world. But I must admit, that I am glad I lived through the quieter times too…they are great memories and I can drift back into them at any time and feel a peace and contentment fill my soul.
I’m so glad that my faith background grew from seeds planted way back then, in quieter times. I still love the old songs I learned in Daily Vacation Bible School and they spin like a CD in my head. I was surprised a few years ago at a High School Graduation to hear the whole class sing…”This little light of mine” as its theme song. There is still a lot of Christian gold in the mines of yesteryear.
A recent movie I saw was about an elderly man trying to come to grips with the new “praise” music. I admit it is not my favorite kind of church music. The movie ends with him accepting the new music but asking for some old hymns to be sung too. I can sure relate to that.
Things change…abacuses are no longer used as an accounting aid and I guess the old hymns I love may someday be replaced by the “praise” choruses of tomorrow but I am glad I was a participant in both the old ways and the new…living is such a fascinating adventure!
Photograph: “Erdbeeren-WJP-2“. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
