Rosemary had a dresser in our bedroom. It is still there. There are several of her diaries in it and almost every week I find something that startles me and more often than not makes me smile. This time I didn’t. I found this little Radio Shack device. I will have to open the back and check the battery. I have no idea if there is a memory recorded. Our Rebecca was a little girl. She is now 28 and is pretty well out of my life. In this century grandfathers are now just old men.

My constant pursuit of association made me look for my Radio Shack sound level metre. One evening I took it to my youngest daughter’s Cactus Club and I measured 135 decibels. Over a period of time that amount of sound can create hearing problems. I wonder why it is that our Worker’s Compensation Board, now WorkSafeBC, has not corrected this Vancouver idea that loud music with lots of bass is what makes a restaurant possible.

I have taken my sound level metre to the downtown Multiplex and also measured over 120 decibels.

All the above brings (takes me back) to what I now see as a simpler century when the latest could be found at the Radio Shack.

In what will be a soon to happen trip to Mexico City (the official nomenclature for it is now CDMX) I took my Microsoft laptop to EJ Phone Repair on Broadway. The friendly folks there told me that the battery was working just fine and they refreshed my memory on how to connect to WiFi. In Mexico City there is WiFi everywhere.

There is one really good advance in this century. This is WhatsApp and Messenger. Expensive phone calls are not back in that so called “better” century. And then there is that video.

I still miss my Radio Shack.