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  • Hello, I'm David Hoffman, filmmaker, and I'm about to show you a clip of a 98 year old woman who I interviewed back in 1979.

  • So she was born in 18 81.

  • She's just a CZ colorful and alive as she could be.

  • So what's the circumstance?

  • I'm doing?

  • A film, a major special for public television called the Information Society is completely new idea.

  • Nobody ever heard of it.

  • We're still in the industrial age in 1979 Yet computers are moving into banks and stores and not yet homes too much butt into people's lives.

  • So I goto Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

  • That's the place I pick.

  • It's got some small cities.

  • It's got some rural people, and I start talking to people about the coming of the information age and about the lives that they lived in before.

  • Even cars and telephones on this lady, 98 years old, remembers everything.

  • Now what you're seeing is a work print.

  • I found this piece of film in my basement in a can didn't know what it was, digitized it, and I find her.

  • You're going to see blotches and marks and scratches.

  • Why?

  • Because it's 16 millimeter work print.

  • It's all I have.

  • I wish I had more.

  • And some of my questions.

  • I just plain dumb.

  • I'm looking at this biggest story the information age and the industrial age.

  • And here I'm talking to a woman who remembers so much she could have talked to me for hours and they should have done that.

  • But it didn't.

  • And in those days, I threw out the outtakes.

  • Take a look at this.

  • I think you'll enjoy it.

  • 98 years old.

  • 1979.

  • What do you want for it?

  • Don't shoot.

  • Not important in the picture, you know, Be someone to listen to you.

  • Of course.

  • I was born in 81 you know, And there was a long period before that.

  • And they the arm works.

  • We're one for why?

  • Didn't number and little still came in and they couldn't compete with him.

  • Of course, the people in the county didn't come home for lunch today.

  • Come on, in the trance explication Mexico.

  • We had a little wound.

  • Uh, well, world that went from links down the power bill, and, uh, I think the train left for it.

  • Will and, uh, Tellem.

  • Kwak something like that.

  • It took us about three hours to get up Stopped of every station, you know, with either to take on something.

  • Well, going back.

  • It was always to put something off and, uh, and come up.

  • Why?

  • We stopped to pick these up temples like the great and sometimes leave stopping the station and the old and the back board.

  • Mellie would spend 15 minutes of getting ready to leave.

  • What?

  • And the in the wear of time, The you almost prayed for snow because when you had the the slaves and it was much easier to get around in a sleigh.

  • What about, um uh, communication between people.

  • Then how much did everybody know?

  • How did you get your information?

  • Why?

  • Why?

  • And my grandfather?

  • That was one thing.

  • And it's like, I don't think everyone missed getting the mail it with guys, and we had to go to two miles.

  • And I have to get my and have a child that one like yours and the I will horseback.

  • I had a little too real card.

  • Looks like it looks like the racer.

  • You know, I had a step in the back and actually got in.

  • And, of course, when the horse crap traveling with you know that was all right.

  • Way right and we had a big old buffalo warm.

  • Let's compare well, we had what the stage coach would come from.

  • It came from language right down when languishes down.

  • I think that when this far I don't look so feel peace gone.

  • It went down and lead was supposed did that, I think, to the book and 11 class and love it usually got.

  • There have been 12.

  • It's happened, waited.

  • And of course, when the telephone rang, the whole neighborhood went ballistic to walk and that a great deal of news got around that way.

  • Oh, the people were full of that.

  • They could, and some sometimes people would be listening to the bone.

  • They get excited, enjoying the Congress.

  • I think it was about 1928.

  • I've got a radio and it's that right here and I don't know.

  • I know that none of you remember one man's family.

  • But there was a story one man's Obama in the ran for I don't know how many years, 20 or 30 years I think, and I remember this simply came on.

  • Just abundant done a little after and, uh, how we would rush some bombs.

  • It was a special time.

  • We're rushing the dinner table to get in to hear the story of one man family, and, you know, it never ended.

  • And I That was one thing I never like to listen to something that don't bend.

  • And, Well, when people came on legs, stay with you, they bought it.

  • Grady Little Luggage and I stayed at least two weeks.

  • Nobody ever would ever think that Common spent in the week.

  • And it was just our and the blew away.

  • All the sense that was the carriage for the guests.

  • And then they Santa something else to carry the looming.

  • What is your opinion about all this?

  • Modern want communications like telephone, television, satellite way that we now deal with each other.

  • How do you feel about the model?

  • Wait, no, I It's a wonderful world to live in today, but, uh, I don't think we're in amber.

  • I know one of those days in those days, I thought I had everything with everybody ad I thought a little more than everybody else because I really had no Kayla's And at the time, it wasn't difficult again.

  • And that bothered the help.

  • And why you I had no worries.

  • And, uh, Well, when I think well, everybody was friendly, Everybody knew everybody else.

  • And, uh, it was it Was it little nice lunch.

  • It was a good life.

  • Go a little.

  • It was a great deal of family life.

  • I would say it.

  • And it's it's so different now because the family life is a world few Stickley and the Children grow up.

  • They want Well, they think more independent exit polls.

  • And, uh, it yes, they want to win the pennant.

  • I don't know what it was wrong, right?

  • And the loads of marvelous people living, but But I'm most interested in the something they because I know the people they're gonna carry on this come to this nation, and I want himto hold their patron too, and love the country like the old soul like our interest.

  • Because everything you got in the world I don't know what you buy depends on one kind of people.

  • You are with your government, Mrs Sadder.

  • Why don't you start by telling me about your grandfather and what life was like for a man in the height of the industrial age.

  • You know, those little long last year were short of pings.

  • They your room is It is that boys would say, but, uh, they helped develop the country in the cards.

  • I know.

  • Down at home they made the rails for being away alone and the civil War that made coming for the army, Another arm and the little legs, stones, the 10 only 10 plates stove in little closure in town.

  • And it was a seven of language to convert.

  • It was a great thing that couple like everybody.

  • Product moved.

  • Yes, there were problems at that time.

  • Oh, all right, let me ask you again.

  • Um but the Lancaster has changed in terms of the way the city communicates with the world right now, for example, you know, and everyone else in town knows pretty much what's happening everywhere between 60 years ago today, in terms of this being a provincial place versus a part of the whole country and a part of everything.

  • Really?

  • Yes, me about that.

  • Have you seen that change?

  • Take place.

  • Mall like to a Yes.

  • I'm saying, when I came here to live.

  • I think there were three automobiles in town and the it is built up.

  • Now that I think almost everybody has an automobile and the it usually is.

  • Of course, they the motive.

  • Convinced that the time I came here, Well, uh, we had a railroad that went ran from here from her I slave from Pittsburgh through to New York and, uh, outside of that, and then we developed a the trolleys.

  • We had a marvelous trolley system here in the early 1900 from 1901 blowback.

  • No, I nine came.

  • Well, a depression began.

  • Well, it was far away.

  • And when you want those places, you thought you were gonna take a trip?

  • You're really going places And, uh, now going through Boston, somebody that's on a plan.

  • I'm never there.

  • In a couple of hours, I went to the post number one.

  • My old boy was quiet.

  • I thought I had quite a trick.

  • And the Yeah, travel with that done and this for going south.

  • Well, what about hearing about things now?

  • Let's say some news occurred in Florida or something like that today.

  • How was the difference then?

  • In terms of the news.

  • You're getting information.

  • Well, go to Florida.

  • That was I think that was three.

  • That Chris?

  • Yeah, And something happened in Florida today.

  • What is the difference?

  • The way you got the information about Well, you you've got the information.

  • I would presume at that time.

  • Of course.

  • I must confess it.

  • That time.

  • I wasn't paying much attention to that song.

  • But looking back over, I would say you would.

  • It was the through the newspapers on that.

  • I've those the newspapers got through telegram things that I wouldn't allow.

  • You wouldn't get it.

  • I don't know.

  • We didn't have any telephones early.

  • Well, when I left the country one in 19 1 we didn't have a telephone.

  • No, we didn't.

  • We didn't have a telephone.

  • What about that?

  • There was a gun.

  • What difference?

  • A ll That telephone and all the other stuff made.

  • Oh, it's made.

  • Of course.

  • The population wasn't it that time.

  • Anything like it?

  • Look now, when they first got the telephone, my am, my uncle took over the homestead after brand.

  • My grandmother died and he lived there, And he, uh, have the telephone setup.

  • And of course, he they had a main line, a line that went down through they'll I have to say it's a language, few roads, and I don't know what number is now.

  • And the he had the bill, the line in from that line to his house.

  • And then he had so many rings.

  • And of course, when the telephone rang, the whole neighborhood went coalition.

Hello, I'm David Hoffman, filmmaker, and I'm about to show you a clip of a 98 year old woman who I interviewed back in 1979.

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