The recent thunderstorms that moved through the region on Memorial Day weekend knocked out the internet, cable television and land phone lines for our neighborhood.

It made me think about what society did before we had social networks like Facebook, hundreds of television channels to pick from and, for many, even a telephone.

Growing up, we had one black-and-white TV and received three local channels. We still thought that was great because we didn’t know anything else.

Long before cell phones (which still do not work well in certain areas of Appalachia), many families were lucky to have a landline in their homes. In the early years of my life, we still even had the old “party” lines where more than one household was hooked up to the same phone line.

Of course we only heard about computers on some science fiction shows or movies and never dreamed we would soon have our own personal laptop at home where we could surf the internet for anything, watch music videos and even movies, contact friends, family and co-workers by email or social media, shop online and many other services.

Going without these services that we have become so accustomed to and comfortable with makes life interesting.

Since we could not get cell service at our house, we had to drive down the road a bit to make some needed phone calls and report the outage. At least the electricity did not go out and we were able to run our air conditioning, refrigerator and lights.

My wife reminded me that we could listen to local radio for music, news and weather. How quickly we forget about those necessities. I grew up listening to the radio and eventually was blessed enough to work in that industry.

We forget many of us used to actually read books and magazines. Hopefully many still like to read their local newspapers, even though much of that is done via the internet instead of the old hard-copy print editions. So why not get that book out you’ve been wanting to read and get started? You might be glad you did.

I used to love to draw and would spend time drawing different pictures. Or maybe I got out my shoebox full of baseball cards and went through them for the umpteenth time.

One of my fondest memories of growing up at Nolan (I’m sure many of you have the same recollections) is sitting on our front porch. We had a long, covered front porch that was as wide as our wood-framed house.

Families would sit out in the wooden porch swing, metal gliders and other chairs just to enjoy conversation and family time. Many neighbors would come by and join in on the session. If someone were walking by they would likely stop and say hello and chat for a bit. I would love to see that come back, but alas those days are probably long gone.

It was simpler times and we had ways to fill in time. Kids actually went “outside” to play games. Hide and seek, tag, kick the can, mother may I and others were normal childhood games to have fun and while away the hours.

There were no video games or all-terrain vehicle four-wheelers. You were lucky to have a bicycle back then. That is another thing we used to do. Ride our bikes up and down the “backway” at Nolan. I’m sure many others had a place they could ride with their friends to pass away the time. We were staying in shape and didn’t even know it!

Of course, others had various ways to use their time wisely. They may have a garden like most people did back in the day. If your mom was like my mother, she loved planting and growing flowers. She had a green thumb and always had plenty of potted flowers and other bushes and flowers in the yard to look after.

Yard work was a little tougher back then. Many just had a push lawn mower and I am not talking gasoline-powered or electric. There were no weed eaters to trim the grass and cut down the weeds. You either used a hand sickle or scythe or pulled weeds by hand. Now that will take some time.

There were very few houses that had air conditioning, let alone central heat and air units. You likely had a window fan and some window screens in the window to let some air circulate. The evenings were cooler, so it was nice to sit outside on the porch.

We didn’t have HBO, Netflix, Hulu and other channels that you do now. It amazes me at the number of channels we have and I still have a difficult time finding something to watch these days. Of course if you know me, I love sports. We were lucky to get a few Cincinnati Reds games on TV and usually listened to the games on the local radio station WBTH. But they had to cut their power down at sunset so the station was hard to pick up after dark.

There is no doubt we are a spoiled group with all of our modern ways to communicate. But it’s times like this that make me miss those simpler times in days gone by. In many ways we were better off.

Until next time.

(Kyle Lovern is a longtime journalist in the Tug Valley. He is now a retired freelance writer and columnist for the Mountain Citizen.)