what was the topic
uh just about um it would be interesting to discuss the social changes of the last ten or twenty years
i said uh
right right
yeah
and um i guess for me the most obvious is women in the work field
well that's a good one i hadn't thought about that yeah
that uh of course when i was growing up not very many women went to work at all most everyone was at home
yeah really
and some of my friends whose mothers were teachers or something seemed a little bit embarrassed that their mothers weren't at home
uh oh
there there was a stigma attached to it
yes and uh but nowadays it's just so common
and and a necessity
a necessity and that when i am uh at home now that i've had children i've stopped uh working
yeah
that it's kind of embarrassing when i go to a store and they ask uh when i write a check out and then they say can i have your work number please and then i don't have a work number to get give to them and they begin to think um i wonder if this is a good check
uh-huh
yeah really i well i hadn't thought about it i can see i i think if they asked me for a work number i'd just write down my home number you know because that's where you work
uh-huh
right
yeah well the thing that i was thinking about uh huh you know social changes i i thought well
you know in a lot of different ways i i think number one just the the makeup of American society how much it's changed i mean uh
uh i live in Houston but i'm i'm in Miami right now on business and uh i mean in Miami it's i mean honestly English is almost a second language now
um-hum
yes
uh you know with all the uh influx of uh South Americans and uh Cubans and the the Latins are are just uh
i i guess a majority in Miami you know of course in Houston uh you've got the people from Mexico so that's certainly a change in the the fabric of society uh
that's true
the other thing that i was thinking about uh the way that things have changed so dramatically is twenty or thirty years ago uh
you know air travel was still uh and not that much in the forefront uh uh and and now i mean it's you know hardly anybody thinks anything about getting on a plane and and going cross country
uh-huh
right
plus the other thing i was thinking about was just the very fact that we're doing what we're doing tonight uh
you know calling a one eight hundred number having a computer hook us up uh tell us the topic of conversation uh and and we take that rather for granted
um-hum
um-hum
right
uh you know thirty years ago uh a long distance phone call was a sort of a special event
yes that's true
and and and you know and it wouldn't be uncommon for it to have been placed through an operator up i don't know if you know i guess you maybe they did have one plus dialing uh in nineteen sixty one but uh i i'm not sure of that
right
no and it wasn't like my parents always watch the clock carefully when they make any long distance phone call and it's it's pennies but for them it's just a socialized behavior
oh yeah
that's right and it harks back to the days like i say when when a long distance call was an expensive uh uh i don't want to say a frivolous but it was an extravagant uh event
um-hum
um-hum
and good grief if my parents knew what my long distance bill was every month they'd have a stroke
that's true that's probably true
but you know it's something that i've just i mean i factor that in i mean that's that's part of my budget i mean i expect to have you know a seventy or eighty dollar phone bill and quite frankly am pleased if it's anything below that
um-hum
right me too
yeah
well that's good in in in our homes we all have a lot uh much more high tech compared to the people ten twenty years ago
oh well and you know microwaves
right unbelievable and everyone has uh multiple televisions probably and
oh i've got yeah i mean i've i'm single and i have three televisions you know and i really they're two well
um-hum
one of them is primary and the other one i turn on maybe three times a month and i've got another one i bet i haven't turned on in six months i mean it's there you know
uh-huh
and i think about it too i have uh uh four telephones
right we
load up on all of the conveniences and they're not special to us anymore just a
um
that's right that's right
necessity and there's the people who don't have televisions are
are uh you know unusual in our society
yeah uh yeah it almost like uh you know it's a big uh
issue i've run across a few people before that that you know make a make a point uh that uh the fact that they uh don't own a television and of course you know people look at them yeah like yeah you know but
um-hum um-hum
and it's it's it would be really quite frankly even though i am not
