Interview with my neighbor - Elva Duran

At the age of seventy, Elva Duran has a car and is able to drive to many places. She spends most of her days working and going to church. Elva still has lots of energy to do many things like cook for her nieces with the stoves that we have now and she is also able to communicate with her nieces with her cell phone. As Elva sits in her dinning room table and thinks about modern conveniences that have improved since before the 20th century, she starts to talk about the things that impacted her more throughout her life.  

Many comfort ness with new technology has brought us modern conveniences like the refrigerator well before we bought daily what we ate in the day and if we had to store food for example the beans, we boiled them; the meat with soup that was cooked was also boiled and the cheese, milk, cream were bought daily because we couldn’t store it. Since before there wasn’t any stoves like today’s: gas stove or electric stove they were wood stoves we would cook with wood and with charcoal we couldn’t … turn on in a little while the fire like today that you only turn the buttons and the flame goes on. To warm up the food now there is the microwave that gives the comfort ness that if the food gets cold we can put it in there and warm it up in a second, in two minutes that food is warm. To warm up the food we had to put charcoal or wood again to reheat the food. It was uncomfortable. Before we would grind the for example the beans, sauce that we would make. They would be grinded in rocks to grind that were big, and a hand rock was used to grind. They were like the “metates” [grinding stones in Mexico] that are used in Mexico. For example also to make tortillas now there are machines of tortillas were a large quantity of tortillas come out in a while. Before we would grind the flour and we had to make the tortillas in iron trays or clay trays warmed up with wood and also to make bread they were ovens of clay that were made by us and there we would put the bread to oven that was the way bread was made. Now there is electric ovens and there is machinery to make flour. Foods that we used for example meat but it would have to be bought daily because meat couldn’t be stored to freeze , and the cereals were always maintained dry in containers, or in sacks in our house. By the cereals I refer to beans, rice, and maze those were maintained in sacks or containers they were maintained to get little by little what we were going to cook.

Before to communicate there was the telegraph that’s what it was called it was the main thing were all the people went, there were phones there and there people would go to make calls the telephonist communicated them. And also to take messages to the houses there wasn’t telephones in the houses the messenger, a man, that was called messenger took the telegrams written in a device that was made by the telegraphers and we were charged by each word, the words that the telegram had was the price that it had and that was how we communicated, outside of the city the messengers walked to leave those telegrams to the people. Now there is a big comfort ness because now the cell phone exists, that the whole world has now. It is rare for a person not to have it. And then the telephones in each home there are phones in each home even a cordless phone that you can go all around the house and we can be talking to the people that we want to talk with that was the way of the communication. Also now there is something that impacted me the computer, now with the advance of the computer there is the internet, where you can talk to a person and see the image of the person in the computer. We can see news from all around the world. We can have information of the whole world. Complete Encyclopedias are in the computer it is impacting to me because it is like a human brain and then that is the comfort ness, it is rare for a person not to have a computer because today even in school children are required to have a computer to do their homework because all the information that they need is there. The computers and the cell phones were the most impacting things because even lives have been saved because of a cell phone.

There weren’t TV’s, TV’s for the general were owned by rich people and they weren’t color TV’s they were black and white. There wasn’t any video- cassettes or these the DVD’s there wasn’t any either it was a regular TV there wasn’t the advance that there is today.

Before to transport there were airplanes but little airplanes it was rare the time that they were seen in the sky right? And the buses the buses were buses with no comfort ness the poorest people transported in carts pulled by mules or in wagons or they walked or by horse that was the way to transport for example to the towns they had that way to transport themselves. Now we have convenience for our comfort ness that there is airplanes with all the comfort ness big airplanes right? With air conditioner, with everything with the new technology and we have the cars that now even the poorest can have a car even if it is not from the year but they have it to transport themselves right? And the buses also there is a great comfort ness in the buses with seats that lay down, seats that give comfort ness for long trips also now the metro exists which runs long distances in seconds and then that is something that is a convenience because it is a comfort ness for everyone for everyone.

 

Interview by Yesenia Flores