Another case for time traveling.

Don’s house. Time traveler from the 1930s.

Primer for time travelers.

I pondered time travel again. If people really traveled through time, wouldn’t we know it? We’d have people from the past and future in our midst. Can you imagine how they would look? Cavemen looking like Alley Oop walking barefoot. Or small guys looking like union soldiers with blue hats. You get the idea. Also space cadets, futuristic helmets, ray guns.

Okay. Alley isn’t there, nor the others. Not yet. Halloween is coming soon, but that misses the point.

Of course. Let’s just assume. Let’s pretend such people, such time travelers, were in our midst. Where are they? The answer is deplorably ordinary. They are everywhere, of course. They are not Republicans. They are not Mormons. They could be, of course, but they are not necessarily. They are our neighbors.

From the past.

My elderly friend two doors down from us grew up in Idaho in the 1930s. Don was drafted into the army for the Korean War, then he taught 8th grade science in Billings. He is a traveler from the past. I know because I sometimes sit and talk with him. He worked in several towns around Eastern Montana.
My friend Mark Fryberger remembers taking science classes from him, back in the 60s, sitting in the back of the classroom, clowning, as usual. The school building where Don spent many years teaching is now called Lincoln Center, used by School District 2 for administration.

To the future.

That would be today’s children, those sturdy, brave souls who must brave such terrors as first grade! Such persons are smaller than adults, but they really are not at a disadvantage, although they might think so. They will see a future we 60-somethings will never live long enough to see. A world that’s even more crowded, with even more poverty and strife, one with even more global warming and its sequelae. Hard not to become saddened by such prospects. Funny how the future is so less attractive to an old curmudgeon than the past, but how ultimately important.