Digital creator Terry Van Robinson wrote: “Do you realize that the Baby Boomers are the last generation on earth that knows what life was like before social media?

“Back then moments were just moments, simple, fleeting and hours alone that we lived without worrying about angles or likes. The conversation wasn’t about notifications. It was about voices, laughter, and silences that didn’t feel awkward.

“There was something raw about that world, a beauty and its imperfection. If you got lost, you asked a stranger for directions, not a screen. If you wanted a connection, you knocked on a friend’s door instead of sending a quick message that can be read and ignored because now everything feels different.

“The world is louder, but somehow lonelier. We scroll endlessly looking for meaning, but do we even notice the things we’re passing by?

“Memories don’t feel as real when you’re too busy capturing them to actually live them.”

As a proud baby boomer, I can relate to every one of Van Robinson’s words.

When I was a child, we had a four-person party line on our rotary dial telephone. Many times, when I wanted to call a friend, I’d pick up the phone and there’d be somebody else talking. Mom would say, “Try clearing your throat to let them know you want to make a call; otherwise, she might be on there all day.”

“Hgg, em, ahem,” I gargled into the phone.

“What’s that?” I heard from one of the two on the party line.

“Oh, it’s just some kid, probably wanting to make a call to his friend,” said the other. “Never mind about him. So, what were you saying before we were rudely interrupted?” I waited and waited and then made my call. This taught me patience.

Back in the ’60s, we moved on from black-and-white TV to color, a small screen in a huge furniture-like box. “Change the channel,” Dad would say, and my two sisters and I would argue whose turn it was to get up off the floor to turn the knob to a new station.

Eventually we wore out the channel dial, and to keep the station locked in, we had to stick a screwdriver into the dial to hold its place. Once the vertical hold went bad that kept the picture flipping up and down we had to replace a burned-out tube. Or, if that didn’t work, we called the TV repairman to come to the house.

Then my father had the bright idea to take the TV antenna, a gangling menagerie of rods pointing every which way, off the roof and put it in the attic.

So, when the picture reception was bad, he sent me into the attic and the shouting conversation went something like this:

“Move the rods until I tell you to stop,” he yelled. “Stop! No, that’s too much. Go back. Stop! Nope not yet. Keep moving the rods.”

“How’s that now?” I shouted back.

“It’s almost there. Move that rod a little more. Go slow,” he yelled.

About 20 minutes later, I came down from the attic and we watched a baseball game that looked like it was being played in a snowstorm. I watched Mickey Mantle hit a home run through a blizzard of static and I jumped off the floor and cheered.

Photographs we took back in the day gave us no instant gratification, but left us with lasting memories we placed inside family keepsake books. Spreading pictures, even the bad ones, taken by a Kodak Instamatic camera upon the kitchen table gave me a special kind of warm feeling inside.

We had no clothes dryer for years, and like everyone else in the neighborhood, Mom hung wet clothes on a line outside. And there they flapped in the breeze drying — until I heard that word.

“Rain!” she shouted. That was my signal to pounce into action. Out the back door I ran with clothes basket in hand. I grabbed each wet shirt, pants, bed sheet and anything else and threw it into the basket as the torrential rain pelted my head. Back into the house I ran, soaked to the skin.

Ten minutes later while I was trying unsuccessfully to dry myself off, I heard, “It stopped. Go hang the clothes again,” Mom said. The sun came out. My clothes dried. All was good again.

Back then, dogs were outside pets and there was a German shepherd next door that was quiet, that was until the night had befallen and his barking would begin.

“A ruh ruh ruh ruh ruh.” The same tune over and over again. We had no air conditioner so we left our windows open all night long.

“I’m going to go over there and choke that damn dog!” my father screamed. Of course, he never did. The “a ruh ruh ruh ruh ruh” continued all night long until the sun came up. I walked outside and looked over to the dog. He was fast asleep. The dog barking and the train rumbling down a nearby track were the sounds of suburban life that taught me tolerance.

These memories make me laugh today. How we survived without a cellphone, without remote TVs, without clothes dryers and with outside pets that are now inside pets — I’ll just say we did the best we could. Growing up in those days was exactly what Van Robinson had said. They were raw and beautifully imperfect.

Just this week, I tried for a fifth time to enter a password I can’t remember, called a recorded voice that said, “The wait time is currently 40 minutes. Your call is very important to us” and then it told me to go their website for answers to my questions. I forgot where I put my phone for the second time in one day, and I got a text that said my internet is temporally unavailable.

And then, after I paid several hundred dollars for a car repair, I drove past an Amish home in Lancaster County. There were clothes hanging on the line and a young bearded man was hooking up his horse to his buggy.

I stopped my car for a moment, lowered my window, clapped my hands and I smiled.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com