File Management

January 17, 2000

FILE MANAGEMENT

As the computer world rolls on, I feel as if the waves are going over my head. I sort of half understand how to use my scanner, and my CD write/read drive, and my Zip100 and my Zip 250. Looking back, I'm glad I missed key punch cards. I don't miss saving and opening files with the tape recorder for the TRS 80. I don't miss switching the TV monitor over to be a computer monitor. I don't miss the 2K Timex machine, or the Banana Gorilla 9 pin printer that left off the tales of the p's and q's. DOS is passing away into nostalgia, but I will contrive to hang on to it, tucked away in Win 95 and 98, and will try to remember not to buy the next operating system. What I still miss is the local Bulletin Board. One person dedicated a machine to the Board, spent a lot of his own money on software and hardware, nd devoted endless hours to teaching people how to use it. E-mail, chat rooms, lists and newsgroups displaced it and replace it, but the BBS was unique. You knew most of the people who posted messages. It was fast. You didn't have to pay a provider. The person who ran it was absolute ruler over content and manners. We all learned together, conquering new software and new words, although we never did learn how to retrieve a saved message from a cubby hole.
Looking back, it occurs to me that people joined the Friendly Cooks Club for the same reasons they later enjoyed Bulletin Boards and now spend hours on e-mail. Young mothers and home-bound older women were lonely, just as they are now. The club was an interactive place to meet and exchange talk with people of similar interests. I printed names and addresses and recipes from members. They wrote to me and to each other. Now I'm reluctant to put anyone's name out here for all the world to see, if it chooses to look. (If you decide to share a recipe, be sure to tell me whether or not to print your name.) The Bulletin Board and the subscription letter closed us in to a small world that felt safer.

In the first issue, May 1948, I announced a contest to find the best Chop Suey recipe. My parents once in a great while took us out to eat Chop Suey - our entire knowledge of Chinese food. There was no Chinese take out, nor any source of Chinese vegetables where we lived. Even as an adult, it was years before I learned anything about authentic Chinese food. The winning recipe, by family vote, remained a family favorite, but it's not very Chinese. It's not Chop Suey, either. It's Americanized Sweet and Sour Pork. I didn't even know what a Wok was then, and I cooked this in our largest skillet. The recipe appeared in the August, 1948 letter. The prize had been announced to be $1.00 but by August the prize had become a case of Fancy Chop Suey Vegetables and Noodles from the Great China Food Products Co. of Chicago. This surprises me. Did I write and ask for a gift? Wouldn't a case of cans make sort of a stir whether it came by truck or to the tiny post office? Wouldn't shipping it to the winner in Cleveland be a major chore? I have no memory of this at all. What else is hidden without a file name in each person's lifetime data base?