A train, a cottage and a time machine

As I'm writing this entry, I find myself somewhere back in the 1930s. How is this possible? Am I stinkn' drunk or high on the hooch? Well, it's possible as it I've had a few Killkenny's in the past few hours, but no – I'm not too drunk. This weekend, I find myself at a friend's cottage north of Toronto, which was built in the mid-1930s and has not really changed all that much since. As I type this entry, I'm listening to a record from a collection called - 'The Story Of the Great Bands 1936 to 1945' as part of a 8 record, 80 song boxset.

Note - a record, not a tape or a CD or your new fangled MP3 file. A record. A big black circular disk with grooves and a little hole in the middle that plays on, you guess it, a record player. (Why do I suddenly feel old?). The cottage is swinging to tunes like Glenn Miller's 'Moonlight Serenade', Benny Goodman's 'Those Foolish Things' and Duke Ellington's 'Take The A Train'. There's a unique magic in the air as we're smiling to the music, perhaps like they did back in the 1930s. Yep, this evening I find myself in a time machine to an era well before I was born, hell, we're talking pre-WWII for crying out loud.

Around the dinner table, our conversation hit topics like politics, family, Internet, cottage life vs. city life, prejudice, the raccoon/beaver/groundhog in the basement, fine wine, imported beer, and of course, the genius that is Benny Goodman. It's funny, except for the Internet, this conversation could have taken place back in the 1930s in this very same cottage. It probably did.

So this got me thinking.... has life really changed all that much after all these years?

Certainly, the technology that is so prevalent in our faces, gives us the impression that everything is different and quite dramatically at that. I am quite cognoscente of this point, as I type on my IBM laptop in the cottage built during the Benny Goodman era.

Imagine if you could parachute someone from the 1930s, and bring him to this cottage today, in 2005. I wonder how would he see the world? Would he eventually conclude that it's same old world just with new toys? Or are we truly in a strange new place with our problems? Would he be able to relate?

I'm guessing once he gets past the new technology, like my laptop and cellphone; TV & VCR; the coffee maker; the digital alarm clock and my brother's IPOD, he would looking over at the table and pick up a copy of the Toronto Star. The headlines today are 'Egypt blasts kill 49', 'Canada's troops head for battle' and 'Manhunt puts British capital on edge'.

So what conclusions he eventually would eventually make? What would he think of the world today? Would he be hopeful for our future? Or downright pessimistic?

Or is it a third possibility - that nothing of real importance has changed in 70 years, that people are still people, world problems are still world problems... and people still escape to the cottage to get away from the rat race, stare at the sunsets listening to the A Train.