In 1965, television producers decided to float a "fish-out-of-water" series that focused on the countryside. Green Acres was a lighthearted story of a New York City banker and his socialite wife moving to the countryside. He has a dream of farming and not a clue how to begin. There were tribulations, stumbles, and failures exhibited each week. The show was amazingly successful. One reviewer on IMDB dubs it "perhaps the most surreal TV show ever done on American TV."
There are those who have never lived in the country. They are perhaps unaware that the way the world there is different. In the day-to-day "normal" of our lives, we are surrounded by technology, convenience, and services. But one need not venture too far afield to lose touch with all three. I recently escaped for a few days to 1957; it is an interesting place to visit.
There was an imaginative movie in 1951, The Day the Earth Stood Still (20th Century, 1951). I think of that title when I venture out there to the countryside. Much has, in fact, stood still here for a very long time.
Some things have changed during my lifetime. It was a big day when they first oiled the roads here in the 1957 hills. Yes, the nearest paved road then was once about 5 miles away. For those last 5 miles, you traveled on graded gravel. The dust produced by a truck or car was magnificent; tractors, not so much.
The powers that be decided to oil the road. I can remember when, several years later, they finally paved it properly. Progress. But it brought more noise in exchange for less dust. I can stand on the hill here in 1957 today, in the quiet, and hear cars coming down that road. They are generally a mile or so away when I first hear them. The genuine quiet is something city folks just never get the chance to understand.
The world here in 1957 was long without electricity. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) first discussed running electricity lines in the depression era. The larger local towns got electric power after a local coop started in 1935. Their website celebrates that in 1938 they had hooked up 200 homes to the modern age.
The hill I stand on in 1957 is 20 miles from the nearest town. It took a bit longer for the lines to reach here. It was the 1950s when people here even transitioned to inside accommodations and the outhouses fell from favor. I am not sure when the last outhouse was destroyed, but it was not so long ago as to escape memory.
The telephone came here next, in the form of a "party line." Many will not remember the party line, but essentially, a whole row of houses shared one phone line. If one phone was in use, no one else on the party could use their phone (except to eavesdrop, see below). Each house could be rung separately by the operator (a human employee of the phone company who connected your call to the correct destination).
Each phone had a distinct ring pattern (though unlike today's cell phone, the sound came from a spring-loaded striker hitting a little metal bell inside it). By mixing long and short rings in combination, each house's phone rang in a different and distinct pattern.
By the 1960s, the operator was no longer needed, but each house on the party line retained its distinctive ring pattern. You could still reach an operator by dialing zero, and most phones had the word "oper" (operator) on the button with the zero. Nonetheless, anyone on the line could answer any customer's call. You were only supposed to pick up your own distinct ring.
I often heard people complain back then that their neighbors did not respect their privacy and were eavesdropping on them. The loudest complainers themselves were seemingly quick to listen in whenever the phone rang, regardless of whose call it was. It was rude, but the world was lacking in other entertainment, and any connection to the outside was welcome (and gossip was a way of life).
Long-distance calls back then were charged by the minute, and people used timers to keep their calls within budget. I knew many who kept an egg timer by the phone. Some simply would not make long-distance calls. They lived within their means in 1957, and they still do. I ran into a fellow on my recent trip there, and he was driving a 30-year-old car. Not because he must, but because he sees it as both effective and adequate.
A funny trope on Green Acres was the telephone. Mr. Douglas had paid to have a phone installed, but the phone company only ran it to the pole beside the house. The customer was supposed to finish the installation from there. Mr. Douglas' efforts in that regard were persistently frustrated.
Whenever he would need to make a call, he had to exit through the bedroom window and climb a pole to the waiting phone. It was funny. But, perhaps too close to home for some here in the country. There is no cell service here in 1957. The closest signal is about three miles away on a hilltop, next to a quaint, neatly-kept cemetery that dates to before the Civil War.
The internet? By the time the internet came to this hill, the party lines were gone. We dialed up the internet over a modem using that phone line. If we had still had party lines, one computer logged in would prevent anyone else from making a call. Nonetheless, the service here was slow, unpredictable, and yet seemed so modern. Despite the lure of such convenience, landlines were soon a thing of the past.
That is not to say they disappeared. Many here have landlines to this day, a throwback to some observers. But dial-up internet is no longer an option, and so a home phone provides no real solace in that regard.
Across the road, there is a post in the side ditch. It is conspicuously labelled with a company name and warns against excavating. It claims to mark fiber optic. Repeated calls to that company have led to nothing but frustration. Though the line may actually run through 1957, the company is not offering a connection to the World Wide Web from here in 1957. Every time I look at that fiber marker I think of Mr. Douglas, so close.
I have wondered why that would be. Why lay a high-speed line and yet not offer a connection? I asked a couple of folks. They denied ever noticing the white posts with bright red caps. They allowed as how they were not too interested in either high-speed internet or cable television.
In the city, it’s harder than ever to step away from our devices, which are so entwined in our lives. Is it fruitless to even try?
In February, news
broke that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had taken a ‘digital detox’: 10
tech-free days at a French Polynesian resort. For a small group of people,
taking a step back from devices is an achievable dream—but for most, it’s an
impossibility, especially now. And yet, here in 1957, it is beyond possible and normally resides in the probable instead. Lack of tech is normal somewhere.
That said, there is balance. The article above stressed that technology has permeated our day-to-day. We have evolved well beyond the phone as a tool for conversing. We are persistently tied to the world of (mis)information, the news cycle, and the latest examples of poor behavior. See Optics and Options (September 2025).
So, I leave it to the reader whether to pity me in 1957 or to envy the fact that I can turn off the world periodically here. I can walk in the sun, smell the woods, and occasionally see a deer, hog, pheasant, or turkey. I cannot make a phone call, but the tradeoffs are somewhat compelling.
If you want to give it a try, just use the power switch some weekend. Turn off the tech and set it aside. How long can you last without it? How long do you want to? Do you really have to be forced?
