We are going shopping. The car my friend is driving is a L.T.D., manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. The beautifully upholstered seats are wide, roomy, and contoured for body comfort. There is carpet on the floor. The tinted windows cut out the glare of the sun. The air conditioner makes the muggy weather outside unbelievingly comfortable. As we travel along a modern four-lane highway, the radio is softly playing; and it is easy for me to slip backward in time.

Near the turn of the century, my parents, Dora and J. Hughes Rouse, owned a farm at Kelly's Chapel near Glade Spring, Virginia. I had two brothers and a twin sister. Even today, I still take a lot of kldding because Lucy is fifteen minutes older than I. There was a lot of work to be done on the farm. Fields for planting and pastures for the livestock were still being hewed from the forests around us. Father and the boys worked hard, long hours. Mother kept Lucy and me busy with household chores; we learned to cook, sew, and do fancy needlework. Members of my family attended church in Kelley's Chapel, and we children started school there.

People in those days loved the times spent at social gatherings. All holidays were celebrated with happy events, such as games and picnics. I remember one particular holiday very well. We had all traveled to Glade Spring for a Fourth of July celebration in the year 1905. Participation in games was thoroughly enjoyed by the adult and children. Everyone brought baskets of food for the picnic lunch. We had finished eating and were resting before the next exciting event. The air was suddenly filled with an unfamiliar sound. Around the bend in the road appeared a contraption such as most of us had never seen. It was the latest thing in gasoline engines built by the Ford Motor Company. We all crowded around for a closer look. It seemed to be a modified wagon seat, suspended on a platform, held off the ground by four very narrow fancy, wirespoked wheels. There was a small metal box that encased a motor placed on the floor between the front wheels. A long stick-like piece of metal with a knob on the end was used for steering. There was another metal rod placed beside the seat to stop the car.

The car was owned by Graham Roberts of Abingdon, Virginia. He was a well-known photographer and took many pictures of his prized machine. Mr. Roberts and my uncle, Mack Lester, were good friends, so the car was in our vicinity quite often. It was one of the first cars in Washington County. Roads had not been built for such modern conveyances; they were mostly widened trails made by much wagon and buggy travel. If they were dry, the car ran beautifully; but rainy weather was another story and traveling on these roads became most difficult. Then the rubber-tired wheels bogged down in the ruts, and the automobile ride became a chore of mostly pushing, pulling, and sometimes lifting the car to a smoother spot.

The passing of a huge tractor-trailer brings me out of my reverie. Looking out the window, I see the vapor trails of an airplane streaking across the sky. Certainly my generation has been one of automation, reaching back from my first remembered car to the one in which I'm now riding. Trains traveling over cities, airplanes carrying hundreds of people faster than sound, huge ocean liners and atomic-powered submarines crossing our oceans, space crafts placing people on the moon, and capsules bringing us world news as it happens are just some of the marvels that I have lived to see. It is impossible to dream of what lies ahead for the next generation.

Amy R. Hill