half a century and visit your grandmother before we attempt to visit your
grandchildren.
1900: Mr. McKinley is President and the airplane has not yet been invented.
Let’s knock on the door of that house with the gingerbread, the stained
glass, and the cupola.
The lady of the house answers. You recognize her — your own grandmother,
Mrs. Middleclass. She is almost as plump as you remember her, for she “put
on some good, healthy flesh” after she married.
She welcomes you and offers coffee cake, fresh from her modern kitchen
(running water from a hand pump; the best coal range Pittsburgh ever
produced). Everything about her house is modern — hand-painted china,
souvenirs from the Columbian Exposition, beaded portieres, shining
baseburner stoves, gas lights, a telephone on the wall.
There is no bathroom, but she and Mr. Middleclass are thinking of putting
one in. Mr. Middleclass’s mother calls this nonsense, but your grandmother
keeps up with the times. She is an advocate of clothing reform, wears only
one petticoat, bathes twice a week, and her corsets are guaranteed rust
proof. She has been known to defend female suffrage — but not in the
presence of Mr. Middleclass.
Nevertheless, you find difficulty in talking with her. Let’s jump back to
the present and try again.
The automatic elevator takes us to the ninth floor, and we pick out a door
by its number, that being the only way to distinguish it.
“Don’t bother to ring,” you say? What? It’s your door and you know exactly
what lies beyond it —
Very well, let’s move a half century into the future and try another middle
class home.
It’s a suburban home not two hundred miles from the city. You pick out your
destination from the air while the cab is landing you — a cluster of
hemispheres which makes you think of the houses Dorothy found in Oz
You set the cab to return to its hangar and go into the entrance hall. You
neither knock, nor ring. The screen has warned them before you touched down
on the landing flat and the autobutler’s transparency is shining with:
PLEASE RECORD A MESSAGE.
Before you can address the microphone a voice calls out, “Oh, it’s you!
Come in, come in.” There is a short wait, as your hostess is not at the
door. The autobutler flashed your face to the patio — where she was reading
and sunning herself — and has relayed her voice back to you.
She pauses at the door, looks at you through one-way glass, and frowns
slightly, she knows your old-fashioned disapproval of casual nakedness. Her
kindness causes her to disobey the family psychiatrist; she grabs a robe
and covers herself before signaling the door to open.
The psychiatrist was right; you have thus been classed with strangers,
tradespeople, and others who are not family intimates. But you must swallow
your annoyance; you cannot object to her wearing clothes when you have
sniffed at her for not doing so.
There is no reason why she should wear clothes at home. The house is clean
— not somewhat clean, but clean — and comfortable. The floor is warm to
bare feet; there are no unpleasant drafts, no cold walls. All dust is
precipitated from the air entering this house. All textures, of floors, of
couch, of chair, are comfortable to bare skin. Sterilizing ultra-violet
light floods each room whenever it is unoccupied, and, several times a day,
a “whirlwind” blows house-created dust from all surfaces and whisks it out.
These auto services are unobtrusive because automatic cut-off switches
prevent them from occurring whenever a mass in a room is radiating at blood
temperature.
Such a house can become untidy, but not dirty. Five minutes of
straightening, a few swipes at children’s fingermarks, and her day’s
housekeeping is done. Oftener than sheets were changed in Mr. McKinley’s
day, this housewife rolls out a fresh layer of sheeting on each sitting
surface and stuffs the discard down the oubliette. This is easy; there is a
year’s supply on a roll concealed in each chair or couch. The tissue sticks
by pressure until pulled loose and does not obscure the pattern and color.