Technological Advances (?)

Another blast from the past!

This is the 40th annual Kerrville Folk Festival, and I gotta admit we’ve seen many changes in four decades. Browsing through the Kerrictionary of Kerr-words*, I find one that seems especially quaint:

InKERRmunicado – As Allen Damron says, “I’m at the festival, can’t be reached, DON’T TRY!”

I remember when it was like that. When a weekend at the Fest really meant getting away from it all.

When I attended my first festival in 1981, I had limited contact with the outside world. There were phones in the festival office. A person could call that number. In a life-or-death situation, the staff would send Security to find me in the campground. Otherwise, they'd take a message, post it on the bulletin board, and wait for me to happen by. If I wanted to call home, I had to drive to town (10 miles) or wait in line at the pay phone mounted on the outside wall of the office. One nice thing about that pay phone: it only cost a dime, long after phones in most places cost a quarter.

For my first few years here, I was freelancing for The Austin Chronicle. In 1986, I wrote my story in camp and read it to the Chronicle's typesetter on that pay phone, with half a dozen Kerrverts fidgeting in line behind me. (We were supposed to limit calls to three minutes.)

Time went by, and cell phones appeared on the scene. At first, only Big Shots had them. I can't recall when they came into common use. It doesn't matter: for a number of years after that, they still didn't work most parts of the Kerrville campground. The festival was still a place where my boss, my mother, couldn't call to remind me of what I wasn't getting done at home.

Alas, few of us are inKERRmunicado any more.

The festival has a new iPhone app for checking performance schedules and other events. You can find iPhones, iPads, and laptop computers in almost every camp. Last year, if I wanted to check my e-mail, I had to carry my laptop to a hi-fi hotspot near the Kerrtry Store. This year I can check it right in camp. One of my neighbors has a spare tent set up as an office, with a big orange extension cord coming in from the nearest power outlet and gadgets galore plugged into a surge protector. Somebody snapped two pictures of me at breakfast yesterday in Camp Inertia; by the end of the day, they were posted on Facebook.

Just now, as I was sitting here typing, one of the 42 players in my camp pulled out a cell phone, pushed a few buttons and muttered, "We may have four." Two minutes later, Mike Williams ambled over from Camp Cuisine. He sat down, shuffled the dominoes, and they started the game.

"Isn't technology wonderful?" said Mike. "We used to have to wander 150 feet across open ground to get four."

*First published by Kerrville Staff & Friends in 1985 and reprinted in Hot Jams & Cold Showers.