Bridging Generation Gaps

Banner Elk. North Carolina

We're up in the Appalachian Mountains. It's very cool here in the late summer. Verizon has a strong retail presence because cable and DSL are not widely available for broadband so lots of the locals are forced to buy air cards to get decent internet speeds.

Our old Verizon card plugged into a USB port. A few times we have dropped the laptop when I hit the brakes too hard and it finally broke in half. We panic at being cut off from the net and roll down the back roads in the Toyota looking for a leaking wireless. We spot some unsecured wi-fis, but it seems impolite to stop outside a farmhouse in the dark and log into their wireless.

We are surprised to find a big Verizon store in a little mountain town open late at night. Our sales person is a 22 year-old geek in a pinstripe suit. He sells us a wireless Verizon router the size of a credit card that will power up to five computers and creates its own hot spot.

Somehow we get onto the subject of easy questions and I ask him. "who's buried in Grant's tomb?" He looks blank and I explain it's an old Groucho Marx gameshow question. He's never heard of Groucho Marx. He tells me about "Who wants to be a millionaire" easy questions, but I've never heard of it. We settle for a common ground and discuss Quentin Tarrantino movies for 15 minutes. I proved my merit by mentioning one he hadn't seen...."From Dust Tll Dawn"...a vampire flick in a Mexican Cantina.

Last night Mrs. Phred and went to an all-you-can-eat pizza place and then took in "Inglorious Basterds". It didn't dissapoint. The German detective called "The Jew Hunter" was phenomenal. Best supporting actor Oscar for sure. I liked the alternative ending to WWII...There are many long Tarrantinoesque conversations in the movie filled with unbelievable building suspense. You will remember the Le Big Mac conversation in "Pulp Fiction". Everyone does.

Mrs. Phred goes in first and buys her ticket. I follow after her a few minutes later and, automatically, the kid at the counter gives me the senior discount. I pay $6. Mrs. Phred gives me the change from her ticket purchase. The kid charged her the full adult fare of $9. She's pleased, of course, but when I point out the disparity, she goes back to the counter for her $3 refund. Dinner and a movie for two...$24...Not bad, but we remember Groucho and when movies were a quarter and fast food was twenty years in the future.