What Century Is This, Anyway?

A couple of days ago I was working through a knotty police procedural plot point in my current w.i.p. I knew what I wanted to do but wasn’t sure it was allowable in 1964 Cincinnati. I’m lucky enough to have access through email to a retired homicide detective from the CPD, who, while he was too young to be a cop in 1964, is also a historian and an archivist. For most of that day my head was in the twentieth century, even though the rest of me had to remember to do things like feed the cat and pay bills in the twenty-first century.

It makes for interesting experiences at times. I like to zip through my local supermarket and grab stuff as I do. Unfortunately, my characters Augusta McKee and Malcolm Mitchell may be having a lively discussion in my head at the same time. It’s distracting and at times I’ve barely avoided colliding with fellow shoppers. I guess people who know me just think of me as the crazy writer lady.

I like spending time in the twentieth century, especially in Cincinnati, a town that owns my heart. I’ve also discovered Google Maps. Have you tried them? I can drive through that entire city and drop to ground level to admire the scenery from time to time. It’s the next best thing to actually being there.

There’s no way I could do any of this without the internet, that marvelous invention that certainly wasn’t part of my world when I actually lived in the twentieth century. Sometimes I pick up my 6S Plus iPhone and just stare at it in wonderment. It’s even better than that gizmo the Star Trek crew used, except I’m not sure it could “beam me up” – but in all honestly, I’ve never tried that.

When I think of everything that’s happened in my long lifetime (I was born in 1938), it’s positively mind-blowing. I like technology, and I’m happy I’ve lived long enough to enjoy all the benefits it offers. On the other hand, escaping into the past has its benefits. The world isn’t spinning so quickly. People take more time to look at each other, and to listen to each other.

One plot point that I had to research with my first Augusta McKee mystery … how did the cops contact each other car to car in 1963? Answer: they couldn’t. Messages had to be relayed through headquarters. No body cams, no way to communicate with each other individually once they left the patrol car. But you know what? They still tracked down the bad guys.

Sometimes I feel I live in “the best of all possible worlds” … all the benefits of twenty-first century life, but with an easy escape into the last century.

I guess I am the “crazy writer lady”!