When my grandfather was born, they still used horses and buggies.

One third of Americans were farmers. Irving Berlin was a household name. Newspapers were the only form of mass communication available except for maybe shouting.

Entertainment was different, too. People entertained each other. Books were luxury items. Silent movies were around, sure, but you had to live in a big city to see one.

Baseball was king. Football was still a new invention. Nobody ever heard of basketball.

There were no radios. Victrola record players were only owned by the well-off, and the sound quality was crap. So music was a HUGE deal. Namely, because it was so rare. The only time you ever heard actual music was when you made it yourself.

There was refrigeration, either. So your eating habits reflected this. No McDonald’s. No fast food. Food was not fast. Food was incredibly, ridiculously, implausibly, unmitigatedly, outrageously, incomprehensibly, unreasonably slow.

Vegetables were always fresh. Meat was a luxury item, and super expensive, not an inalienable right. Plus, meat wouldn’t keep without cold storage. So there was a lot of salting, curing, smoking, pickling, and preserving going on. The average American diet was three quarters vegetarian.

People sent telegrams. Nobody had telephones, unless you were born with a silver spoon shoved up your you-know-what. And even if you DID have a telephone, who the heck would you call? The Rockefellers?

Average people didn’t use lightbulbs. Especially not in the rural parts, not until the 1930s. So poor families like my grandfather’s went to bed with the sunset. They woke up with the chickens.

In those days, ordinary people weren’t insulated from the horrors of life. When someone died in the community, for example, the community dealt with it themselves. Undertakers were too expensive for country people. So you WERE the undertaker.

Let’s say your elderly aunt Lucy died at the ripe old age of 53.

First, someone’s kid would sprint to the church and ring the bell. The death knoll would sound far and wide, bouncing off the hillsides, reaching all the little farms in the community.

Whereupon everyone would fall into their respective funeral roles.

Young women cooked a spread for the mourners. Townsmen gathered at someone’s cabinetry shop to build a pinewood casket.

Elderly women began preparing the body, cleaning it, making the remains presentable for viewing. Little boys raced into town to spread word to nearby communities. The post office sent telegrams, free of charge, to out-of-town kin.

Someone had to sit up with the deceased overnight, to make sure rigor mortis didn’t contort the body before visitation—and, more importantly, to make sure the expired didn’t wake up.

There was no time to dally. Aunt Lucy’s body was already decomposing. Her remains would be in the ground within 24 hours.

Death was a major part of your life.

So was church. Back then, your church was not merely a religious institution. Your church was far more than just a place for listening to some preacher gesticulate for one hour each Sunday.

Your church was your entire community. Your church was your health insurance, your daycare, your school, your weekend entertainment, your midwife, your support group, your family therapist, your hospice nurse, your social media, your best friends, your family.

You leaned on these people. They were all you had. And you needed each other. To survive. To find the meaning in your own life.

That was then.

Yesterday morning, I read that Morgan Stanley forecasts within the next two decades, nearly 1 billion humanoid robots will be in service globally. They will be in homes, commercial settings, and in the industrial workplace. In short, within the next 25 years, humanoid robots will likely represent one eighth of our global population.

I’m not worried. And I’m not depressed by this. Honest, I’m not.

But sometimes I can’t help but wonder what my grandfather would think.