Can Change Be Frozen?

Those of us with a few decades under our belt have seen a lot of change. We can all think of major changes: computers, cell phones, solar energy, electric cars, bottled water. But there have been other changes not-so-life-altering, that have kind of sneaked up on us.

This was brought home to me over the holidays, when I wanted to make whole-berry cranberry sauce. I like to add a few tablespoons of frozen orange juice concentrate.

So, I merrily went to the grocery store and stopped up short at the frozen food aisle. Do you remember the frozen juice selection in the 1980s? You could find case upon case of various frozen cans. This picture is of the 1950s, but it is what I remember.

Well, you don’t see frozen juice sold in cases like this anymore. And you certainly don’t see the smaller six-ounce cans.

This is how we buy our juice now:

I looked all over for frozen juice concentrate. Finally, I found a small selection underneath the French Toast Sticks and Toaster Strudel. We didn’t have those either, when I was raising my family in the 1980s. This small selection was all the frozen juice concentrate!

I bought my 12-ounce can and made my cranberry sauce, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how this change had “snuck up” on me. I didn’t even notice when the big refrigerator cases of juice disappeared.

This essay about Change recently appeared on Facebook, author anonymous:

They call us the Elderly:

Turns out we've lived through EIGHT different decades...

TWO different centuries...

TWO different millennia...

We have gone from the telephone with an operator for long–distance calls to video calls to anywhere in the world.

We have gone from slides to YouTube, from vinyl records to online music, from handwritten letters to email and Whats App.

From live matches on the radio, to black and white TV, color TV and then to 3D HD TV.

We went to the Video store and now we watch Netflix.

We got to know the first computers, punch cards, floppy disks and now we have gigabytes and megabytes on our smartphones.

We dodged infantile paralysis, meningitis, polio, tuberculosis, swine flu and now COVID-19.

We rode skates, tricycles, bicycles, mopeds, gas or diesel cars and now we drive hybrids or electric.