Y2K Through the Keyhole

The year 2000 was called Y2K in the last decade of the 20th Century by people who had an unhealthy, shameless fascination with it as well as an unfounded and ridiculous fear of it. These were the hi-tech freaks who were so in love with their personal computers and the Internet that they couldn’t imagine a new millennium or a new century or a new decade or even a new year without them.

In the average person's earthbound mind, the year 2000 was mistaken for the first year of a new decade, new century and new millennium, not the last year of the last decade of the 20th Century. So, instead of just being the year 2000, it was magically transformed into the infamous Y2K, where everything in cyberland would suddenly break down because supposedly short-sighted 20th-Century computer programmers had not allowed for the advent of the year 2000 in their programs.

So, the catalyst for all the Y2K hype was the misconception that the year 2000 was not the last year of the 20th Century but the first year of the 21st Century. Most people had no clue that the year 2001 would fit that bill like a glove. It was the number "2" that mesmerized everybody. A year starting with a "2" instead of a "1" could not possibly be part of the 20th Century. 2000 just had to be the super-cool first year of the hi-tech, space-bound new millennium. Even though it wasn't. Turning a blind eye to the truth, they called it Y2K instead of 2000 and didn't look back. Y2K belonged to the 21st Century and there was nothing that anybody with a brain could do to change that.

The great World Wide Web, only five-years-old, would die a swift and sudden death at the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 1999, Greenwich Time, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Hospital machines would stop dispensing medicine, computerized manufacturing would grind to a halt, governments would fail, missiles would fire and Armageddon would arrive as predicted. And all because of the Y2K “bug”.

But none of that stuff happened.

And any so-called stupid, redneck hillbilly from Appalachia could have told you that.

The Gypsies Are In Town!

You would think that the mid-20th Century was a time for overcoming some of the foolishness and unfounded fears that had crept over into that century from the previous one. By 1950, fewer people were throwing salt over their shoulders and refusing to let blonde children bring in the new year, for fear of bad luck. By 1960, not too many motorists would crash their car into a retaining wall in order to avoid crossing paths with a black cat in the middle of the road. And, by 1970, hardly anyone felt the blood rush from their face when someone at the dinner table accidentally “crossed steel” by absent-mindedly laying a stainless steel knife on top of a fork or spoon. But they still feared the Gypsies.

Every summer in the Pennsylvania Appalachians a “Gypsy Alert” would ring out from town to town. Better lock your doors because the Gypsies were coming to steal your children! The alert went from neighbor to neighbor and from one neighborhood to another. And it always occurred during carnival season, which meant most of the summer months, but especially during the Fourth of July weekend.

As children, we were instructed to walk in pairs or groups and not to speak to strange dark-haired women in old print dresses and paisley scarves who wore funny shoes. And to stay away from unshaven men with big-brimmed hats and suspenders altogether. No one stopped to consider that this tall order would eliminate contact with about half of our relatives at the time. It didn’t matter. The Gypsies were in town!

No one really knew who these Gypsies were or where they came from. They certainly didn’t come all the way from Hungary in their wagons to steal American children. As a child, I assumed that these people could not have children of their own and would take any healthy kid they could get their hands on. I felt sorry for them.

The word was out that these crusty and coarse people wanted somebody else’s children to clean out their wagons and shovel the horse manure and run errands for them because they were too lazy to do it themselves. No one in Appalachia suspected that these so-called Gypsies were just Americans called “Carnies” by the rest of the country, people who liked carnival work and carnival life and not paying taxes.

For us kiddies, the “dreaded curse of the Gypsies” was fearing them as much as fearing the devil, himself, without ever getting to see either.