I told myself when I was a kid growing up in small-town West Alabama, that when I grew up I would never utter these words: “When I was young.”

It was a favorite phrase of my grandfather Gibson, who grew up in the shadows of World War I, when stagecoaches still traveled the roads and indoor plumbing was very rare.

My grandfather, loved to sit his grandchildren on his knee and talk about what it was like to live in the Depression or to fight in World War II.

Many times I imagined him as someone akin to Indiana Jones, conquering new worlds and traveling to exotic locations.

But then came the teens and, like most of my friends, I tuned out my grandfather and his stories.

And I hated his ever-present phrase.

To me, computers, satellite TV, CD players and the newest technology were much more interesting than my grandfather’s old stories.

My how things change.

I thought of him this week as I finalized some of the plans we are making for our coverage of the Mississippi primaries Tuesday night.

My grandfather, who died in 1985, never knew the Internet, didn’t own a computer and could only dream of cell phones.

Election day in Carrollton, Ala., back then had evolved little from the early 1950s. There was no TV station.

The most important piece of equipment in the courthouse when I was a kid was a chalkboard and a very worn box of chalk.

Every four years, the board would be dragged into the courthouse hallway, where one of the county clerks would meticulously draw a grid identifying each candidate and each precinct.

By the end of election night, that grid would be filled with names and numbers and a lot of smudges where the total number of votes for each candidate was revised and revised again.

That hallway was the most popular hangout in town each election night.

Most everyone in town came over the course of the night to get an update or just to be seen.

Tuesday night, the Natchez Democrat Web site plans to be the chalkboard for the community.

Over the past few days we have been preparing to provide our readers with up-to-the-minute results of the the Adams County Primary.

But this time there will be no chalk dust, blackboard and best of all, no smudges.

No, this time it will all be done with the click of the mouse and a broadband Internet connection.

Want to know how this year’s slate of candidates is doing in the primary?

No longer will you have to go to the courthouse or wait to see the results in Wednesday night’s paper.

Just fire up the computer and turn on the Internet Tuesday night and get the latest information on the local races. Better yet, get this information live as the precincts trickle in.

But this is not the only service we will be offering our readers.

This weekend we will be providing voting district maps, a separate section devoted to our continuing coverage leading up to the election, all in an effort to provide you with information you can use to help you vote on Tuesday.

So get ready for the new, innovative election night coverage of natchezdemocrat.com

It’s nothing like when I was young.

Ben Hillyer is web editor of the Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at ben.hillyer@natchezdemocrat.com.