Nostalgia—Things I Miss
The Dewey Decimal System.
Grocery clerks who packed bags without destroying fragile items.
Old-fashioned Southern political oratory, last heard in the early 1950's.
Old-fashioned drink boxes with bottled soft drinks in icy water.
Real libraries and bookstores not full of nonbooks.
Quiet push lawnmowers.
Woods and waste spaces that children could safely explore.
The fragrance of tobacco barns and smokehouses.
Real buttermilk.
Home ice cream makers.
Real biscuits.
College students who at least pretended to be polite and studious.
College professors actually worthy of respect for learning and character.
Clergymen with genuine knowledge rather than fashionable notions.
Postage stamps with dignity and educational value.
News reporters who could tell fact from opinion and were suspicious of ALL politicians.
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"Grocery clerks who packed bags without destroying fragile items."
And would help women load them in the car so she could load the kids.
"Quiet push lawnmowers."
And young neighbor boys who would use them reliably for a few bucks and a cold drink in the Summer.
Quail hunting during the fall on farms that were occupied, very simple and full of life.
"Clergymen with genuine knowledge rather than fashionable notions."
Who were not mamby-pamby types.
"Real libraries and bookstores not full of nonbooks."
Our library has become a taxpayer-subsidized free video store full of morally degenerate garbage. The classics are taken off the book shelves to make room for books about Jap cartoon characters or multiple copies of the latest raunch flick.
Full service filling stations with uniformed attendants who cleaned your windshield.
Nuns who wear habits. Priests who wear collars.
Highways full of American cars that were distinctive and beautifully designed.
Real Corvettes.
The old, blue collar Baltimore Colts and Baltimore Orioles.
Locally owned bars and taverns, bakeries and retail stores.
Real American neighborhoods where everyone knew each other, your parents' friends came over for card nights, the neighbors held picnics with locally brewed draft beer ...
The list could go on forever.
Thanks, Dr. Wilson.
local owned gas stations-the owner was the mechanic-with old dime pop machine and you returned the empty bottle to the crate by the machine.
humour-and no one was offended-if they were they kept it to themselves
Six Flags Over Texas-before it went national and politically correct.
walking to school in all weather.
Teachers and principals solved student problems without police on school grounds.
TV without reality shows.
The original Monday Night Football-yes that includes Howard Cosell.
Spanking your child in public when they richly deserve it without fear of someone snitch reporting you to the Child Protection Stazi.
Cars that were actually made out of steel instead of fiberglass
Food products that had real sugar in them instead of high fructose corn syrup
When carrying a shotgun on the rack in the backseat of your truck was no big deal
Thanks to Professor Wilson and the other contributors for these wonderful thoughts! All of the listed items would make our society SO MUCH better!
Given the calendar, may I add:
the celebration of Columbus Day without the predictable ritual of folks writing in or chiming in about how nasty 'Ole Christopher was and how wonderful it was here prior to the arrival of Europeans. (Just what is it about barbarity and human sacrifice these politically -correct types like so much?)
Great list, Professor Wilson.
“Quiet push lawnmowers.”
And brooms instead of that horrible invention, the blower, for the trully lazy who wish to make a bigger mess than they supposedly cleaned.
"Highways full of American cars that were distinctive and beautifully designed."
And Americans who valued Midwestern farmboys turned engineers who could produce those fantastic cars, Apollo rockets, and semiconductors instead of H1-visa imported discount engineers who work tirelessly for the better porn search engine.
Dr. Wilson,
There is apparently still hope, even out here in the disgustingly immoral cultural wasteland of California. Our libraries in the Sacramento area are catalogued according to Dewey, and I know the system pretty well, having just acquired my A.S. degree in the field from my local community college. Plus a couple from my church have a home ice cream maker and their ice cream is better than anything in the store. Maybe you'd like to move out here (ha ha)?
Being able to expect basic sanity from the American governing class---or from the average American.
"News reporters who could tell fact from opinion and were suspicious of all politicians".
By now, I'd settle for reporters who could give a full, correct street address, from which you could discern whether the blood was spilled on the North, West, or South Side of Chicago. As for suspicion of pols, didn't that go out with the linotype machine? Today's unstained wretches admire them the more the crookeder they are; corruption's a perfect fit for their puerile sense of humor and besides, most of them dream of being able to do the same type of thing someday once they've climbed the ladder to become a public relations exec or lobbyist. They have more incentive to keep the gravy train going than to stop it.
Things I also miss!
Deer hunting that demanded real skills of the woods, a mastery of dogs and a knowledge of the prey.
Old men gathered. In Pollock, it was the Indian Inn or the post office. They would have been the elders at the gate in the Old Testament.
My barber of nineteen years in his little shop on Main Street. He always had a story to tell.
My pastor of nineteen years, a pastor who preached the Word in season and out of season.
My maternal grandmother and my paternal grandmother. Both had sweet spirits. The former made the best fried apple pies, and the latter took me on many possum hunts.
Cat fishing on Big Creek with Daddy on an April's night.
Kids riding in the back of pickup trucks.
Friday night high school football beginning with prayer and the singing of Dixie.
Diggin' out swimmin' holes on or about 15 May of each year.
Going into the woods to fell a Christmas tree: some years a long-leaf pine, others a cedar or a holly.
Shootin' down mistletoe for mama's Christmas decorations.
One old tradition, a tradition of our family, is still left. We still have a graveyard working at Madden Cemetery each October and each May. There we gather to review the legacy which those who rest there have left to us and to check among ourselves as to whether we might leave a part of that legacy to our grandchildren. This year, we determined that the old Madden peas are still around and well cooked as well as the fried apple pies. Out of about seventy folk gathered there this year, about twenty were young children. They seemed to be having fun. That was a good sign.
Dr. Wilson,
Just last week, my mother, approaching ninety-three, made some real biscuits - those from utter scratch - which cooked out to be what Daddy used to call "cat heads." We had cream and Ribbon Cane syrup with them along with some pork-venison sausage. The mere mention of such a meal gives modern doctors heart attacks.
@ R. Cort Kirkwood #3 "...the neighbors held picnics with locally brewed draft beer..."
All is not lost in this regard. There has been a resurgence in local microbreweries across the country over the past few decades.
My own state of Montana, with less than 1 million in population, boasts of no less than 24 craft breweries.
A group of men from my church meets every Tuesday night over cigars and local brews to read the works of Martin Luther.
#11 Kid's riding on the back of pickup trucks. Ahh! how could I have forgot that?
More things I miss.
When Dixie was played and the Southern Cross(Confederate Flag)displayed it was a revered part of our history and culture.
kids walking through their neighborhood with their 22 rifles and into the hills to shoot rabbits or any critter they could get a bead on.
pick up tackle football games in the park.
Drive In Movies
An age when,being a Tennessean,I could look at Washington D.C. just with contempt instead of fear.
"College" football and basketball players who were actual scholar-athletes rather than hired guns.
Quarterbacks that actually call their own plays.
Milk shakes made out of milk and ice cream.
Women in skirts and dresses rather than sweat pants, pant suits and jeans that expose large portions of their rear portions.
A conservative movement without neo-conservatives.
The Confederate flag at Ole Miss football games.
An American public not deracinated, that was proud of settling a continent and honored men like Washington, Jefferson, Lee, both Jacksons(not Jesse) and the soldiers of all of our wars, even the misguided ones.
Farmland before it became suburban sprawl.
Yes, I remember riding in the back of my uncle's pickup truck. Who knew then he was a child abuser? I also miss sandlot baseball games where the "first ups" was determined by a toss of the bat and whoever could hold on to the top of the bat won. Also played without: real bases (use whatever could be found), umpires, uniforms, little league bureaucrats, aluminum bats, helmets, parents, and protective cups. From personal experience I can tell you that last one was a BIG mistake.
Yes, rides in the back of pickups. I miss them.
The real WGN: Jack Taylor, Ray Raynor, Bozo's Circus and Bogie movies late at night. The prime time news program was so cozy and non-controversial it could've been filmed in your basement. For the first half of my life, I don't think WGN ever showed a film that had been produced after 1970...
Now WGN is horrifying.
My sweet home of Chicago - at least the far Northwest Side is still
going strong and a fortress of families, old folks and Irish/Polish real people.
The Metro Club - Chicago's only - and one of the world's best - Austrian restaurants. The schnitzel was the size of a manhole cover.
The Orbit restaurant. Want to taste something outstanding? Their Polish sour cream soup would make you weep.
The electric buses on North Halsted Street.
My father - a prince of a man, surely. Resquiescat in Pacem.
Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray.
I miss my brains most of all. In my younger days, I used to value our Constitution and my irreverent thinking, even a night with 7 to 8 hours uninterrupted sleep - those days of youthful exuberance are gone now.
Full-service gas stations and gasoline wars--nine cents a gallon, the lowest.
Submarine sandwich wars in the Italian neighborhood grocery stores--19 cents, the lowest.
General admission to Fenway Park--75 cents.
Bag of peanuts from cart vendor outside Fenway--5 cents (15 cents inside the park)
Beans and franks on Saturday night as a kid, a bath and clean sheets.
Free hot dogs on Saturday at the neighborhood bar.
Great pot of clam chowder on Friday for lunch at the same, bean soup on Wednesdays.
Stay-at-home mothers.
Smoke-filled Sunday afternoons the house crowded with aunts and uncles all drinking Canadian Club and ginger ale.
There is a bit of hypocrisy in these comments. Many of those despairing the lack of "old-fashioned" foodstuffs would be no more willing to venture into a Mexican grocery to find them than those bemoaning the lack of scholar-athletes would be willing to send their children to Harvard or Stanford where even football players are held to high academic standards.
Perhaps this is unfair, but Mr. Ryu's comment strikes me as the type commonly made by those who always talk in theory about the wonders of, say, Mexican groceries, but who, unlike many of those who take part in these comments, would never actually enter one. Those of us who care about fresh vegetables, good meat, and variety in our diets have no need to trumpet the stores and restaurants we patronize; we simply do it, and we don't lecture others on where they should or should not shop.
"Many of those despairing the lack of “old-fashioned” foodstuffs would be no more willing to venture into a Mexican grocery to find them than those bemoaning ...."
What the heck are you talking about Alex? By 2021 we will all be shopping at Mexican grocery stores and sending our kids to Gonzales High for instruction. As for me, I will be making oyster stew at the old folks home for myself and our last generation, getting pleasure from the fact that kids like you will finally be working for a living.
So you say, Mr. Ryu. Do you know the posters here or are you guessing?
To Mr. Ryu @20:
Do you know what you're talking about? I was accepted at several of the Ivies, attended one of them, played sports, lived for a hard-partying year with several of the best athletes, including the captains of the football and wrestling teams, and now live in the Bay Area, where I've known a number of Stanford grads. Beyond noting the confusing syntax of your second sentence, I can state categorically that there is preferential treatment (not limited to racial minorities) for athletes in the Ivy League, and that Division One Stanford in particular is notorious for its athletic affirmative action. If I were given 'only' one hundred thousand dollars for every idiot ex-Stanford varsity athlete I have met over the past two decades, my net worth would be comfortably into the eight figures.
Single platoon football in college before our groves of academe became parking lots for tailgate parties on Saturday afternoons.
Things I miss
The South without Yankee snow birds
English was the only language spoken in Public Schools
Grade school Christmas shows.
High Schools did not need day care centers
Bunches of kids trick or treating across their neighborhood without adult escorts
Sunday afternoon Super Bowls
Amateur Boxing was for young men only who wanted to be fighters, not today's fencing piddy pat contests.
Picking Green Chili 10cents a pound in the Mesilla Valley
I was surprised and cheered, Clyde, by how many things on your list I still have here--and not just because I'm the cook: everything from kids illegally but ecstatically in the backs of pickups to honorable and painstaking clergymen, though we just lost one of those. We see plenty of losses here in this small Kentucky town, but there is plenty of happy backwardness, too.
Lone Racer: in which part of the Bay Area do you live? I'm in the South Bay.
#30. Dear Kate, Thanks, and count your blessings.
A glass of water with your ice cream. I was asked if I wanted water
with that when I purchased and ice cream bar recently. I was impressed and later told my daughter what happened. She told me the clerk was suggesting I buy a bottle of water. How had I found myself thinking like I was in 1961?
Y'all are rememberin' the small stuff. How about:
when divorce was a disgrace
and bastardy a scandal?
I remember riding in the back of my dad's pickup with my 3 brothers after a long day in the desert looking for "Indian Arrowheads". As we rode home down the high, long hill into the beautifully lit-up city of Albuquerque, we were singing every song we knew at the top of our lungs - from Christmas Carols to folk songs to western classics! Now kids sit enclosed in SUV's watching videos and cartoons without any knowledge of the REAL WORLD. It's pitiful.
Jim: yes we are remembering the small things. I think it's a terrible sign when the small things in life disappear. It tells us something. Perhaps, in the decline of a society, the small things disappear after the big ones have already gone. It's a sign of the end of a culture and a civilisation, or at least of the nadir before a recovery, if it comes.
It says something that instead of remembering the big things, we have already given them up as hopeless.
Here's one I miss: soft drinks sweetened with real sugar.
Also, old folks in the family who knew how to farm and had it in their vocabulary. All gone in my family, except for some uncles who remember it as kids.
I am not old enough or from the right area of the country to remember many of these things that are listed but can appreciate the sentiment. One thing I fail to understand is this incredible fondness for the killing of animals. I have no problems with guns but I fail to understand the thrill taking the life of rabbits, deer or squirrels for that matter. If you are killing an animal because you need to eat fine; but the killing of an animal for the sake of killing it is beyond me. Those who have fond memories of doing this and I part company!
#38: I don't know any hunters who kill animals "for the sake of killing." Everyone I have ever known who hunts eats his kill, whether deer, rabbit, squirrel, etc.