Those Were the Days
Things I miss:
Boys who carried paper routes and mowed lawns.
Women and girls in actual dresses.
When you seldom had to call up a corporation, but when you did you reached friendly, helpful Americans instead of recorded messages, Procrustean menus, and Hindu sing-song.
Men who walked in a congenial, alert manner rather than stumbling around with a phone in their ear.
When it was a thrill just to get a glimpse of a girl’s calves rather than see almost everything.
Fathers who left early in the morning for real work, with a serious and dignified demeanour.
Boys who played war: Americans against Indians, Gooks, and Krauts, though with high spirits rather than hatred. (Now it is multi-cultural both-sex teams with real hatred against vaguely known Middle Easterners, in undeclared perpetual war.)
Soft drinks in glass bottles pulled out of the icy water of an old-fashioned drink-box.
The great variety of delicious soft-drinks that no longer exist.
Elevators and offices without ghastly canned music.
Newspapers that had actual news and genuine opinion.
Real woods for boys to explore with real rifles. (Something Thomas Jefferson highly recommended.)
A comforting family doctor when loved ones were sick or hurt instead of multiple unknown “specialists” who can never be found or reached.
Boys who would have been ashamed to sit in front of a screen for hours.
Policemen who seemed like friends and protectors rather than storm-trooper bullies.
Children with just a few cherished toys rather than a warehouse full of electronic gadgets.
When everybody knew that politicians are crooks but it did not matter much.
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I miss the days when most everyone believed in God.
And had a code of morality.
I miss the 1950's
Ah, Mr Wilson, just like me, you are another dying dinosaur!
Better a dying dinosaur than a living vulture.
The dinosaurs may rule the earth again. Let us hope.
All right, here is my favorite childhood memory of the South in the early 1960's: It is sunrise in Cottonport, Louisiana, and my maternal grandfather Narcisse Lacombe has been up for several hours. He has already assisted at daily Mass down the street at St. Mary's Church on Bayou Des Glaises, has returned, made coffee, and started breakfast. I am the first city visitor to make it out of bed, and as I rise, I marvel, as always, at how my grandmother's house is so clean it *smells* clean, with the marvelous upcountry air of red-earth central Louisiana, so different from the miasma of New Orleans. I tiptoe to the door of the dining room, at the end of which my grandfather sits silently on a cane-bottomed rocking chair, saying the Rosary and staring thoughtfully out the window at his abundant vegetable garden.
I was given many other memories like this, and they formed a rock of inner stability which remains in spite of all. In spite of all that has befallen since that country morning, I do thank God for my people and our state.
Growing up in Vermont in the '80s I had the same experience #50 did. I wanted to go outside and play basketball, play stick ball, ride bikes, catch frogs in the swamp or go sledding (in the winter), but all my friends wanted to stay in and play Super Mario Bros.
Speaking of soda, if anyone is in Connecticut, there's a local soda place in New Britain called Avery's which has been operating since 1904 and still makes a wonderful variety of beverages:
http://www.averysoda.com/soda.html
Steve, I clicked on your link to Avery's and was charmed by the 100-year-old local tradition of sodas - until I saw some of the names for their flavors. "Monster Drool", "Bug Barf"?! Why, oh why, do modern marketers think it clever to use such names. Here in Louisville we have a local bakery that calls itself Blue Dog Bakery. While that isn't gross it does irritate me.
Dear Mr Wilson, I wonder if you took my little comment as an offense. It was not meant as such. May I add "barless bars" to your list? Happy birthday, belatedly!
Geronimo. No offense taken. I was simply replying in the same spirit.
I lived in the country, just outside a small southern Indiana town. When one of my "city" friends visited we would often play war. One time we decided that we would hide in the cornfield (the corn was high enough to cover us) and the other would lob ears of corn into the field like a "bombardment." He went into the field first. I picked up a large ear of corn and threw it into the field. I heard a "crack" sound and then a bloodcurdling scream. It hit him right in the head. Shortest war in history.