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.
Entries(RSS)
When I ponder it, I am greatly saddened that the world I grew up in no longer exists. It's not that that world was utopian perfect, but, rather, what has replaced it is so vulgar and horrible. I pity the youth of our misguided country.
Dr. Wilson, what is your opinion of the late historian, activist, and author howard zinn? Do you think he was honest, fair minded?
I can still remember putting out the empty milk and cream bottles for the milkman, who came by early ever morning (except) Sundays, in a horse-drawn truck.
"Newspapers that had actual news and genuine opinion."
(Never happened, in my humble opinion)
I remember running around the neighborhood playing war in the late 80s with an old drill plugged Springfield rifle and even that late no one thought anything of it.
"“Newspapers that had actual news and genuine opinion.”
(Never happened, in my humble opinion)"
It did, but only on a local level. A reporter from Richmond who never intends to leave Richmond wouldnt care about upsetting people in New York in Wilson's day.
In Pollock, all through my childhood and youth, old men held, just as in Old Testament times, council at the gate. Actually, it was in front of the Indian Inn, a real cafe made of sandstone. There was a bench known as the loafers bench. After the Indian Inn closed, the old men moved to the post office. My father was one of them, most being former members of the 156th Infantry Regiment which served in the Europen theater. One by one they died, my father being the last. One of the days on which they were holding council, a young lady asked why such old geezers met in the post office. My father responded that they were old gazers.
I miss watching the passneger train grab the mail. When school was out, we would race to the depot and sit on the platform; the older one's who knew better would bet the younger ones a nickel that the train would miss the bag. It never did. We were once the younger ones.
I miss the folks who delivered stuff: the mailman, the milkman, the paperboy, the coffeman, the laundryman. They came to towns, villages, hamlets, settlements and country homes. My grandma always invited them in. She was better informed in fact and truth than CNN Central.
I miss the open range of old Louisiana. Cows, hogs and boys could cross property lines and hunt anywhere. Corporations had not posted everything, and landowners had not been intimidated about liablity by lawyers. A tribe of us boys would buckle on our machetes, gird ourselves with what we called Bowie knives, hang our .22 pistols on our hips and strap on our various 410's. Mama would say, "Now you boys be careful." Off we would go to shoot gar in the river, to kill birds and roast them, to build grass huts or to build rafts and play pirates. When the sun hit a certain westerly angle, we headed for our respective homes because mama would have a nice hot supper and quiz us about the day, not probing too deeply as not to find out things she did not want to know such as had we hopped a freight train going real slow up Colson Hill and jumped off before it went down the other side.
I miss riding the long dirt roads on my bike, a bike with just peddle brakes. When I got thirsty, I drank out of a creek. If there was no creek, then I would stop at the first house and ask for water. I always got a drink. Sometimes, I got milk and cookies. No one tried to kill me, kidnap me or seduce me.
I miss sinking beer cans in the creek, beer cans which when they hit the water became the Bismark. Ask we threw the rocks we sang "Sink the Bismark." We had heard, speaking of creeks, that armadillos did not swim but held their breath and walked on the bottom of the creek. During one of our Bismark encounters, we saw a young armadillo, caught him and tossed him in the deepest hole we could find. So many minutes went by that we thought that we had disproved the theory; but, behold, about thirty yards down stream the critter came walking out.
I miss the smell of my grandmothers. My paternal grandmother smelled like Winter Green, and my maternal grandmother smelled like talcum powder. Uncle Julius smelled like tobacco, and Aunt Alice smelled like prunes.
"I miss the smell of my grandmothers. My paternal grandmother smelled like Winter Green, and my maternal grandmother smelled like talcum powder. Uncle Julius smelled like tobacco, and Aunt Alice smelled like prunes."
I still remember when older ladies had a particular scent they would always wear. My grandmother still does this, despite her extreme age, which has been the same as long as I've been alive. I asked her awhile back what it was; something Spanish. She is from that old generation of white Mexicans who celebrated their Spanishness.
My grandmothers both smelled like the snuff they dipped. They were never far from a can with toilet paper stuffed in it. The smell of the snuff mingled with the sweet aromas of the kitchen to create a wonderful memory.
One thing I still find beautiful about the South in summer is Crape Myrtle. Also the folks who live in the smaller towns seem awfully nice compared to the carpetbaggers and money hustlers in the more sprawling places like Atlanta. Fried food,(okra,gritts,ham,fresh tomatoes with breakfast) flowers and local folks with their accent I found most delightful. The invasion of national chain stores and restaurants is a blight on the South as was the Carter Center to a certain extent. The idea of building monuments to the living with the solo theme of " Come and see and let me tell you how great I was" is not a Southern virtue or it never seemed so to me. In this respect, the Carter Center seemed interesting at times but rather gaudy in the end, compared to the authentic and simple Southern virtue described by Dr. Wilson as "When everybody knew that politicians were crooks but it did not matter much."
Speaking of smells, how about those biscuits cooking.
I miss the time when there was one immigrant family in town--refugees from Communism that everybody knew
My father tells me his hometown of Camarillo, CA used to be rural with many farmers, where great grandpa had his TV and radio repair shop. A one stop light town. Now its just another 'diverse' anonymous strip mall filled suburbia.
Yes, biscuit cooking. Biscuit link me to the cooking of mayhaw juice to make mayhaw jelly to go with the homemade butter which the old aunts churned. With aunts churning, I associate old aunts rocking as they churned; and with rocking I associate being rocked to sleep on the front porch on a hot summer's day, wiped by a cool cloth and then, when asleep, laid on a quilt on the porch floor. With biscuit, I associate curds and whey. When grandmas and great aunts set the raw milk out with a dish towel over it, we knew that there would be curds and whey with biscuit the next morning, usually with red-eye gravy.
Shade is another blessing that is dear to those who know the seasons and hot weather. It is dear to the outside worker because it offers brief refreshment from the beating sun and a place to gulp or sip cold drinks, to the elderly because it is a good place to sit amd watch things, to the gardener as a place for sorting, cutting, shucking and washing vegetables or flowers, for kids because all the adults are gathered in the shade talking and its fun to listen to them and learn from them, and of course most animals like shade because God has told taught them it is a good thing not to be always in a hurry. Cold fruit is another blessing -- cold peaches, apples, or strawberries with ice cream, can also be enjoyed in the shade on hot days. Lemonade stands were also something to do in the heat when I was a kid -- along with buying and eating hard candy on the cheap. Now I imagine kids would need full time security guards and a marketing permit to sell lemonade.
Shade, yes. There seems to be something in the modern mind that actually hates trees and delights in seeing them bulldozed down and burnt up. My neighbours have destroyed many great trees in order to plant grass which is artificial to this soil and climate and takes great effort to keep going. They seem to think I am strange for not doing likewise.
Those people are fools. I think I know some of their relatives and extended kin around these parts. They will learn as their plans continue to fail and more pressing concerns take over. But you are correct,the world is not all sunlight and toil nor should it ever be,some even say it ends in darkness.
I knew a holy monk who wanted to build a large stone church with beautiful windows but wanted the interior to be sufficiently dark so sinners would not be afraid to enter. I also have heard that Gen.
Jackson's last words outside Fredericksburg were "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." I cannot speak
for everyman,but for me and the sake of beauty and peace,I prefer a little shade and shadow in this life,with some light streaming through the cracks of my many sins.
Arkansas has two places with the name of Evening Shade. I have only been to one of them on Arkansas Route 26 between Lewisville and Hope. It is a mere settlement, primarily marked by the sign which says "Evening Shade." It sits in the rolling hills of southwest Arkansas with pastures dotted with little stands of large oaks. One such stand of oaks encroaches on the roadway and casts its collective shade on the road as the sun sets in the west. My wife and I delight in driving through the settlement, seeing the sign and passing through the shade.
When I returned from Germany in the late 80's, I took up my old habit of hunting squirrels. Not far from the house which we were renting out in the country, I found a beautiful beech bottom in the sandy soil of an upland stream which had carved the bottom from the ridges around it. Each day I got my limit of cat squirrels which I fried or which I made into squirrel gumbo. One Saturday, just a few weeks after I had found the bottom, I returned, anticipating the hunt. As I pulled around the curve on the dirt road not far from the place where I would park, I was shocked. Within two days the entire beech bottom and attendant ridges had been cut flat and ravaged. It was my first encounter with clear cutting. Before I had left for Germany nearly two decades prior, we had all be taught selective cutting, i.e. the stewardship of the forest. That was gone; the wasteland was upon us!
I have always thought that those who actually put turf on their lawns and keep it fertilised are doing themselves a disservice. It usually looks artificial, like an ersatz lawn, and why go to the trouble if native grass will grow there on it's own anyway. I also dont understand those who want only one kind of grass growing and will poison other grass, along with dandelions and other plants, out of the yard. Why? Just mow it, and when it gets hot and dry enough, it will grow slow enough, and it may even die down so you dont have to mow it for a while. That's the natural order of things.
I pity the lunacy of those who use bagging mowers so they dont have to look at grass clippings laying around in the yard, and then have to fertilise the yard every year because those clippings are not there to decay into the dirt and fertilise the grass naturally, while they take up city and county dump space unnecessarily.
I deride all fools who fertilise unproductive grass instead of food-productive gardens, and who dont see trees in the yard as the blessing that they are, especially oaks.
Reading things like this always make me wish I'd been born a few decades (or centuries) earlier.
It's true, there is something that's somehow rather disconcerting about neatly manicured lawns in some settings, and seeing nothing but planted in front of tract housing is just plain ole' creepy. My dad has a certain fondness for fresh green grass, having grown up in Michigan, but here in the relatively dry pine forests of Southern California, they're rather out of place. On the other hand, we have no want of fine beautiful trees, with little danger of them being cut down. I guess the National Forest program isn't all bad.
MAP @ 9
Smells! In my earliest years, our church was not airconditioned. We kept "cool" with funeral-home fans in the pews. I was put into a swoon by the smell of lady's talcum powder and sweat. Falling into the swoon, I would be pinched back into worshipful reality by my mother. Upon one of those occassions, I made a very bad mistake: I swooned and Mama pinched me. I then whispered to her as the offering plates were being passed that I had learned that my body was the temple of the Holy Spirit and that she should not pinch the temple of the Holy Spirit. She whispered in a low hiss that Jesus had cleansed the temple. When we got home, the temple of the Holy Spirit was cleansed with a peach-tree switch. Ever since, I have quite careful when quoting Scripture to Mama. I was also disinclined to fall asleep in church.
I was the last paperboy in my neighborhood. Like all paperboys, I rode a bike and put the newspapers carefully between the screen door and main door. I was replaced by a middle-aged man who tossed the newspapers from a car on customers' driveways or front yards, often into puddles. This happened during the Reagan Administration.
TWC,
You omitted "with the radio on."
Back in the old days of my country, a large number of local scouts and colonial officers would wander the forest.
The Indian foresters and the British commander would spot an ancient edifice in the middle of it, hinting at practices and rituals of a hitherto unknown civilization from millenia back.
And they would both gladly relish in having it broken down, and its bricks dismantled and used to make forts and necessary buildings. Nobody cares about the dead of the dead past. Practical needs first. The proud motto of the British and South Asian people living here in those days was, "Boots are superior to the works of Shakespeare!"
Those were the days.
Nowadays, enormous amounts of public money is wasted on maintaining these "heritage" sites, and relishing in the empty glory of a useless past. Forests are considered "heritage" sites too, even though both these old temples and trees could be cut down and help sustain the livelihood of the many poor in this country.
In my family church attendance was a mandatory event. Even the complaints that might keep you out of school for the day would not work for church. We would wake on Sunday morning and start getting our Sunday-best together - white shirt, slacks, and a bow-tie for me. Everybody at church wore their best. And it was always as much a social event as anything else. In the church I attend today, everybody wears blue-jeans, even the women, and t-shirts are common. Such dress would have been out of place in the churches of my youth.
"Men who walked in a congenial, alert manner, rather than stumbling around with a phone in their ear." Yes! And men who whistled a jaunty tune while they walked in public.
I heartily agree with each of the good Doctor's points. I would add that I find it disturbing that so many "men" go about chit-chatting at their cell phones like high school girls.
#24 @ #25 ,
Yes, I think we cann all see many more hard, sad, desperate faces in the world than fifty years ago. I even notice some looks in peoples eyes that I can't recognize. I think life was somewhat harder when it was simpler and slower, but not as inhuman and frustrating as it is today with all this speed, concentration of humanity and power in smaller and smaller plots. I knew a family in my father's generation that would take their daughters to Mass on one Sunday and their sons to Mass on the next Sunday, because the wagon was not large enough for all of them together. At least the slow steady pace of getting there was more consistent with offering a prayer, than the traffic jam or going 80 mph on the interstate. Things have certainly changed alot but not very many good things have been conserved.
1960s small-town in southeastern Wisconsin. We’d walk home from school at an utterly leisurely pace. Mom wasn’t too worried about when we’d get home; she knew we’d be there for supper. Frequently a short train would crawl through town (maybe going 3 mph). The older boys would dive between the wheels of the train to the center of the tracks, pause, and then out the other side; they just needed a little rhythm—like skipping rope. Looking back I feel confident the engineer went this slowly just for those boys; and none ever lost a hand or foot.
Then we’d walk on the top of the fence around the old ice rink, balancing school books and lunch boxes as we did. We knew which yards we could “cut through” and which ones had crabby old men yelling at us to keep of the grass. Then we’d stop at our fort in the woods by the creek and maybe fix the sticks in a collapsing wall. Or maybe we’d catch crayfish. Then it was on to the corner store for a piece of penny candy. And finally home for a little play time before supper. Often we had to go back to the corner store to get something Mom needed to finish supper. Mom would call the storekeeper before we went and he’d have what she needed ready waiting for us—she didn’t trust us to know the difference between baking powder and soda… Oh, and the storekeeper ran a tab for us and most of the regulars; though Mom nearly always paid because she didn’t want to be beholden.
After supper: homework, and then out to play. And we could play anywhere: the street, neighbors yards (except those crabby old men who’d yell…), down by the creek, in the open fields and lots in the neighborhood. Mom and Dad never worried because they knew if we got into trouble there’d be an adult somewhere to drag us home by the lobe of our ear, or by our hand or shirt collar, if they were “nice.” But we didn’t get in much trouble because we knew how to behave in public (or we’d get the “stick” in private).
Only in the winter did we watch TV and that was usually brief by modern standards: we got bored; it was more fun playing cowboys and Indians than watching them.
Dr. Wilson
Great piece, as usual. I thought you might not have heard of Jones Soda. Like anything, when something has been out of fashion for long enough, it comes back for those who demand it. They offer delicious natural sodas of all kinds of varieties, and you can mail-order them!
http://www.jonessoda.com/files_4/products-glass.php
They also use photos that customers send in to label their glass bottles.
When I was 8 or 9 I would ride the bus from the country down town and stay all day going to the movies, eating hot dogs, and perusing comic books, and ride back in the evenings. Even though it was a tough, working class and biracial city, harming a child would enter noone's mind (except another child's). Now, you can't let the kids out of the yard. The "New Frontier," "the Great Society," "the New World Order," The "End of History," but not in the wat they meant.
@29 Problem is those sodas (and there are other brands than Jones)are now treated as specialty (aka gourmet) foods at over $1 per bottle. Used to be they were cheaper than the "name brands." I still buy them on occasion for a trip down memory lane.
Thanks, Mr. Heiner. I had not heard of that. There was a time when there were multiple local soft drinks, like boiutique beers today.
Things I miss: Men who knew when to remove their hats.
Must say, I miss a cold Sun Drop in a glass bottle rather than in plastic.
Birch beer!
One Tuesdays, Mama got her hair fixed. We had to stay in town, Pollock. Off to the local grocery store we went. In a town of three hundred and an outlying region which considered itself part of the town, the social town rather than the political town, we had three grocery stores, two cafes which sold great and wonderful hamburgers for 25 cents, three filling stations with full service, one garage, one dry goods store, one hardware store where you could buy dynamite for blowing out the stumps which the Yankees had left (You could also fish with it.) with its owner being one of the five Catholic families in town, one barber who was my barber for nineteen years and one of the other Catholics in town, a jail, a Boy Scout hut, and the depot.
Back to Tuesday. While Mama was getting coiffed, we went to Tiley and Montgomery Store. There, long before Barnes and Noble thought of putting coffee and pastry into their bookstores, Mr. Gene and Mr. Bracey allowed us to sit before the funny-book stand and read funny books, usually Sgt. Rock or the Stuart Tank for me, while we filled ourselves on peanut patties and cold drinks, which we, of course, bought for a nickel apiece. We rarely bought the funny books; but they did not care; they made their money and, I am sure, got their pleasure in listening to the tall tales that little boys told. It seems that all of our daddies had fought in Sgt. Rock's company in WWII. His company must have indeed been the size of a division.
We used the term "cold drink" or simply "coke," both meaning any of the wonderful things one could buy. I liked Nehi Orange, Orange Crush and Big Chief Orange as well as Grapette and a chocolate drink, all ice cold from those big box coolers, the watery coldness of which I can still smell in my memory.
An excellent piece. The only blight was the useage of the term "gook" which many will find to be offensive.
I am not sure why Gook is offensive and not Kraut. Besides, I was merely reporting a memory, not making a statement.
I don't remember girls and women in actual dresses. But I sure wish I did. Women and girls in dresses are so pretty. And it emphasizes distinctions between the two sexes. I have no idea why they don't wear them anymore. Even in conservative churches.
I blame the older generation for allowing this country to fail. The boomers, in particular, have proven themselves to be selfish, short-sided, and self-destructive.
It was the "Greatest Generation," not the ones who fought but the ones who gathered in Washington and New York offices and planned the "postwar world." The 60s wreckers were their children.
In Michigan where I grew up (and I'm in my late thirties) we loved our local soda pops, particularly Towne Club and Atlas, even the old brand Faygo which was more widely available than just Michigan. Towne Club offered something like 35 different flavors. They are no longer available. The market forces which give us all this choice have now 'simplified' the choices for us down to the 5 or 6 flavors offered by the national behemoths known as Coke and Pepsi.
We also had a magnificent brewing legacy in Detroit led by the Strohs family. Not to mention dairy distributorships like Melody Farms and Twin Pines that were delivering to homes as late as the 1980s before ceasing to exist or stopping such activity. I still remember the dairy delivery slot built into my grandparents' house. As mentioned, though, these pleasant and local things have laregly disappeared.
Those were the days:
When the bank robbers could get away from the chasing cops if they could just make it to the nearest state line. "They're Oklahoma's problem, now", say the cops, staring wistfully at the state line sign, and climb back into the Plymouth Fury and head for the cafe. That was when states were sovereign and cops were strictly local, not part of a nationwide quasi-military network.
"Real woods for boys to explore with real rifles. (Something Thomas Jefferson highly recommended.)"
My wife's mother and her friends all had twenty-two cal. rifles and would spend a lot of time exploring the woods around Waukeegan, Illinois. Once when she and a friend started walking through nearby Zion, Illinois with their rifles, a policeman picked them up in his patrol car and left them off at the other edge of town.
I have my mother-in-law's rifle in my gun safe. It is so old, it doesn't have a serial number on it. It's not very accurate now because it was fired so many times.
When southern California was a paradise. Riding bikes to the fruit and vegetable stands that also had sodas, a burrito at 25cents, a burger that was 15 cents. Playing in the fruit orchards, Saving lunch money in order to buy 45 rpm singles...I have played serious concerts on three continents, and I still think that my most basic eye to ear coordination for memorizing music came from butchering those Ventures records-- figuring out the licks by playing them on slow speed, over and over. Want music for the school dance? Well, there were always at least four or five bands with their homemade arrangements and skill. What was once memory has become a data base, in the off chance that someone might want to actually remember and do something.
I remember, growing up in historic West Florida during WWII:
Ration stamps for sugar, gasoline, and other commodities; My Uncle, a doctor, was able to buy tires and gasoline; My Dad, who transported fellow army airbase employees (not “defense workers“) on a 1940 Ford pickup could get gas, but not tires. Many times I went with him to get a split rim welded and a boot put in the tire to keep going. Many people traveled the local dirt roads on their rims.
Seeing my Dad tape over the top half of his headlights to keep the German Subs from zeroing in on the Base at night.
Inventing or copying games to pass the time, such as a combination marbles/golf/horse shoes game where holes were scooped out in the "hoed clean back yard" with a teaspoon and marbles were shot toward them for scores and some form of spanning with the thumb and middle finger used to measure closeness, as in horse shoes.
Cutting a holly tree from the back forty for a Christmas tree and thinking that getting an orange, an apple and a cap pistol was a great Santa visit.
Riding, with my cousins, the “flying jenny” my Grand Pa built in the front yard of his blacksmith shop with juniper poles.
Building a hideout in the barn by moving the hay bales around to create a cavity as part of the cowboys and outlaws (no Indians) games we played.
Punching holes with a nail in each end of an old syrup bucket or Claber Girl can and inserting a loop of hay wire, then filing the can with dirt to use as a pull toy.
Stepping hard on the side of Pet milk cans so that they locked onto the leather soles of our shoes and walking around crazily for our own amusement.
Going with my Grand Pa on the mule and wagon to the woods to cut wood for the stove and fireplace. Or, with my Dad on the pickup to cut green scrub oaks for burning in the heater.
Using a kerosene lamp to see how to clean up the kitchen and to light up the fireplace room before bedtime. I was not allowed to carry the lit lamp from one room to the another.
Marveling that my Grand Pa had the only running water, with a shower bath and hot water automatically heated by the wood cook stove in the kitchen, for miles around. The pump and several other machines were powered by an old cast iron external crank gas engine from the teens. But we all still used an “outdoor” toilet.
My Grand Pa letting me kill my first hog for butchering with his Stevens Maynard Long Rifle Jr. single shot with a shot to the forehead. They, and lots of neighbors, always “killed hogs” on a cold fall day. The water had been heated in wash pots and dipped into barrels partially buried at an angle so the hogs could be scalded prior to being scraped clean of hair and dirt. When the butchering was done, then came cleaning of intestines for sausage making and the rendering of the fat for lard and cracklings. One of my favorite things on that morning was eating brains and eggs for breakfast. All of the participating neighbors got some meat for their effort.
Plundering through my Grand Ma’s upstairs rooms looking at the left behind artifacts of my mom’s and two uncle’s college days and my Grand parent’s days of operating a general store (small). I learned as much there as I did at the government grammar school.
Being so inquisitive about things mechanical that I tore up every clock or other contraption I could get my hands on, with or without permission, to see what made them work. Fortunately, I had very forbearing parents and grand parents.
Gazing at the “empty” car shed and wishing Grand Pa’s old Model T was still there so I could sit in it and someday drive it. What a pipe dream.
Stories that Grand Pa would tell me about the old days of his childhood and early adulthood. About when he saw his first tin can at a railroad gang’s camp. About when he worked as a shipwright during WWI, or when he was a partner in a sawmill, shingle mill and cotton gin. As anyone can see he was a very important part of my life.
Nowadays children growing up as I did would be considered as highly disadvantaged. Hogwash.
Being foreign born, I don't have those exact memories but mine were quite similar. Thank God I had enough money to pry my son out of the clutches of the American success in NYC (Nintendo, Mario Brothers and other brainlessness of the 1970s and 1980s so I had him live with his mother in Seville, Spain, or with me in Buenos Aires Argentina. The children would play as long as they wanted (usually till about 1, or 2 or even 3 AM). One parent would always be at the window watching for the safety of all. They too, played cowboys and Indians, soccer, handball, tags, etc. Following morning the man of the house would find his trousers neatly pressed along with his shirt (starched collar), neck-tie and polished shoes. Women always wore dresses, elegant pocket-books and nylons (those were "new"). My son is a father himself today and just a few days ago asked me where he should take his boy to have a life of a boy? I had no answer.
On the other hand it is not exactly "all downhill". In today's world we are blessed with the absence of the Bee Gees, Madonna and Michael Jackson, the undisputed rulers of trash music ever composed and forced into man's ear. If I think hard enough I'll come up with at least one more benefit of today's world, but I do admit that drawbacks and shortcomings are far more predominant. Or to paraphrase the Bard:
"Banquo:
By the clock 'tis day
and yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp.
Is it night's predominance or the day's shame
that darkness does the face of earth entomb
when living light should kiss it?"
We, (Earthly humans) are just players on this stage called life and seldom know the left from right.
I just moved to northeast Louisiana from Houston and live out in the Parish. (A big change for me a city boy) My land is backed up to what is essentially the beginning of a wilderness that starts where I am and goes west and north through Morehouse Parish and all the way up into Arkansas.
I love it. On your property, you can do what you want, when you want, how you want with no city or liberal regulations. Neighbors hear you shooting next door and they want to come join you.
Back in the 80s we used to play in some woods and throughout the neighborhood in the small town my grandmother lived in at the end of the street. We had toy guns, fought bad guys, etc. Nobody thought anything of it.
Now, kids tear up property with motorized 4 wheelers causing people to fence off their property. Whatsmore, landowners are afraid to let boys play or hunt in their woods for liability reasons in our lawsuit crazy culture.
I don't want to spoil ruin good times in somebody's childhood, but I understand how other landowners feel about this.
in the 80s, I think I was about the only boy in our neighborhood who like to play outside...just about all day every day. Much as I loved Nintendo games, I had to beg and pry my friends away from video games after a while. Even in our Houston neighborhood, there was far more to do than sit in front of a game system for 8 hours