Did You Ever Think You Would See … ?
Questions for people of my venerable age or even younger, down to about 50.
Did you ever think you would see . . .
- Arrogant or sullen foreigners swarming everywhere you look in your own hometown?
- Obscenity and vulgarity beamed into every home 24 hours a day?
- Large numbers of people walking and driving about holding little machines to their ears and paying no attention to their surroundings?
- Two Muslim friendly presidents followed by a Mormon?
- American baseball stars who are not American?
- The foreign policy of the Republican Party dictated by Communists?
- That of the ten most common family names in America, three would Mexican. (Among people below 25, Mexican names make 8 of the top 20. In Canada Patel is 6th and Wong 8th.)
- Men and boys unable to mow the grass without a machine to ride on?
- New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon blown up by dimwitted foreigners armed with plastic tableware? (Those who lived through WWII and the Cold War would not have been surprised by an atomic bomb or invasion by hordes of Chinese. But this?)
- Wars lasting decades in eastern places nobody can find on a map?
- People with unfortunate sexual tendencies publicly flaunting and bragging about their affliction and demanding special government privileges?
- Government control of medicine with the consequent astronomical costs?
- Your privacy invaded by calls from some creep in Calcutta who can barely mouth English and wants to cheat you with some phony prize?
- A college degree almost worthless and the rising generation of Americans certain to be poorer than their parents and lucky to have any job at all?
- Picking up a girl at her house and meeting her parents would be replaced by “hooking up”?
- The complete disappearance of teenagers eager to earn pocket money by doing odd jobs and delivering newspapers?
- Arrogant or sullen foreigners swarming everywhere you look in your own hometown?
Entries(RSS)
American baseball stars who are not American?
No. I knew Mickey Mantle and Hiesman trophy winner, Steve Owens. Mickey is of course dead but Steve still lives down by the University of Oklahoma. I thought about both of them last friday night when our old High School's football team went 0- 10 for the first time in its history. We just don't make'm like we used to. I could see it all coming when I arrived at The University but I never thought it would arrive so fast. But as Tom Fleming is fond of saying, "Kid, it was over before you were ever born!"
"Two Muslim friendly presidents followed by a Mormon?"
Has Mitt Romney won yet? I'm not sure he is going to pull it off.
"American baseball stars who are not American?"
Having grown up with the likes of Zoilo Versalles, Orlando Cepeda....this one does not surprise me.
"A college degree almost worthless and the rising generation of Americans certain to be poorer than their parents and lucky to have any job at all?"
With large, public universities....not shocked at all. Too many tenured bureaucrats getting state pensions for overseeing the indentured servants they call TAs (many of whom do not speak English) and writing books nobody wants to read. Please note this is not an attack on Dr. Wilson. He is a very fine writer.
"Picking up a girl at her house and meeting her parents would be replaced by 'hooking up'?"
I think most people who grew up after WW2 would not be shocked at all on this one.
"The complete disappearance of teenagers eager to earn pocket money by doing odd jobs and delivering newspapers?"
I'm not sure this is the fault of the teenagers. A lot of the jobs that teens used to do--delivering papers is clearly a dying profession but the papers themselves are fading--are now being done by adults. Sad but true.
"The complete disappearance of teenagers eager to earn pocket money by doing odd jobs and delivering newspapers?"
This. Now at fast food places, instead of pimple faced teenagers I see 35 year old men behind the counter, not to mention middle aged 'paperboys' delivering papers at 5 AM by car. Kids are having a harder time getting summer jobs now than even 10-15 years ago. Adults like to blame the kids for the loss of those jobs, but from what Ive seen theyve simply slowly been pushed out of that market.
"Men and boys unable to mow the grass without a machine to ride on?"
To be fair, for some of us a push mower isnt an option. My father has a 10 acre farm that would be a back breaking all-day long job to mow the old fashioned way - before he had a tractor, he had to pay someone to mow it.
Well, I was born after WW2, and I've been shocked and amazed by most of the articles in Professor Wilson's bill of indictment.
The de-Americanization and africanization of our major sports has got me to the point where I don't even know or care who's playing in the World Series or who won the Indy 500 any more, ignorance that would have been inconceivable when I was a boy. One of my first girlfriends was from one of the first Mexican families in Chicago's old Pilsen neighorhood; you never could have convinced me in 1966 that that whole section of the city would become a Mexican village. And I never did "go all the way" with that sweet little thing; respect, fear, lack of a safe place, my ignorance, in other words, the fact that we were still teen-agers, not today's jaded sophisticates, kept us from taking that step.
The war I went to a year later, Vietnam, I expected to be a noble effort that would save a people from a brutal system, as we had done in Korea. Millions of Americans believed the same in the beginning, and followed the war intently and intelligently on every night's six o'clock news, not like these estranged faux hero-worshippers we have today.
When I was a teen-ager and young man, college education was revered by my parents, and I went to college fully expecting to become a better, wiser, and more useful person. And the extent to which I failed in that was due to my incompetence and character flaws, as much as to any shortcomings in the university I attended, and that was as late as the mid-70's.
Tomorrow's our big day! The day we all get to have our say! And so, Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and persue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, ... get out there and be heard!
Arrogant and sullen foreigners: In my little village, there were two kinds of foreigners in the 1950's: the Chinese lady Mr. A. married with all their boys speaking with a deep Southern drawl, and the boys from Dry Prong who came to town to try to date our girls.
As a boy, I never heard a lady say anything vulgar or obscene, and I never heard men say such in front of ladies. Such was saved for the deer hunt when the pickup would get stuck or when Red Johnson broke the horses back and the dead horse fell on Red. A good bit of cussin' was done in the old Indian Inn Cafe, save when the preacher came in; then, most of the men grew silent.
We were on a party line. The phone rang for us about once a week. Granny usually called us on Saturday night.
When I grew up, there were no Muslims, only Moslems, save for the black ones.
Joe Adcock was one of us. He's buried up in Holleywood (correct spelling) Cemetery at the little Southern Methodist Church where we once had a one-room school. Herbert with the weird pronunciation was a foreign name in my time.
Today's American foreign policy looks for all the world like the Brezhnev Doctrine!
We used to have a little 18-inch Lawnboy - built like a mini-tank. I had to mow three acres with it. From late April to late October hardly a day passed that I was not mowing. By the time I had finished, it was time to start over. A boy kept the grass and his hair cut.
Compared to the dimwitted foreigners we were really armed as teenagers; perhaps just as dimwitted but much more heavily armed.
When I was real little, I recall asking my granny what an "Indo-Chinaman" was. Paul Harvey, whom I used to confuse with Pearl Harbor, would talk about it. I don't think that we are supposed to use Chinaman anymore. The same goes for "Oriental." Are we still allowed to say "Frenchman"?
Unfortunate sexual tendencies could get one shot among the hill folk in those days or make one a point of gossip at the Women's Missionary Society.
We did not go to the doctor much. If old folks got that "ol' hardenin' of the arteries," they took a little pill until they died. Then we had a funeral and ate a lot, preparing ourselves for a similar event in the distant future. There were no stints,bypasses or transplants. The government was no where to be seen.
No creeps called; only granny called most of the time, again, usually on Saturday night. My mama remembers when drummers, usually Jewish, would come to the plantation to sell their wares. They usually took supper and spent the night. They were good conversationalists and always had something for the kids.
Financially, I would be better off had I continued mowing grass and expanded my business rather than going to college. I did,however, meet my wife in college; and she has remained faithful these forty-two years. I got something out of it.
If girls of the 21st century had daddies like those of my day, there would not be much hooking up. One of the prettiest girls in our town rarely got dates. We were all too scared of her daddy.
I raised and sold tomatoes; I cleaned tombstones - one dollar a tombstone; my friend and I dug graves for five dollars until the sheriff and his prisoners put us out of business; I collected green pine cones for the U.S.Forest Service; I cut pulpwood for a fallen preacher. One hundred dollars and a meal won't get a teenager to work today for a day.
The Commonwealth of Pollock is being invaded by foreigners; but they are mostly Yankees coming in to take the good jobs in the industries the Chamber of Commerce has brought it. That is progress!
Clyde,
I know I'm at least as old as your venerable three score years and ten. While all of the "Did you Evers" circle my heart, the one that tugs at me the most is the "hooking up" replacing a humble approach to the door of one's desire. I was forbidden to cross the property line of my great love for more than a year, until my pitiful persistence broke down her mother's resolve. I have proven myself with 51 and 1/2 years of marriage, but my love and her sister still tremble at their 93 year-old mother's fierce love. I will gain her trust, but not if she thinks we are "hooking up."
John Willson
As to fast food places, is it my imagination or my irritable old age,, or they have changed too? I remember them as they first appeared as clean, pleasant, efficient places staffed by local teens. Now they seem to me ditry, loud, slow, and staffed by aliens.
Clyde,
They say young Americans won't take those kind of low paying jobs. You might try Hooters on Saturday night or Buffalo Wild Wings on Sunday morning for the NFL report. I hear you can run into alot of young Americans at these kind of "higher end" places. (Or was it "hind end" places?) Anyway, its all the same these days anyhow. Hope this helps.
PS. "irritable old age, ????" Surely you jest.
John Willson, (Alias Fabius )
Congratulations Mr. Wilson. It is a rare and beautiful thing to even hear of let alone witness a life long marriage these days. 51and 1/2 years is more than half the whole. My Father passed away a few weeks back, about two weeks after 66 yrs of marriage to my Mother. We lost the head of our family but our heart still lives. Again, my congratulations to you and your beloved for such a noble achievement.
My next-door neighbors celebrated their 50th this summer while I was attending the summer school in Rockford. I arranged to have flowers delivered before departing for Illinois. They were the first people greet me when I came back to the old neighborhood. They recognized me immediately, although it had been about 40 years since I last lived here. Mr. Peters may feel a twinge of further regret when I report that my neighbors have a family business--my daughter's contemporaries in their family work it now--that does lawn maintenance and snow removal.
Congratulations from me, too, Mr. Willson!
Is it smug of me to report that, whereas I encountered many who were arrogant or sullen--overwhelmingly black, Indian, and/or young rather than foreign, though, it grieves me to say--during my long residence in Chicago, back home in the Twin Cities, such are far scarcer on the ground? I was under the impression that the TCs had changed in terms of public congeniality, and perhaps it has, but compared to Chicago, it's Mayberry.
Finally, yes, Clyde, the fast food places have quite degenerated. I had to give them up completely around the turn of the century.
It's incredible how much this list resonates with me... and I'm not even 30 years old! Things have really gotten worse since I was even a teenager.
"Your privacy invaded by calls from some creep in Calcutta who can barely mouth English and wants to cheat you with some phony prize?"
Somewhere I have a cut-and-paste letter informing me that I won some foreign lottery. I just needed to wire a lot of money to pay the taxes so my winnings could be released and sent to me.
Clyde Wilson: "Two Muslim friendly presidents followed by a Mormon who evidently wants
the foreign policy of the Republican Party dictated by Communists? "
Dr. Wilson,
I can see the suspense of it all is killing you, just like its killing the rest of us.
"Picking up a girl at her house and meeting her parents would be replaced by 'hooking up'?"
Some traditions endure. A young man just the other day asked for my permission to marry my younger daughter. I realize that in the past, it would have been a request to court her, but let's be thankful for what we can preserve. (Many years ago I asked my wife's father for his permission to marry her. We celebrated our 43rd anniversary this past June.)
Like Mr. Moses, I'm not old enough to have any real say so in this thread, but I will add something that happened locally that may seem silly but still shocks me. I'm not far from Fredericksburg, VA, a place of great history. The "old town" is, to some degree, still preserved, although often overrun by the obnoxious vermin of the nearby University of Mary Washington. However, last Saturday, over 400 people dressed up like animated, rotting, cannibal corpses to shuffle around the streets. The pictures from the newpaper article, of which I'd rather not give a link, show that most of these costumes were very graphic (i.e. eyeballs falling out of sockets, chunks of flesh missing . . . etc.). Participants included men and women clearly in their forties or north of there, and many included their children also dressed up to resemble graphicaly decomposed cadavers. The crowd would also try to "interact" with innocent folks who chose the wrong day to go antique shopping. But, much like the surf porn for charity initiative, it's all okay because each participant donated a canned food to a food shelter.
That this type of behavior is seen as perfectly normal is hard for me to swallow. That I am the outcast for voicing any concern over this is mind-boggling. I'm just glad I didn't have my children there at the time as I would have been hard pressed to have kept my temper. If one chooses to dress up in public like a monster, I don't see why I can't publicly treat that person as a monster.
This is a society? This is a community? At times I think that if all of my children wind up being called to cloistered and secluded life I would fall to my knees and thank God with fervor.
" If one chooses to dress up in public like a monster, I don't see why I can't publicly treat that person as a monster."
Vince,
I quite agree. Afterall, is this not the libertarian way?
On a brighter note, Fredericksburg, VA is, was, once upon a time, etc., a beautiful town and I thought Mary Washington a good and decent University. Stonewall Jackson, Lee, Washington's family,the river, the homes of heroes. It was my wife's favorite. Tell me there is still something left of it other than a quaint place for bureaucrats in Washington to sleep and a place their children exercise their perverse neurosis and expanded freedoms.
Mr. Cornell,
I quite sympathize with you. I've told my two sons that this was the last year they will be allowed to trick-or-treat: next year we celebrate via the church calendar, i.e., all hallows eve; All Saints Day; All Souls Day. I'm sick and tired of subsidizing all the evils associated with halloween, while allowing the great religious feasts underlying it to wither away.
Mr. Jacobi,
We don't trick or treat (there's really no where to do such a thing - we'd have to walk about two acres per neighbor - the reward to effort ratio wouldn't bear it out), but we have done little costume parties with the kids and had a fun time on all Hallow's Eve. Then, we dress up like Saints on All Saints Day (and, naturally, fit Mass into the schedule somewhere). I will say, though, that the stress of having to come up with about 12 different costumes over 2 days can make the end of October as hectic as Christmas Eve! I've started taking off from work just to keep some level of sanity.
Robert,
It's not all gone. At least not yet. There's still a little charm left in old Fredericksburg. There's still the nice Belmont plantation house (I have to give credit to UMW for taking care of it), acres of preserved battle fields, still a good number of horse farms, and beautiful stretches of the Rappahannock. I've got little good to say about Mary Washington and its ilk, but it's the inevitable evil of being a "college town". She may have been good at one time, but she has fared the last several decades no better than any other college. Nearby is the Bowman Brothers distillery, the only place other than Kentucky where that magical elixir known as Bourbon is made. I'm just around the corner from Hartwood Winery which makes a tasty Rappahannock Red. And even Carl's Ice Cream shop is a nice stop so long as the patrons are wearing some semblance of clothing (one hot summer day some old feller crawled out of his jeep with only some shorts on, and my children stared and giggled and shouted "naked boy" - the phrase they call out when the youngest boy squirms out of the bath tub and goes racing down the hallway - I don't know if the old feller was embarrassed but I know I sure wasn't).
So it's not all bad. Not yet. Alas, if the current trend holds, though, it will be swallowed by D.C. in about 20 years. Woodbridge is nothing more than a D.C. suburb, and in a few years will be what Fairfax is today. At the rate of growth (Stafford is the fasting growing county in all of Virginia), that will put Fredericksburg as a new Woodbridge soon. D.C. is finally coming to take Fredericksburg for good, and this time there's no need to go through Cold Harbor, fight up the James, or try to scramble across Manassas.
The one bright ray is that they do a lot of Civil War reenacting here. The 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fredericksburg is this December. The enrollment for the Confederates filled up almost instantaneously with a long waiting list besides. The Yankees, true to form, will enlist a lot of dopey college kids from UMW who enjoy playing dress up. So who knows. Perhaps all is not lost.
"Tell me there is still something left of it other than a quaint place for bureaucrats in Washington to sleep and a place their children exercise their perverse neurosis and expanded freedoms."
Free samplings at the Bowman still
Dr. Willson--congratulations. This speaks highly of the splendid character of all the folks involved.
This article and some replies to it renewed a fading memory and made it quite distinct, and I hope it is not too tangential.
Roughly ten years ago I was subjected to a HR training from my still-current employer. One of the examples given for the one-two sentence point of the whole indoctrination went as follows:
"In the office, one worker has displayed in his cube a Confederate flag. Would a reasonable person find this offensive? Yes. [No dissent followed, of course.]
"In the office, one worker has snippets of Bible verses displayed throughout his/her cube. Would a reasonable person find this offensive? No. [No dissent followed.}
The company no longer uses these opposing examples, undoubtedly because the second scenario is no longer accurate. I am in my mid-thirties, and, yes, I did think I would see...