In the Old Days

In their later years all old people remember 'the old days'. There is almost always a bit of nostalgia, I suppose because those were the days of youth. Somethings never change in the nature of change. That is to say the music of the young is invariably not the favorite music of the old. And some imbedded biases against this or that group tend to go by the wayside. This is not to imply things are always better and better. Man's inhumanity to humanity simply changes in focus and target. Science has always forced, ever so painfully, many religious dogmas to change, or at least become ignored. In a materialistic society the older population will always remember the cheaper cost of practically everything. What follows are simply changes that have occurred outside of simple price changes, as seen through my own eyes. The days are gone when a mother says to a 10 yr old kid, "You be home in time for supper or you won't get any". That's a big change. And if you went somewhere as a kid you walked, hitchhiked, or rode your bike---there was no parent driving you in a car from one scheduled supervised event to another. A family, no matter the size, only had one car and daddy used it to get to work. Nobody hitchhikes anymore. I can remember hitch hiking from Maine to New York on college breaks. It never crossed anyone's mind back then that we might get molested, let alone be murdered. It was a free ride and often a free meal or two en route. Programmed activities were few and far between. We had a lot of time on our hands and few electronic gadgets to play games on or message anybody. Phone conversations tended to be short and to the point or there would be squawking about the cost. A long distance call was a really a big deal. I can remember as a PRE teenager going to Ebbets Field to see the Brooklyn Dodgers with neighborhood pals. This required getting to a train station, taking the train to New York City and then a series of subways to Ebbets Field. If kids did that today the Police would be called and the parents scared stiff. Just about everybody talked to us kids back then and no one ever told us not to speak to strangers, although many a stranger probably wished we hadn't. Strangers were mostly friends for any sudden need, and part of a community spy network with direct connections to your parents. Parents had a lot of eyes back then. The front steps and sidewalks of a neighborhood bustled with activities, like what else was there to do but hang out and socialize in the neighborhood. The neighborhood today is your face book page. Much of youthful activity back then was planned nonsense born out of boredom. The favorite comedians back then were the likes of Abbott and Costello. In fact most of the TV stars back then seem really unsophisticated and simpletonian now. I guess this proves we have changed with the times. I can't remember even once fearing to go to school lest I get shot. I can't think of any student in my good size suburban school ever getting stabbed let alone shot. Even fist-a-cuffs were rare. Schools were of a far different atmosphere than now. Back then you had a Superintendent of the Schools, a high school principle, a dean of boys and Dean of girls, a guidance counselor, and that was about it. The teacher was King or Queen in those days, respected by students and parents, and it was the teacher alone who decided how he/she taught and what. There were 'regents' exams statewide and this put pressure on teachers to be effective. Actual vanilla sex was difficult back in high school in those days, let alone teachers having sex with students or an array of internet observed kinkier sex. The current encyclopedic array of sexual acts found on the internet today were non existent in our minds. The mouth had yet to become a primary sex organ, and any sexual diseases easily treated. A trip to the Deans Office, if for anything other than the most minor offense, would likely result in some sort of physical lesson, and depending on the nature of the parent, another physical lesson at home. Little of what I am recalling here are things that I am saying should never have changed. The point is times have changed. We can make fun of the endless sensitivity emphasis of today but it was bad for a lot of people back in my younger days. Almost all of discrimination was simply ignored. Minorities, for the most part, knew their place and as kids we were less prejudiced than ignorant. TV probably played the biggest role in bringing to the forefront how certain other groups were really being treated. I can't remember, as a kid, having discussions with other kids about anyone's rights and I can't remember much serious derogatory comments about other groups either. They had their world and we had ours. A black getting elected President, gays getting married, women getting equal pay or playing important positions in government or industry was simply a rarity, or unimaginable. Back then, those in the least paying jobs could at least make a living, afford a used car, a house, and spend a lot of time with family. Today, many people have to have two jobs to support a family and then everyone wonders why unemployment is high. Duh? If people could make a living with one job, like a waitress, truck driver, etc. then maybe there would be a job for everyone. Today we are busy trying to find out how many jobs we can eliminate in order to stimulate the economy? That sounds a bit strange and those who demand this be done never, ever, of course, think in terms of eliminating their own job to stimulate the economy. It was possible, with certain grades or talents, to pretty much pay your own way through college back then. When we graduated we never much were concerned about getting a job, keeping a job, having to work two jobs, etc. There was job security.. Health care was not a big issue in large part because medical knowledge was limited, the equipment not expensive, and there was no capability to keep some cells going in some form or fashion for months and years. You had your heart attack, cancer, diabetes, stroke, etc, and mostly just died shortly thereafter. When I was a kid the doctor sometimes came to your house to treat you. If you wanted a pizza you had to go and fetch it. Pets were common back then too, but more often the pet's territory was the whole neighborhood. People didn't much walk their dog as let them out. You might not see the pet again until they got hungry. I had one pet dog with a 2 mile roaming radius and food was wherever he found an unattended pot roast, a shot deer hung up to cure, and treats enticed from kids who would raid the kitchen for him. His idea of run and fetch was to take your hat or lunch bag and you had to do the fetching. Wrestling was another fun game for this dog but not for the mother who had to get the dirt stains out of her kids clothing. Through all of this he never bit anyone---but did get rides in a police car back home. He looked so proud of himself sitting in the back seat of a police car. My parents looked otherwise. TV was kind of new, and nobody had more than one, and somehow the whole family had to agree what to watch. There were maybe 5 or 6 channels to watch. The big names back then included such dumb ass vocabularists as Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk. Ok, now we have Sarah Palin, a vocabularist of the inane sort. Of course no one back then remotely suggested Ed Sullivan or Lawrence Welk run for President. That was Harold Stassen's assigned perennial job. 'Family values' as the term is used now, didn't much exist. It was hard to circle the wagons with your own family, or wall your family off from others back then. As soon as kids could walk and ride a bike they were off making their own friends, their own activities. And God forbid your parents came to watch anything you might get involved in----that was pure embarrassment, to have your mommy and daddy hanging around when you were trying your best to be independent and self important. A friend used to die a thousand deaths every time his mom, as he left the house would yell, "Robbie, where's your hat?" Or who wanted to be at bat and have your mom or dad start yelling supportive statements like you were a baby learning to walk, "C'mon Dicky, you can do it". And then if you grounded out into a double play who needs some booming parent shouting "That's alright Dicky, there is another inning". I always felt the kid should run over to the bleachers and yell, "maybe for me, but not for you, now get the hell out of here". Fireworks on the 4th of July were note worthy only if you and your friends could manage somehow to smuggle in fireworks, then take off and find someplace to shoot them off. The biggest thing for us were 'cherry bombs', a firecracker so dull that now they probably don't exist. Parents did worry about it all, but had little ability to stop it. It was fun back then to prey on the worries of parents. Someone told a parent of a friend of mine that some kid had put a homemade bomb in their family woodpile. That was funny when the mom took a broom and went outside and hit the kid over the head with the broom. Another time a kid was outside in his mom's yard and pretended to argue loudly about this or that with a friend, then covered himself with ketchup and threw the bikes together and he laid under one. The mom looked out the window and nearly had a heart attack. Well, funny at the time. Misbehavior by teenagers was creative but rarely destructive like damaging anyone's property. We didn't like the school bus driver so we would invent ways to anger him. One day we all got off the bus, crossed over in front of the bus and deliberately dropped our books and took forever to pick them up. Finally the driver stopped at one stop and this younger kid got off and dropped his books too. The driver gunned the engine to scare the kid, but his mother was in the yard gardening and saw the whole thing--- she called the Principal and told him the bus driver tried to run over her precious child. That was funny. We liked to get off the bus in the winter time and throw snowballs at the bus. The driver went to the Principal and the Principal told us the next time anyone throws a snowball at the bus they walk home for a month. So, the next snow storm the bus driver stops the bus, and each time he pulls away you could hear the bam, bam, of snowballs hitting the bus. The driver wrote the names down and the Principle followed through except we all said no one threw snowballs. Finally, he called in just the girls on the bus and asked them to write down annoymously whether anyone threw snowballs at the bus and put their hand on the bible when they turned in their answer. Every girl said no one threw any snowballs. And they hadn't. When the bus pulled away some of the guys would kick their feet against the side of the bus to make it sound like snowballs. Anyway, I think such creative nonsense is rare now because kids are too busy being amused by their electronic devices, texting every inconsequential movement of their life to the same small circle of friends. Of course, on the other hand, who needs so much nonsense? Still, one can argue that kids need fun, need some freedom, need to have to create ways to amuse themselves. Robots are good, but robots don't have much fun. I suppose maybe the world has become too dangerous for kids to be loose as in the past, and maybe the current close supervision is necessary and good. At one time the weekends were the heavy traffic days, people used weekends to visit relatives and go to the beach etc. Now the heavy traffic days are workdays when hordes of people travel distant miles to get to work. Some things haven't changed at all in this country. It still takes the same amount of time on a train to get from point A to B. No high speed anything unless it is a missile of some sort. Wars in the past were waged with real uniformed soldiers and real simple bullets. Now, the enemy could be anyone in the invaded country, no one is in uniform. There is no ready aim fire at a visual target, you press a button and some smart missile will chase down the ass targeted, enter and totally rearrange the molecular configuration of the target's entire body. In the past, those with the best weapons won, ask the American Indians, the Japanese, etc. Not anymore, if our soldiers die in a war they most likely stepped in the wrong place, or get hit by sniper fire. And, ever since we did away with the draft, wars occur almost endlessly. The idea of going to war and everybody sacrificing or being eligible to fight, if the right age and no connections, is gone. These are the strangest wars now---we are the invaders, and most people, like myself, find no impact on our lives whatsoever. In fact, if we don't get tax cuts from politicians we don't elect them, war or no war. I suppose this is now catching up with us, but hopefully the lights won't go out and the party be over until we ourselves are over and done with the misplaced priorities. Recently I came across a field filled with bumble bees. I haven't seen swarms of bubble bees since childhood. In fact there are a lot of animals and plants which we will never see again, they are all extinct. The rate of specie extinction is greater now than any time for hundreds of thousands of years. Maybe that just means we truly are God's favorite species and eliminating the rest pleases God immensely. It isn't just certain other diverse groups of humans who are a nuisance, other species get in our way and God wants us to keep on multiplying and rid the earth of all these nuisances. Walking through many 'forest preserves' today is like walking through a graveyard to experience humanity. In many of these forests about only thing left are the trees. Some, like the redwoods, have been alive for thousands of years. A forest without wildlife, birds, bodies of water with fish, and insects yet to even be named, is really a graveyard of sorts., and is certainly not a real forest. Even I know not to worry too much, Time stays, WE GO, just as it did without the dinosaurs. There is nothing inherently sad about all the changes above. Change has been the nature of God's evolutionary process from the start. What is noteworthy has been the extent of change in my own lifespan. It is a different world out there today than it was in my yesterdays and it will be a different world in the future years too. While it is possible to understand the past, the future seems beyond our grasp. I kind of feel something really noteworthy is about to give----that Mother Nature is about to play her cards. In the past when Mother Nature has played her cards, she always has won, corrections small and large are made, and the nature of the game and participants gets shuffled around and a new era gets ushered in. Good night souls of the past, wherever you are.