TRY TO REMEMBER
(Under age 60? You won't understand.)
You could hardly see
for all the snow.
for all the snow.
Spread the rabbit ears
as far as they can go.
as far as they can go.
'Good Night, David.
Good Night, Chet.'
 |
| Chet Huntley and David Brinkley |
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.
Almost all of us would
Have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring!), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I don't remember getting seriously injured, buI must have because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a white cap and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we must have been without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box, 270 digital TV cable stations and SmartPhones.
Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could
have been killed!
have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $99 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where
it was such a threat.
it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Danny Winfield from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop and falling off unto bushes Little did his Mom know that she could
have owned our house! Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a jerk.
Ours was a neighborhood run amok!
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.
How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into Group Therapy and Anger Management classes?
We were obviously so ignorant about societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country
ought to be taking Prozac!
ought to be taking Prozac!
However Did We Survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA; AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, WE'RE SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!
It’s good to emember that life's simplest pleasures are very often the best.
We watched Amos and Andy and Archie Bunker without being called a Racist!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful piece of nostalgic writing! This makes me wish I had gown up in an earlier time!
ReplyDeleteAn anti-fragile youth... :)
ReplyDeleteNot really. To US it was just NORMAL –– nothing special –– nothing needing analysis by "experts."
Deletebut that was before America was driven out of her mind by Cultural Marxists dominating enertainment, the news media, the law and the field of education. It was before Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll, before, and leftist-activist Supreme Court upended our beliefs and made us doubt who we really were. It was before Child Psychologists (Marxists all!) began to convince us we were "diseased."
Our fault lay in our NAIVETE –– an innocencethat made us easy prey for evil charlatans, sophist, and agenda driven master manipulators to warp ur thinking..
Ah, the elixir of reminiscence!
ReplyDeleteBut methinks those time are gone FOREVER. Unfortunately.
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DeleteOh I don't know, Les. As the Preacher says: "There is nothing new under the sun."
DeleteEverythng moves in cycles. Heaven only knows how much we'v forgotten, lost track pf, then rediscovered over millennia.
I'm not taking MATERIALITY, which is always in flux, but bedrock moral truths of being on which civilization must eternally rest, lest it be lost.
basically the sets, costumes, hairstyles and versions of etiquette maybe subject to the whims and caprices of Fashion, but UNDERNEATH everything remains the same.
Look at it his way. The world is a THEATER. The SHOWS are always changing, but the BUILDING remains constant.
You have a point Franco. I probably should have said those days are gone during MY generations remaing life on this plant.
DeleteNot to overuse a figure of speech, bu in the theater REVIVALS are very common today, a–– nd have been for a long time.
DeleteBesides, our EXPERIENCES stay with us all our conscious, so nothing is ever really lost –– or at least I have fun it so
I do feel very sorry for the young ones coming up today, –– and even the middle-aged ––,because THEY will have very little to remember that could give them much comfort, pleasrue and satisfaction as they age –– or so it seems to me.
I could always be wrong, snd rather hope I am.
I hope so as well Franco. But suspect you my be right. Although my guess is future generations will adapt and find whatever it is that gives them a measure of comfort. People have been adapting to change for generation. The pace of change grows exponentially with our ever expanding scientific knowledge.
DeleteOnly time will tell, Les. I haven't much of it left –– if I last five more years, I'd be surprised. One never knows, of course.
DeleteI try not worry about things I can't control, but that doesn't mean I have to LIKE what I see.
👍👍👍
ReplyDeleteHopefully you have many years remaining.
All of this made us Survive well. The elimination of all of this makes us Not all survive well.
ReplyDelete