Things I Miss

 Okay, I'm an old guy.  I've been watching a lot of videos on how things used to be.  I was born in 1951.  I'll let you do the math, but it seems YouTube knows how old I am.  And I can remember a lot of things that kids today would never understand.  I still pick my phone up to dial a number and I'm still expecting a dial tone.  In fact a phone today has replaced many things that are no longer needed.  I still miss the sound my computer made when connecting to the Internet.  But I don't miss paying a dollar a minute for connection charges.

I think what I miss most are books.  All books are now on-line.  I miss the smell of a book, although my wife still reads books.  And if my eyes were better, I'd probably read more books.  But even encyclopedias are no longer needed.  Every question can be Googled.  In fact, Google has replaced tons of books that used to be needed for research papers.  Any historical figure can be found on a YouTube video.  No need to read dozens of articles on an historical figure.  

My parents bought a set of encyclopedias from a door-to-door salesman, who was probably a college student working his way through college.  My mom bought a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman.  In fact milk deliveries were made door-to-door.  Now people put up no soliciting signs to keep the Jehovah Witnesses away, although I have to admit there were times I wanted to talk with them.  

Talk to kids today about Civil Defense drills in case the Russians dropped the big one and your speaking a foreign language.  But I have to admit that ducking under a school desk isn't much protection from an atomic blast.  There was a time when radium was used in shoes stores to show an x-ray of one's foot.  Every shoe store had a flouroscope and kids, especially, lined up to see the x-rays of their feet.  No one thought of the dangers of radium.  

And then there are cars.  Back then automakers didn't give much thought to safety.  Cars didn't have seat belts.  And kids would sleep on the window shelf of the back seat.   Cars were big and heavy and that was the protection.  Cars had chrome bumbers.  Even my spellchecker changed bumpers to numbers.  I had to go back and correct the spellchecker.  But the list is endless of things that no longer exist.  

I don't have the space to include everything, but one of the things we did as kids was to go out and play until the street lamps came on.  Parents didn't care where we were, who we were with, or even worry about what we did.  We simply played, explored, and went where we wished, just as long as we were home by dark.  I grew up in what were both the worst of times and the best of times.  I got scrapes, bumps, and bruises, but I survived.  We fought, but there were no gums or knives.  We just had fun.

Thank you for taking time to re-visit the past this morning.  I really need to do more of these, simply because growing up at that time was the best.  I'm sitting here this morning smoking my Peterson Churchwarden pipe here on the patio, unlike back then men smoked pipes most anywhere they wished.  I miss those days, but the pipe is still the same.  My coffee this morning is a flavored coffee by a company called Manatee.  Thank you for your time and Peace to each one of you.

Dave