Good Old Days

Published in the Desert Valley Times
July 5, 2005

It’s easy to find faults and flaws in today’s society, providing enough literary inspiration to keep a whiny old columnist like myself in material for centuries.
Every once in a while, I find myself wishing for the “good old days,” which basically encompasses any time period that isn’t now.
Sometimes I think about what a great life it must have been back in the Wild West days, riding the prairie and shooting bad guys.
At least, that’s the way John Wayne liked to tell it.
Other times I ponder what I missed back in the innocent and wonderful fifties, with exceedingly cool cars and care-free times where the worst venereal disease to afflict most teenagers was a bad hickey.
Even the rollicking twenties holds an allure, with images of flappers and speakeasies that promised excitement and adventure.
Admittedly, I’ve never waxed longingly for the time of the Great Depression, although I am quick to admit that it was the tempering forge which produced some of the most honorable, ambitious, and patriotic men and women in the history of the country.
However, when I find myself getting too nostalgic, I try to remember the facets of those eras which were less than appealing.
For example, the one reality of the Wild West that is never portrayed in the movies is the, um, most natural.
I’m sorry, call me spoiled, but that whole “making doody outside” thing isn’t what I would consider a Kodak moment, particularly when you consider that farmers and cattlemen never grew an annual crop of Charmin.
I shudder to think of all the things they used in its stead.
While we usually think of the pioneers as hardy and tough, the truth is that the list of simple things that could result in death is a long one.
Some contemporaries point to the 1800s as being nutritionally superior since cancer wasn’t as prevalent as it is today.
However, the truth is that most people died of something far less harrowing long before cancer got a crack at them.
Remember, this is a time when people died of that nebulous disease “old age” long before their 55th birthday.
And it takes a lot of fun out of the idea of running down to the store to pick up a few items when you consider that the trip to Ye Olde 7-Eleven was measured in days instead of minutes.
Moving on, there were plenty of hot times back in the twenties, particularly in the cities.
This is attributable not to the pearl-draped women doing the Charleston, but because air conditioning was not yet a part of the building code.
Today, Americans occasionally whine because high-speed internet hasn’t quite reached their zip code.
Back then, the big wait was on that mystical innovation known as “electricity.” Again, call me pampered, but I’ve grown attached to the alternating current teat.
Which brings me to the fifties.
Yes, it was a boom time.
Unfortunately, the biggest boom was the one we feared from the Russians, who we finally learned to refer to as the Soviets just in time for the USSR to be dismantled back into being Russia.
These days, we pay lip service to the security concerns about terrorists.
However, schools aren’t running “terrorist” drills where kids are taught to hide under their desks in the event someone named Hassan drops in.
Back in the fifties, children were instructed to hide under their desks in an orderly manner in the event of a nuclear attack from the Commies.
I’ve often wondered what miraculous stuff those desks were made of, a material that could ostensibly withstand the thousand-degree heat of an atomic explosion.
Personally, I’d like to build my next house out of that stuff and tell the insurance company to take a hike.
The truth is, each generation has its challenges.
We have ours, including a hundred-year addiction to the economic heroin known as fossil fuels, ways to extend average life-spans beyond the century mark, and a dangerous, conniving, insidious band of counter-revolutionary terrorists known as the U.S. Supreme Court.
The best part is that, fifty years from now, an overweight, middle-aged guy with a beard is going to sit down in front of whatever passes for a keyboard, and begin a story about our era.
It, too, will be entitled “The Good Old Days.”