Hell In A Handbasket

Originally published in The Spectrum in November, 2002

A news flash for you: The World Is Going To Hell In A Handbasket.
I remember my first encounter with that statement.
At 8 years old, I overheard my paternal grandfather punctuating a long-winded diatribe with “the world is going to Hell in a handbasket”.
I don’t remember the topic which inspired the statement, but I do recall the imagery.
In 1969, I had grown up with supermarkets, which involved wheeled shopping carts.
I didn’t understand what a “handbasket” was, but since it was apparently the vehicle in which we were traveling to Hell, I figured it couldn’t be a good thing.
My grandfather got out of the “Hell In A Handbasket” industry when they planted him in 1972.
He won 2nd place in game that was popular back then, called “I’ll Bet I Can Smoke 3 Packs Of Cigarettes A Day Without Dying of Cancer”.
(Unfortunately, the only people I ever met who won that game were those who got hit by buses.)
My dad inherited the “Hell In A Handbasket” franchise, and business was booming.
According to him, the Democrats and the Commies (which is redundant, because he believed the terms to be synonymous) were responsible for Nixon’s implosion.
We had lost the war in Vietnam.
And Hippies were ruining everything.
Being children of the 1960’s and 70’s, most of my friends disagreed with my dad’s philosophy.
They thought he was just too old fashioned, and that the world was really a wonderful place full of new ideas and opportunities.
We alI tried to maintain that optimism through the 1980’s, when “greed was good”.Now I’m in my 40’s.
Most of the things I read in the news confirm that my grandfather and father were right.
I’ve adopted their philosophy, although I’ve updated the vernacular.
“Hell In A Handbasket” has been replaced with “That Sucks!”, but the sentiment remains unchanged.Kids today have taken my former place in the heirarchy, convinced that I’m just old fashioned and out of touch.
They see nothing wrong with the fact that “Ozzie and Harriet” have been supplanted with Ozzie and the Osbournes.
(It’s ironic. Back then, I insisted to a parent that Ozzie qualified as “music”. Today, kids insist Ozzie qualifies as a parent.)
Schools without armed policemen have become as foreign to them as the old one room schoolhouses were to me.
And Constitutional Rights are as relevant today as the Magna Carta was in the days of disco.
Every generation has “H.I.A.H.B.” as a rite of passage.
It is usually bestowed with the confluence of the first gray hair and puberty-bound offspring.
Of course, in my humble opinion, I believe the handbasket now has shuttle rockets attached.
Everything in society is moving at warp speed, including our impending demise as a species. I am not crotchety, nor a fuddy-duddy.
In today’s words, I am simply “politically incorrect”.
Typical.
Even my status as a *@&!%$# has become a kinder and gentler insult.