Nostalgia – What Came Before

Lately, I consider myself an old guy. The ideals of the young, hip Millennials and Gen-Z elude me sometimes.  I used to recognize the names of celebrities in current events, but that is now few and far between.  I shake my head at car commercials that promote self-driving features.  I quickly scan past TV programs which include some sort of talent show whether it’s about dancing, singing, or cooking.  I’m watching the world pass me by.  But I feel no remorse for my youth and relevance.  I feel no urge to connect with the culture of the day.  I think it’s because I still love the culture of yesterday, flawed as it was.

I see it nearly every day…Facebook posts about how we used to play outside, ride our bikes through the neighborhood, and roam until the streetlights came on.  I see posts about the things we had…phones with long spiraled cords attached to walls, metal lunchboxes (which could double as a blunt weapon) with graphics depicting our favorite TV shows and cartoons, televisions which were controlled with knobs and switches by getting up off the couch and walking across the room.

We got up early on Saturdays to watch Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner.  Superfriends, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker.  Then came the live-action shows…Land of the Lost, Lost in Space, and Shazam!  Interspersed were catchy tunes and lessons from Schoolhouse Rock…we all knew about adverbs, the American Revolution, and how laws were created thanks to them.  These were the best few hours of the week.

When we were out, our parents had no way to reach us except at the range of their screaming voices from the front yard or by calling every other household they knew of (with the phone attached to the wall).  We had no phones in our back pockets.  Our social networks consisted of those friends within bike-riding distance.  But parents had little reason to worry.  No one was snatched off the street for God knew what nefarious purposes.   At worst, we broke an arm or a leg, and the neighbor would patch us up with a Band-Aid and send us home.  We had bloody lips, black eyes, and casts on our broken limbs as trophies to show off at school.

Our parents were the product of a world war and witness or veterans of several others…our only war was the Cold War.  We only worried about The Day After, a made-for-TV movie about nuclear holocaust, and that was enough worry by itself.

We had news sources we could trust.  No bias, just facts.  Walter Cronkite’s sign-off was, “And that’s the way it is,” and no one questioned his veracity…no one had any reason to.  But we were kids and didn’t care about the news anyway.  The world outside our neighborhoods and schools was foreign and irrelevant.

When our president was shot in the chest, the nation was shocked and dismayed.  But he was a tough old coot who quickly recovered and so did the country.  We rooted for the country regardless of who was president.  America was righteous…beyond the capacity of corruption.  We knew it and never questioned it because we were kids.  If any president were shot today, I’ve no doubt half the country would weep while the other half cheered.

Politics was much more subdued…parties clashed but were quick to negotiate and come to a compromise.  America had a clear and common enemy, and the threat of nuclear war ensured it would remain so.  In retrospect, the fall of the Soviet Union might be considered a sad result for our nation.  We had our factions and fractions, but none were more important than the red threat.

Our guns were tiny replicas of the Colt-45, with no orange tip, and they popped caps which were harmless and made the most wonderful smell like fireworks.  We could shoot and kill one another all day long…if we had enough caps.  We graduated to BB guns and very few of us shot our eyes out, although sometimes we shot each other.  Our Tonka trucks were metallic and tough…until they rusted in the rain.  Our hobby horses were wooden.  We learned capitalism from Monopoly and life from Life.  We built blanket forts inside and tree forts outside.  We went to arcades and spent hours on games like Pacman and Donkey Kong (whence came Mario), Space Invaders and Galaga.  We had Pong, Atari, and Coleco-vision, but those only kept our attention for so long before the outdoors called us away.  Then our playground equipment was just short of lethal…toughened us up for adulthood.

We were the kings of all creation…even if all creation was only in our own backyards.  I think kids live in a much bigger world today, too big to wonder what came before.  If it passes me by, I’ll be content remembering the world that was…I’m okay with that.

-Big Steve