THE OLD DAYS

I’ve been getting a lot of emails that refer to the old days and the terms that were used long ago in the 50’s and 60’s. If you tried to refer to these terms with the younger generation, they may not understand what you are talking about.

I was in a conversation with a nephew of mine recently and we were talking about keyboards and software. I had to ask if he knew what a typewriter was, and was afraid to hear what he might have to say. I recall a typewriter being something of a luxury tool, one that Mom owned and kept hidden away from her brats. That was the 50’s hardware, and the software was the ribbon that you tried to get a third go around from before you spent some money on a new one.


Autos in our day were more interesting, we could manipulate them, and make them into another image other than what the manufacturer intended. You could “Chop and channel” or add: “fender skirts” or even put in a “Continental kit” to give the car new direction and flavor. Today’s cars are not altered like they were in the old days.

Of course there was such things as dimmer switches that were located at the floor board near the break, or clutches and even decorative “steering or necker knobs” to accentuate the interior of the car.

Today’s cars are too sterile, too hi-tech to fool with, unless you are a geek.

Even our language has evolved into a streamlined vocabulary of certain words and phrases, made so we don’t need to be vocal artists and paint pictures with words. I wonder where the poets will come from tomorrow.



PLASTIC AND CHROME

I recall when we jumped out of the 40’s and into the 50’s the age of plastic and chrome. I recall my folks replacing our porcelain topped wooden table with a draw and the wooden chairs for a plastic and chrome table and chairs. The chairs were heavily padded and didn’t last more than 5 years. The flavor and beauty of the wood and porcelain were lost forever! Instead we traded wood for plastic that eventually cracked, discolored and the stuffing puffing out.

Cars became automatic and so the art of stick shift began to disappear from our present day reality. Running boards made a slight comeback but for the most part are gone.

In one email I received it mentioned: “Coast to coast” and we thought “Oh wow! They are televising something from San Francisco, coast to coast!” Today we televise from the moon! Not even “world-wide impresses us any more.

Many of us never went on a plane until we married, some us never went on family vacations until our husbands or wives planned one. Everyone seemed too poor to go on anything but a bus or subway, and never overnight.

A new car? A new car was something you saw in color in a magazine ad, or in black and white on TV, hardly ever in person.

And the streets we grew up on, seemed so much larger than they appear to us today!

But are there any real good old days? Yes, there are now, and they belong to the younger generation. I hate to say this, but ours were better, more creative, and certainly more interesting.