THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Back when … well, whenever, things were better. Right? People loved each other more, spent more time with family. Life was simpler.
Exactly when was that?
Was it the 1950s, Back when the U. S. and Russia detonated nuclear weapons above ground, when milk tested positive for radiation? When school kids routinely practiced scuttling under their desks in case of a nuclear attack?
When everyone smoked cigarettes?
When women had to find a back alley abortionist to end an unwanted pregnancy and the only means of birth control were condoms and diaphragms? (Okay, plenty of people think this was a good thing because, you know, women who abort should die and sex is only for making babies.)
When schools and most businesses remained segregated? When homosexuals could be beaten to death? (Another good thing, right, for all the racists and bigots out there?)
Back when there weren’t any cell phones or cordless phones and television only came in three channels in black and white?
Oh, you mean earlier than that? Back in those halcyon days when folks sat on the front porch and ate homegrown food?
Like the 1900s?
Back when nobody had automobiles and you had to saddle up to go anywhere? When families traveled by wagon on the rare occasions they went to town? When horse dung littered city streets and nobody had indoor plumbing? We loved hanging ourselves over a stinking hole in the ground and freezing our privates while relieving our bowels in January. Right?
When three generations all lived in the same house?
Ah, the good old days before modern medicine invented antibiotics and people died of tuberculosis because nobody had figured out it was a curable, contagious disease.
Those days, so wonderful without any of these modern distractions like radio or television or rural electricity so everyone could enjoy dinner by the light of kerosene lamps or candles.
Yes, gee whiz, back before welfare and food stamps and all those other pesky handouts to the slackers, how we miss working in the fields all day, milking cows, butchering hogs, because if we didn’t we wouldn’t have anything to eat.
And how we miss sewing all our own clothes and all the women wearing corsets and long skirts.
When women couldn’t vote.
Those fabulous days when no one could talk about birth control or buy condoms because it was against the law.
Further back? Like 1850, when much of the labor to produce goods or foodstuffs was performed by African slaves? When it was legal for husbands to beat their wives as long as the stick they used was no wider than their thumb? When children worked in coal mines? When no one had heard of weekends or sick leave or vacation time or minimum wage?
How far back, exactly, did you think we’d have to go to get back to “the Good Old Days?”
The colonial era when poor people and random miscreants were rounded up to work on ships or turned into indentured servants and no one had the right to vote?
Or the 1600s when people who couldn’t pay their debts were imprisoned? When those who didn’t agree with the dominant religion could be burned as a witch?
Or the 1500s when Protestants and Catholics fought endless wars?
Or the 1300s and 1400s when bubonic plague killed one-third of the entire European population?
I mean, how far back do we go? The Crusades? The Roman Empire? Ancient Egypt?
In all those times, war ran rampant as nations ruled by kings fought over resources and territory. People starved and died of diseases that are now preventable or easily curable. Women died in childbirth and half the children born died before adulthood. All the inventions we now consider normal didn’t exist—heated homes, air conditioning, toilets, sinks, glass windows that open and close, motorized vehicles, air travel, ambulances, hospitals and medical doctors, understanding of planets, stars, and our sun, microscopes and the world of bacteria, viruses, cells, and atoms, organized educational systems and widespread literacy…
Could it be that the fondly remembered good old days were simply the days of our youth when we didn’t have to earn a living and didn’t know enough yet to worry? Could it be that those early years of playing in piles of leaves or swimming in a creek or coming home from school to savor a freshly made cookie were simply the experience of a decent childhood without any real application to the adult world? Or that our memories of childhood gloriously forget the bad stuff we don’t want remember?
What exactly were the Good Old Days?