Things Gone Away

Having reached the annoying venerable age of 82, I was just thinking of common things I saw every day in my early years. I’ll bet you, dear readers, have not seen any of them.

Chewing tobacco and spittoons

Snuff, snuff boxes and sticks

Rumble seats.

Party line telephones.

Electric trolley cars

Lots of dirt roads in town, not to mention the country

Front door deliveries of milk, ice, rare telegrams. And mail twice a day.

Mules.

Cotton fields as far as you could see and out to the edge of the road.

Goats kept behind the house.

Nearly every grown man was a veteran of WW I or II.

Real biscuits.

Buttermilk.

30 cent gas; 5 cent soft drink; 3 cent postage stamp; 10 cent bus fare, hotdogs and movie admission. Soft drinks and beer in real bottles, not cans or plastic.

Christmas parades with lively marching bands from black schools.

Teachers who actually made you learn or else. Principals and fathers had applicable belts. Of course, they had real content to teach.

Nobody had ever seen or heard of a Volswagen, not to mention a Toyota. Likewise an exotic thing like pizza.

Prohibitively expensive long distance phone calls, usually only for announcing death.

Almost nobody I knew, except veterans, had ever been on an airplane.

People with polio and theories about its cause, leading us to hours of swatting flies.

Houses, churches, and schools without air conditioning, but with real windows you could open.

Only a few immigrants in town, refugees from Communism, which we knew was a bad thing.

Doctors who would do house visits.

A few politicians left who were genuine Southern orators.

Small black and white TVs, getting only one channel, on for only two hours a day in the evening.

Doubtless we are now better off in many ways than we were. I suspect there is spiritual decline, however---less personal integrity, work ethic, Christian faith, family loyalty, education quality, more government interference in private society.

​Better off? You tell me.