Sunday’s Reminiscence

For this post I'm plugging something that crossed my mind today. Imagine that... something coming cross your mind.

After opening a piece of mail that contained a book I soon hope to read, and flipping through, I happened to latch onto a section describing how much fun the 70's and 80's... leading into the 90's were. Oh, there are no truer words.

So, like me, I got to thinking around... remembering how my parents, and grandparents, talked about their days. I don't know, maybe they hoped to instill pride in us, or the will to want to work hard, have it easier, perhaps remember where we came from... I'm not entirely convinced on this view, still musing on what day they really hoped the next generation would see. I mean, please re-read this part... and do like I do. Really think about it.

And yet still, I pay homage to talk of how the food was better, not so diluted. I laughed at my father scoffing about Wonder-bread; Guess the doughy stuff was nothing in comparison to what bread was made of years before. I think about him talking about the days when the milkman brought milk to the door and sat it on the steps. Think it cost a nickel. There were about five telephone operators (in the entire city?–number may be exaggerated), but these few operators personally connected each call...one telephone sat in the center of the block... you picked it up and said, "hello operator... I want to speak to Sam," and the operator patched the call to Sam... your local delicatessen, grocer, or someone along that suite. Personal calls came through too... probably for number runners though. But then there's my mother too, who believes they had more fun at parties in her dancing days, than I had in mine.

That was the rich side of life, the good part, because I also heard a lot about the hard, dark days... struggling through post-slavery, civil wars, wars, and the Depressions, the installation of Jim Crow and the civil rights era when most weren't counting as much fun and good times as they recounted the humiliations, cruelties, and insensitivities... all in strife, struggle and hope that the next generation would have it better.

I guess now with that, I'm not so sure how I want to put what zipped one way, and then back the other way across my mind. I'm thinking... and maybe it's just me... though I do keep hearing it here and there... about those who experienced the 70's, 80's, and leading on into the 90's, recounting how it was, as Con Funk Shun so judiciously jocundly (how you like them two together) sang it... Fun! Fun! Fun! Man those were some fun times!

Now, maybe the way I spelled fun isn't exactly how the sentiment 'hoping the next generation would have it better' was meant to be taken, and I humbly respect those who made it possible for me to have known of such a time, but have no regrets reminiscing on what happiness does for the longevity of the spiritual well-being.