Nostalgia

As I sit here scanning the hard drive on my sons computer because it picked up something,

I looked at a few places on the web and found some pics that take me back.

I couldn't find any pics of gas prices when I was little kid, but I remember my mom and dad complaining in the 70's about the OPEC oil embargo and gas prices going up.

Young folks today don't really seem to understand about price inflation of every day products.  At the store the other day I pointed out the 10 lb chubs of ground beef we normally buy, and asked her if she remembered what we USED to pay for them.  She surprised me by knowing that we used to pay 11.98 for 10 lbs of ground beef.  Now we pay 24.88 for the same 10 lbs.  The chicken we used to pay .69 cents a lb for we now spend 2.19 a lb for.  And this was only in the last 7 years.

A 1.5 lb can of chili that used to cost .89 cents is now a 1.15 lb can and costs 1.49.  A 12 ounce can on chili we paid .49 cents for is now 10.5 ounces and costs 1.19.  Boxes of saltine crackers which used to be 2 boxes for a dollar are 1.89 a box..  The cheap 3 pack of hotdogs for a dollar is gone and it's now 1 pack of 8 hot dogs for .99 cents.

I remember when I was a kid many of our neighbors didn't even have telephones, when my family lived in an apartment building in the Central West End area of St. Louis.  The buses ran all night and it cost a dime for an adult and kids rode free.  No one thought anything was strange for a young white boy to be riding the bus by himself at 11:00 pm as long as he was dressed nicely.  We had recess after lunch every day, where we went out an played kick ball, played on jungle gyms, monkey bars and sung on swings.  And the teachers didn't mind if we climbed to the top and acted like we were King Kong.  Getting hit in the face with the tether ball only meant going to the nurse if your nose started to bleed, not a call to your parents and a trip to the doctor or the emergency room.  We walked or rode our bikes everywhere.  I remember being brought home by the police with my bike a couple of time after 10 at night when I rode all the way out to the airport 8 miles away and had been playing pinball in the game room.  The Airport Police officers didn't want me to get in trouble by riding home after curfew so they gave me a ride home.

We only had 3 maybe 6 TV channels and most of them went off the air after midnight, except maybe the UHF channel that would show old campy movies all night long.

I remember the first "Infomercials" that started taking over the late nights and the TV Stations started staying on the air all night to run them.

I remember the beer can collecting mania that took over all the highschool kids lives like my older brothers.  He and I would go dumpster and trash can raiding looking for cool and interesting cans for his collection.  I remember wading through the ponds on the golf course collecting golf balls to clean up and sell to golfers for .10 cents a ball.

I remember going fishing with my parents and my cousins at Montauk and while I never really caught anything I still had fun trying to make my own tackle to catch a fish.

I remember when I used to go to my Aunt and Uncle's farm where I would walk around all day either with a fishing pole or a little .22 single shot rifle.  A cup of worms and 100 rounds of .22 ammo both cost a quarter at the Western Auto and everyone there didn't see anything wrong with me walking in with a fishing rod in 1 hand and a rifle in the other as I got my bait and ammo.  At NINE years old.

It was a much simpler time back then.

We didn't have cell phones, home computers or in many cases not even television.  At the farm my aunt and uncle didn't even have a TV until I was almost in my teens.  It's not because they couldn't afford it, they could, it was there was just too much work to do to sit around and watch TV.

I remember where to get back home from my aunt and uncles farm, they would put me on a Greyhound bus all by myself.  And no one messed with me.  Everyone was always nice, polite and proper to everyone else.  If someone was rude to another everyone around them would stand up and speak up against the rude person.

I think that is one of the problems with society today.

We just can't be bothered to stand up and say "That's Wrong, Stop It."

We are just to self absorbed in our own lives to even think about the well being of others any more.

And for that, despite all of the other progress we have made, I'm sorry to see we have come too far too quickly.

And we have forgotten who we are supposed to be.