Do you remember the good old days here in America? The days when we had record players, transistor radios and 6 channels on television and our parents were happy if they could tune in to PBS or the occasional UHF station! We kids built forts out of rocks & sticks, played SPUD, Dodge Ball & roller skated in the street; climbed trees, played Army, Cowboys & Indians with metal cap guns that looked like the real thing; we rode our bikes without helmets, had drive-in theaters, neighborhoods were nice and free of crime, jobs were plentiful, and people took pride in what they did and were basically happy, safe and free? We had the milk man deliver our milk in glass bottles along with cream, butter & eggs sometimes. Do you remember the Good Humor Man? Whenever we heard those bells, all the kids in the neighborhood (and there were a lot) would start screaming to their parents, “Ice Cream! It’s the Ice Cream Man”! My brother & I considered ourselves lucky if there was an extra 25 or 30 cents for our Mom to give us for ice cream. Most times~ there really wasn’t. But, we survived anyway and did not have a tantrum or call it child neglect.

We survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant & usually spent at least a full week in the local hospital after giving birth! They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and, when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps, not helmets, on our heads. As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes. Riding in the back of a station wagon or pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren’t overweight. WHY? Because we were always outside playing…that’s why! We fell out of trees, got cut, skinned our knees, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from those accidents. We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, Ping-Pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse. Cell phones had not been invented yet but we would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And~ we were OKAY.

Do you remember the Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, the Kitchen Knife Salesman, the Insurance Salesman or the Avon Lady? They really did come to your house & ring the doorbell in those days. They were usually one of our neighbors & we all knew their names; all our neighbor’s names and every single kid on the street too. We didn’t need to lock our doors and windows & our parents never even dreamed of home alarm systems.

In the afternoons (after school) we watched Sandy Becker, Bozo the Clown & the Mickey Mouse Club but since most households had only one television in those days & if you were lucky~ after supper your parents may have allowed you to watch the only late night television show for kids, Terrytoon Circus with Claude Kirschner & Clownie, (7:00 PM – 7:30 PM). As we grew older we watched Ozzie & Harriet, Superman, Roy Rodgers and the Rifleman. In those days, TV stations went off the air by 2 or 3 AM & they showed a still photo of the American Flag, signing off with an orchestral rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. That lasted well into the mid 1960’s. It was post WWII & Korean War era America. In my neighborhood, we kids all got up early on weekend mornings and not wanting to bother our parents~ we turned on the TV. In the late 1950’s the only Saturday morning cartoons were either the old silent “Farmer Gray” or shows like Beanie & Cecil & in the early 1960’s, the Flintstones & Johnny Quest! Sunday mornings we kids had only Davy & Goliath & later in the morning it was either Gumby or Wonderama. You had 2 choices back then on a Sunday morning and it was either TV Preachers or going to Church with our parents~ and since all the parents in the neighborhood kept Sunday sacred, there were no kids allowed out to play until after lunch. Some never showed their faces all day.

The public schools were excellent back then and the classes had 20 to 25 student’s maximum. Sure we had air raid drills and “duck & cover” but we survived & the Russians never did send those missiles over here from Cuba. Indeed~ we all survived the cold war. Everything was simpler back then. No worries about such things as Sharia law in America. That could never happen! America was the leader of the world! Respected and rightly so! We set the model for which the world could follow and the entire world would be perfect. Sure we had gangsters but hey, they built Las Vegas and provided places to gamble and drink & the federal government wasn’t sticking its nose where it didn’t belong then too! But overall, America was beautiful no matter where you went. You could go to the beach and not have 20 foreigners throwing sand and screaming in a language you couldn’t understand or leave trash all over the place. Indeed, immigrants learned English to better fit in~ and they did.

We had room to move back then. We had space. And we all respected each other’s space. Plenty of parking. Very few traffic jams and no long lines unless you were at Palisades Park or Disneyland~ then you had to stand in line for 10 or 15 minutes. I miss those days and they are gone forever unfortunately…we have too many damn people here and that’s a fact! Too many illegal aliens breaking the immigration law that is rarely enforced here in America and those are the very people that those 1960’s & 1970’s TV commercials warned us about when they ran those advertisements about not forgetting to re-register their green-cards! I haven’t seen those ads in over 40 years! Now days~ illegals sneak in and actually manage to vote or have their naturalized relatives vote for the Democratic party who is currently ignoring the law in favor of amnesty & changing American Immigration Laws to suit themselves!

But~~~ I digress.

We used to walk to a friend’s house, knock on the door or ring the bell, or we just walked in and talked to them. Barbie just got a new little sister named Skipper & she had a best friend named Scooter & how could we talk our mother’s into buying one for us. And~ Mary Wells has a great new song out called “My Guy”; isn’t it great? Hey, I saw “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” last week & it was really good! Want to try on your mom’s shoes?

More often than likely, we had to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! As a result, MY generation (Baby Boomers) has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors in History!

I am so lucky to have been born in the mid 1950’s and having lived through some of the best years that any kid could have grown up in here in America. The past 70 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We’ve had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all! Such a shame that we have failed to pass these great and really fun lessons, values & morals along to our children as well as our parents did. My guess is that we’ll know how well we did as parents & teachers when the time eventually comes for ‘them’ to decide whether or not to ’care for us in our old age’ or discard us in favor of an ‘assisted living facility’ as the current politically correct climate prefers. I guess, we’ll just have to wait & see if our children and their generation decide how best to deal with “us” the Baby Boomer elderly. (We took care of both of my parents & my father in law. There was NEVER a thought of a nursing home. We loved them & did what we morally thought was right. In the end, they were all done as an act of true love because that is how we were raised.) Indeed, the newest American law, OBAMACARE & its ultimate consequences may just solve all the problems associated with caring for we, the newest elderly by way of “euthanasia for the us” (the NEW elderly). Because don’t forget ~ our parents are either dead or dying by now! This will most likely be seen to be just as matter of fact to them, as is “abortion for the unborn” was to our generation! (FYI since the passing or Roe V Wade in 1973, the abortion murder count is approximately 60 Million Babies.

To that end, I can only hope & pray that we (I) have passed on more of our (my) Moral & Religious values to our children than the cowardly & politically correct Bull Shit which is currently being peddled by the Liberal Media and their infectious Radical, Liberal and Socialist followers. Our Children and our Country, the United States of America deserve the very best~ from us ALL!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!🙏🙏🇺🇸