One of my high school classmates phoned me last week. He has returned, after many years, to live in our hometown once again. After a hitch in the military and college, (where he played football for Iowa State along with Moe Nichols, also a classmate) he spent many years traveling and moving about the country. His last move, from Colorado Springs back to Knoxville was about seven years ago (a near-record for him) and he was amazed when I mentioned that I’ve lived in this same house since we built it in 1971, well over fifty years ago.
As we discussed things that have changed since we were raising our families, we agreed that we were lucky not to have had to contend with some of the hazards that exist today. For me, it was bad enough to have to scrape up ten or twelve dollars for the popular sneakers of the day – I don’t even want to think about today’s $80+ sneakers – just because they‘re what “everybody is wearing” and they have some celebrity athlete’s name emblazoned on the heels!
I’m also exceedingly happy we didn’t have big shopping malls then. My kids were home on Saturdays, not hanging out at the mall, eating junk food and getting their navels pierced. Credit cards were strictly for Dad during those days. I didn’t even have one, and our teenagers went shopping with real money that they had earned or saved from their allowances. Meals were cooked at home and we all ate together. Trips to MacDonald’s were family outings, not after-school snacks. Our junk food consisted mostly of homemade cookies and popcorn popped in a heavy aluminum kettle on our kitchen stove, not in a microwave oven, which we didn’t yet have. They played pool on a pool table in our basement recreation room and, when they tired of that, we converted it to a ping-pong table.
We had two television sets; a necessity if Mom and Dad were ever to catch the newscasts, and everybody had a radio in their room so they could indulge in whatever their favorite music style was without driving the adults crazy. We didn’t own anything remotely resembling a VCR or video game. We bought lots of children’s books through the school book clubs and went to the library frequently. They discovered the writings of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Michener, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, John D MacDonald and Agatha Christie because the books were there in our home library. Their interests in horticulture, nature, survival, camping, fishing, mechanics and building were nourished by our collection of do-it-yourself books. Board games and card games were family affairs for rainy weekends or hot summer afternoon. We played cribbage, chess, gin rummy and backgammon.
Our kids managed to grow up without the World Wide Web and e-mail. I am eternally grateful that I didn’t have to deal with all the problems and hazards that are so accessible to youngsters and teens in this electronic age. I’m glad they didn’t expect their own cell phones and credit cards.
I’m glad that theme parks were in California and Florida, and I was able to convince my kids they weren’t nearly as much fun as the county fair. Beef Days, new and strictly a local attraction when we first came to Solon, was more like a community picnic or school carnival and a kid could have a fine time on a couple dollars. In later years, when riding herd on four teenagers became impossible and Beef Days got out of hand, we managed to take our family vacations or go on a camping trip during that weekend. Today, with similar celebrations going on every weekend all around us and everybody over sixteen with a car at their disposal, I guess I’d simply stay home and pray!
I managed to cope with leg-warmers, Beetle haircuts, bell-bottoms and cowboy boots but I’m not sure I’d want to face tongue-piercing, baggy cargo pants and purple hair. Call me chicken – call me old-fashioned – and call me serene! I admire the parents who manage to pilot their kids through the maze of growing up today and see them safely into adulthood. I’m just grateful I no longer have that job.