You’ll enjoy the good old days all over again. Looking back, it was the best of times. It’s hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have. Do you also remember the good old days like this?
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or bags. Riding in the back of a truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We slept without air conditioning, with doors and windows open.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scrap, cooldrink bottle crates, and apple boxes. We used old pram wheels for the back and old ball bearings for the front wheels and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes! After running into the bushes a few times we learned how to solve this problem.
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. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar sodas, but we were never overweight … we were always outside playing. We played with cap pistols and toy rifles and rubber knives.
We petted stray dogs and cats and took them home to see if we could keep them.
We shot off fireworks without supervision or safety precautions ̶ without getting arrested. We walked or rode our bicycles to and from school in the heat, in the freezing cold, and in the pouring rain. We were not afraid to accept a ride from a total stranger when it was raining. We left our bicycle lying in the middle of the front yard at night, and it would still be there in the morning.
We made kites of brown paper and bamboo reeds. We used flour and water to create our own glue. We used gut or strong cotton to fly the kites. To balance out the kite we used old pieces of rag and called it the tail. Our biggest joy was to see which one flew the highest.
We did not have TV and had to listen to the radio for entertainment. Weekends we could go to the bioscope and watch our famous Serial plus the main Cowboys and Crooks film.
We used to get a glass of soda when we sat down and oh how did we enjoy this?! We would then watch the film over and over until they told us to leave.
After many years the drive-in came to surface and this changed the lives of many. If you bought a car the first thing you wanted to do was go to the drive-in.
We didn’t wear designer clothes to school or drive shiny new cars to high school. If we had a car to drive, we were happy with anything that would run no matter what it looked like. We had never even heard of seatbelts or airbags, which probably would not have done any good anyway, with so many people in a Volkswagen.
That generation produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers. We had freedom, failure, success, and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
I hope life brings you much success.