Those were the days...

That was a title of an old Cream song as it was of the Mary Hopkins song, both in 1968, or the theme song from All in the Family but  Nookworms blog about her youth inspired me to think about my early youth in the '50s and the '60s. A lot of what she wrote was similar to my recollections. We didn't have the technology that we have today. We did have television, which at the time was in it's infancy, but still was a pretty incredible thing. I remember watching I love Lucy when it was on as a regularly scheduled program, Monday nights. I remember watching the Honeymooners which was always and still is a favorite of mine. I remember walking to school. We lived very close. I remember my kindergarten teacher who was also my 3rd grade teacher and later my piano teacher. We would go out and play during the summer and wouldn't go home until you heard your mother hollering for you to come home for lunch or supper or curfew. We rode our bikes around. Kick ball, whiffle ball, stick ball in the street. The telephone pole was first base, the manhole cover second and so on. Tag, hide and seek, digging holes in the dirt and getting completely filthy. It was a time of the polio scare and I knew a girl who had it. I remember having a plethora of childhood maladies from chicken pox, measles, ruptured appendix, an eye operation and scarlet fever during the families first trip to Italy in 1956. We were there for almost 3 months. I would get killer colds that would knock me for a loop, I especially remember having walking pneumonia. It would seem that I was a sickly child but I really wasn't. Then at a point in my teens I stopped getting colds and truthfully I don't think I've had a cold since sometime in the 1960's. I have been quite lucky to be so healthy in my adult life. As Nookworm said in her blog, I really don't see kids playing outdoors anymore. Their lives are much more structured and of course they have much more technology than just television. Now to be perfectly honest if all this stuff was around when I was young I would probably be doing the exact same thing. It was a simpler time. I remember the testing of air raid sirens every Saturday which would be really scary and creepy. Things are much more complicated these days. When I am stopped at a light and I see the person in front of me with their head down I know they're texting. When I was driving back then, well not in the '60s, if someone had their head down they were either asleep, dead, or more than likely rolling a joint. I may have done that once or twice.

Still I have to say I had a happy childhood. I was lucky to grow up when I did. The world was still in turmoil. It always has been, we just have much more sophisticated...well everything today. I still remember seeing Nikita Krushev saying to America, "We will bury you!" The nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States was pretty scary as well.

The marathon is Monday. I have never gone to the marathon to see it but I have been there on marathon day a few times because I was working at one of our stores which is in the Prudential complex on Boylston St. in downtown Boston. The finish line was not far from the front door of the store.

    No matter what your shift was, unless it was overnight, which I have also worked, you weren't going home for quite a while. But that was ok because this was a big event and it was pretty neat to witness runners going by the front of the store towards the finish line though I never saw a winner cross it. The crowds were large and the store was busy. I will be off on Monday but I have no desire to go to Boston. It can be one big pain in the ass normally speaking, though it's only 5 or 6 miles away.  Here's a shot of Boston from across the street from where I used to live about a half mile from where I live now.

Well that's it for this episode. I have to hit the hay as I do have to work tomorrow. The less I work the less I want to work. I have been working for 47 years. I find that hard to believe, but it is what it is and it's better than being dead. And on that cheery note...
I'm outta here.