Does Anyone Remember...

March 3, 2013 | Doc Savage

[Doc Savage]

Waking up to the news these days can not only ruin your day, it can make you irritable, frustrated, and sad. That's when I like to spend a few moments remembering the things that made America such a great place to grow up when I was boy. Here are just a few golden memories:

1. How excited I was when I put on my new Cub Scout uniform for the very first time and my mom was so proud of me.

2. How my friends and I would spend the long hot summers fishing down at the North Side Park lagoon with bamboo poles, safety pins for hooks, and bread dough for bait. Caught some good sized Carp in those days!

3. The great feeling of putting on my Little League uniform, and fixing my socks just like the Big Leaguers, and getting ready to play the big game. The uniforms were wool and weighed about 100 pounds but I didn't care. I was walking two feet off the ground every time I took the field.

4. The excitement of opening my Christmas present and finding a Daisy BB gun. Wow! It was incredible.

5. The first time I was old enough to sit at my grandmother's Thanksgiving table with the grownups. I was so excited I could hardly eat!

6. My parents bought me an English Racer bike for Christmas and I put multi-colored streamers on the handle grips. Talk about flash!

7. First time my mother took me down to the Loop in Chicago on the streetcar and we went to see Santa Claus at Carson Pirie Scott. I want to tell you I was a little nervous and could only tell him what my younger brother wanted for Christmas. If you were never in a large department store at Christmas time you really missed something. It was beautiful!

8. Playing baseball every day in the summer at the Little League field. Everyone pretended they were a famous baseball player. I was always Ernie Banks. I used to dream about someday buying a Wilson A2000 glove. I used to rub neatsfoot oil into my old glove and go to bed each night pounding the pocket so I'd be able to make a great catch! I think I wore my knuckles out on that old glove.

9. I remember when they made me a crossing guard in 6th grade and I got leave class a few minutes early and get to my corner station wearing my white safety belt. Pretty neat.

10. I remember that late in August every year Dad would take us down to the Wheaton Sports Shop where all the gym teachers in town worked during the summer, and we'd get a new pair of gym shoes. I can't even describe how excited I was when Chuck Taylor introduced not only Low-Cuts, BUT WHITE!! I felt like a million dollars wearing them that first day in gym class.

Anyway, after spending a minutes down memory lane, I always feel better. Yet also a little sad. America has lost so much of it's wonderfulness. But I'm so glad I had a chance to experience it before it vanished.

Perhaps you'd like to reminisce with some of your favorite boyhood or girlhood memories. Have at it!

[KoRn]

I pretty much ‘grew up’ during the 80s/90s, and even then, those were FAR better times. I miss those decades.(even the damn Clinton years for God’s sake)

[real saxophonist]

I was Navy JROTC. Color Guard and Drill Team. Showed up for school early because my partner and I raised the Flag every morning.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I sit reading your memories, smiling and nodding my head to each. They could be from my own childhood.

Good times. But...that world is forever gone. We have gone through the looking glass.

[WXRGina]

You’re right, Doc, about it being nice to look back and also a little sad. I got a little misty-eyed just reading your list, and I’m a 45-year-old woman. :-)

I know the sadness is not for what we had back then, but for what we have watched our country become today, and the dread we feel for tomorrow.

Thank you for sharing this list with us.

[real saxophonist]

It’s not completely gone. I just read last week that a local high school (which looks like a prison) is getting a Marine Corps JROTC.

[guardian_of_liberty]

Ahhhhh. Fond memories of when I grew up too.
Wish my grandkids could experience that but I fear it's too late.

[Fiji Hill]

A few things I can remember

• Riding my bicycle, at the age of nine, through all of the alleys of West Whittier, Calif., often traveling more than a mile from home, and sometimes shopping for groceries for my family. To do so in that neighborhood--or just about anywhere else in America nowadays would be unheard of.

• Diving off the high diving board at swimming pools. Today, diving boards have all but disappeared in America.

• Playing on the teeter-totter, the jungle gym, and the merry-go-round at the park. These devices are all but extinct in America. In fact, I rarely see kids playing at our local park, which is mostly used by the homeless as a place to sleep.

• Playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and re-enacting WWII (usually the bad guys were the Japanese, not the Germans) on the school playground. Unthinkable in this age of zero tolerance.

[Vaquero]

I would put on FNC in the morning for 3 hours. Limbaugh for most of 3 hours. And peruse FR on and off all day

Now I watch FOX in the AM for about an hour. Same for Limbaugh and peruse FR for much less

I need to keep my blood pressure down. The news is so bad lately I have to stay healthy so when the SHTF I am ready.
MOLON LABE.

[Daryl Dixson]

Great list doc!.. I grew up in the 50’s we would get up in the morning pick sides spend the whole day outside playing baseball using a tennis ball,water balloon fights, ride our bikes four blocks away to a gas station to buy a bag full of penny candy(if we were lucky enough to have a dime and a nickel).Run around until the street lights came on which was the signal to get home. We were told to lookout for strangers but never really had to worry about it, we didn’t even really know about some of the crap that goes on today.
Hate sounding like an old foggy but those were the greatest of times!

[Daryl Dixson]

Great list doc!.. I grew up in the 50’s we would get up in the morning pick sides spend the whole day outside playing baseball using a tennis ball,water balloon fights, ride our bikes four blocks away to a gas station to buy a bag full of penny candy(if we were lucky enough to have a dime and a nickel).Run around until the street lights came on which was the signal to get home. We were told to lookout for strangers but never really had to worry about it, we didn’t even really know about some of the crap that goes on today.
Hate sounding like an old foggy but those were the greatest of times!

[john drake]

Doc, thanks for the post. I can relate to most of your memories growing up around the same time, same area. Those days I’m afraid are long, long gone. The demographic makeup of the country, along with the mindset of most of the American people has changed drastically for the worse and won’t return, especially the demographics. I won’t go there because I’ll be labeled the usual lie. Doesn’t matter, the memories were wonderful, what I only regret is what remains for our children and grandchildren. Hope, prayer and action are to be pursued for the return to some sense of balance/purpose under the Constitution and to reintroduce and promote the strengths and virtues of a Republic under the historical structure of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization before it’s permanent decline. Or die trying....wake up, America, before it’s too late.

[Le Chien Rouge]

Favorite Moments of growing up in the 1970’s Bronx:

1) Anytime a fire hydrant was opened during the summer

2) Watching Reggie hit three HR’s in game 6 of the 1977 world series

3) A good slice of pizza

4) Surviving Ed Koch ‘s idiocy

5) Not becoming on of Son of Sams victims

6) Sneaking off to CB-GB’s to watch the Ramones

7) Getting into fights with pansy Disco fans near Studio 54

8) NEVER getting mugged

9) The Bronx is Burning!

10) Being the only kid who supported Reagan and Loathed Carter.

[DustyMoment]

. . . after spending a minutes down memory lane, I always feel better. Yet also a little sad. America has lost so much of it's wonderfulness. But I'm so glad I had a chance to experience it before it vanished.

Thee and me, brother! It's a shame that younger folks, today, will never experience some of the great times WE had when we were young'uns!! I know that time marches on and our childhoods seem like ancient history, but I would LOVE to see the America of my youth! It was a proud, great country that was respected in the world and we were all proud to be Americans.

Today, Ireland is starting to look pretty good, but it's out of reach.

(sigh)

[Fiji Hill]

Last year, I would listen to Glenn Beck in the early morning, then Rush or maybe Dennis Prager, then Sean Hannity, then Hugh Hewitt. While cooking dinner, I would watch Bill O'Reilly, then Sean, then Greta.

However, I can hardly stand listening to commentary shows today because the news is so bad--and what makes it bad is not the misdeeds of Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al, but the supineness of the Republican and conservative opposition.

[dfwgator]

I'm oooooold! And I'm not happy! And I don't like things now compared to the way they used to be. All this progress -- phooey! In my day, we didn't have these cash machines that would give you money when you needed it. There was only one bank in each state -- it was open only one hour a year. And you'd get in line, seventeen miles long, and the line became an angry mob of people -- fornicators and thieves, mutant children and circus freaks -- and you waited for years and by the time you got to the teller, you were senile and arthritic and you couldn't remember your own name. You were born, got in line, and ya died! And that's the way it was and we liked it!

Life was simpler then. There wasn't all this concern about hy-giene! It my days, we didn't have Kleenex. When you turned seventeen, you were given the family handkerchief. ... It hadn't been washed in generations and it stood on its own ... filled with diseases and swarmin' with flies. ... If you tried to blow your nose, you'd get an infection and your head would swell up and turn green and children would burst into tears at the sight o' ya! And that's the way it was and we liked it!

Life was a carnival! We entertained ourselves! We didn't need moooovin' pitchurrrres. In my day, there was only one show in town -- it was called "Stare at the sun!" ... That's right! You'd sit in the middle of an open field and stare up at the sun till your eyeballs burst into flames! And you thought, "Oh, no! Maybe I shouldn't've stared directly into the burning sun with my eyes wide open." But it was too late! Your head was on fire and people were roastin' chickens over it. ... And that's the way it was and we liked it!

Progress?! Flobble-de-flee! In my day, when we were angry and frustrated, we just said, "Flobble-de-flee!" 'cause we were idiots and we didn't know what else to say! Just a bunch o' illiterate Cro-Magnons, blowin' on crusty handkerchiefs, waitin' in lines for our head to burst into flame and that's the way it was and we liked it!

[real saxophonist]

When I was in elementary school, some kid fell off of something and broke his arm. The superintendent ordered that all playground equipment be removed, 'for the children'.

Three years later, we got a new superintendent, who ordered all that equipment replaced.

[Hot Tabasco]

My parents bought me an English Racer bike

I bought my own for about $48 with money I had saved. Three days later my foot slipped off the pedal and went into the front wheel, breaking 3 spokes........

Yea, I remember! Just had to bring it up didn't ya?

[mylife]

I remember playing DR with Becky McMagnus behind the boiler shed. ☺

[BenLurkin]

Tose are wonderful memories of a world that is gone. Preserve them. Revisist them and share them.

Now, there is no future worth waiting around to see. Every day brings a world more decayed, more sick, more giddy with it embrace of evil.

If I had known had bad things would get, and how quickly, I would never had children. I hope they never have children.for to bring progeny into the clutches of the horror to come would be nothing other than cruel.

I don’t know if we are fortunate to have seen civilization’s peak before witnessing its collapse, or if we are cursed for it.