The change was slow at first and then it accelerated, so it’s hard to say. Change builds on the previous change and goes faster. The most drastic and dangerous changes have been in the last couple of years, and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The junk man still came around with a horse-drawn cart. We used to save up the aluminum from chewing gum wrappers and sell it to him for a few cents.
I remember VJ Day because my mother grabbed us out of bed in our pajamas and put us in the back seat of the car to go visiting relatives to celebrate.
My aunt had the white margarine that you mixed with yellow dye so it looked like butter. All my aunts gave us their shoe coupons because our feet were still growing.
My father’s best friend came home thin as a rail and never ate more than one small meal a day for the rest of his life (Japanese internment camp).
One day my father said come with me. We went into one of the little “clubs” that Italian men had in storefronts in Newark’s Little Italy, and there was like a machine with a black-and-white movie on it. It was Super Circus. It was a television set.