I was remembering a story from my thirteen-year-old self to my daughter as we talked about what each of us consider “the good old days.” I’m not sure good old days is a legitimate term, but we tend to cling to days gone by in this rapidly changing world, which is a much bigger topic for another day. My daughter, born in 1992, was expressing her gladness for having grown up when she did. Her reasons were valid and included playing outside with her sisters like somewhat-feral children, talking on the landline and barking at her sisters to hang up the other phone, a Walkman with cassette tapes which she now considers just one notch up from cave drawings, riding bikes up and down the aisles in the dairy barn where weather was no issue, growing up with technology but not having it rule the day.
When I was growing up, born in 1955, television only came into our home after I had started school. It was a big deal when the man came to our house and installed the television along with the converter that sat atop the tv, a device that switched the antenna from Duluth/Superior programming to CBC television. Saturday mornings were occupied with My Friend Flicka, Fury, both of which were programs involving a horse, Mighty Mouse, and a host of other cartoons with the likes of Deputy Dog, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Snagglepuss. My siblings and I lied on the living room floor, which seemed almost mandatory, our chins in our hands while we ate our Alpha-Bits or Sugar Crisp without worrying about spilling the milk nor fretting about the amount of sugar in said cereal. Television played a role but was merely a temporary distraction from serious play. The television did not become the centre of our attention and other than the news, Hockey Night in Canada and sometimes scary Perry Mason and The Wonderful World of Disney, the tv was seldom on and… it got me thinking.
Lots of homes did not have a television and I don’t remember thinking that a sacrifice or hardship. My mother’s first teaching job was in Forrest (north of Brandon, Manitoba) in 1947, where she boarded with the Phillips family which began a lifelong friendship. They did not have a television. We often travelled to their farm during holiday times. When we visited, every Friday night had a dance in some nearby community hall within the neighbouring farming communities. Babies, toddlers, and older children came along while their parents danced the night away. The little ones were tucked into car beds under the tables at the front of the hall, toddlers stumbled around the dance floor testing their sense of rhythm until they collapsed in sleep on blankets also under the tables. Older children played tag outside and raced around the hall from top to bottom until their legs gave out. Some sort of local trio provided the repetitive sets of music, while wax was intermittently sprinkled on the wooden floor. I can still hear the shoes shuffling while the couples twirled and spun. The night ended with sandwiches and cakes and coffee. On cold winter nights and before block heaters, the men went out to start the cars to be sure they’d start when it was time to go home.
There were many gatherings like those community dances from the good old days. Our farm was the tobogganing mecca most winter Sundays along with annual corn roasts complete with scavenger hunts. But suffice to say entertainment was found outside the home when my parents were newly married and the activities of their children did not interrupt those plans. Consider what we have access to now, keeping us from needing to venture out into our community to speak with one another, to listen to each other’s woes and worries, to argue about politics, to complain about the price of things, and to find out who needs help. We can buy our groceries without getting out of the car, we can go through self-checkout and not have to speak to a human being, we pump our own gas, we bank online or with ATMs, we don’t know our neighbours’ names and we become isolated even in large urban areas and perhaps more so. I do believe something has been lost, and many of my generation are of the same mind. It’s okay to celebrate the good old days. Thinking it a lucky circumstance to have grown up when we did is a wonderful perspective. If each generation feels that, then something has gone right.
wendistewart@live.ca
