If I have posted this before...I apologize! But, I have been thinking about the past and growing up in the twin cities. Maybe I think about it too much! Like a literary character we all know by the name of Miniver Cheevy. A HISTORY OF A LIFE Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons I will admit to being a bit of a dreamer. I seem to have more than my share of Miniver Cheevey’s blood coursing through my veins. I can’t say I was a child of scorn, but I have always been lean in all seasons. 1 Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; And a vision of warrior bold Would set him dancing And, like Miniver, I have always loved the days of old…when swords were bright and steeds were prancing and the vision of a warrior bold would set me dancing and daydreaming. 2 I think it must be so in all times that yesteryear seems to be more exciting. And all men probably say to themselves IF, only if… I could have been born in those times then my name would now be emblazoned across the pages of history. Or, at least it would have been an exciting life to have lived. It would have been exciting because I would have seen history change right before my very eyes and I would have been a part of it. But, of course I did see history change right before my very eyes and like most men and women, I failed to recognize it. 3 Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors: He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam’s neighbors It is given to very few people in life to lead the charge up San Juan Hill or to take their troops across the Rubicon. There seems to be room for only one Commander in Chief for Operation Overlord. Only one George Patton, only one Douglas MacArthur but that’s okay, surely the men and women of those times knew what they were doing was historic and exciting…didn’t they? I would think that anything that momentous, they would have to recognize as historical at the time they were doing it, but did they? Maybe not, if of course to them it was just…life! 4 When I was growing up a great many of my friends parents never owned their own home. They never wore Levi’s. And they certainly never set foot on a golf course…that was for the ‘well to do.’ They never traveled out of the country, unless they had been in WW11 and some never traveled more than fifty miles from home before that or after that. But that is no longer the case for today, as it is now just history. 5 In their later years they may have had something called a “Revolving Charge Card,” and I think that was only good at Sears and Roebuck or maybe it was Sears Roebuck. In any event there is no more Roebuck. I guess he died or sold out. It’s a piece of history I missed. 6 Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant My parents never drove me to soccer practice because we didn’t have soccer practice! In fact very few Americans had ever even heard of it, and even if they did, you still had to walk or ride your bike. No parent was going to chauffer their child anywhere because if that family were lucky enough to have a car…it was at work with the man of the house. So, the bike was the conveyance of choice for every child under twenty one. Mine was a Western Flyer, sold by Western Auto which is no longer in existence. I don’t know if they were bought out or merged or just went belly up. Another piece of history I missed because I was too busy living life. 7 They may have made 3, 5, 10 and 12 speed bikes back then…but I doubt it. At least no one living in Festus Missouri in the 40’s or 50’s ever saw one. All our bikes had two speeds…slow, for going up steep hills and fast for coming down steep hills and how slow or how fast depended on how strong your leg muscles were. Coming down hill was different… how fast depended on how brave or how fool hardy you were or if you even had brakes…some didn’t. Drive past any school yard today and look for the vast array of bicycles parked there. You can’t see them anymore for the cars in the way. When did that happen and more importantly…why? 8 I never had a phone in my room…I didn’t need one. People didn’t talk much on a phone…it was for business or short personal calls, for crying out loud! A phone call went like this: Bill ---Stan, I’m heading for Sunset park…3:00? Yeah …I’ll meetcha there. Okay ---bye…Clunk.{Hang-up} Any longer conversation brought a raised eyebrow from your mother and one thing every man knows, no matter his age, is if a women raises her eyebrow or puts her fists on her hips…well sir, that’s like standing in tall brush and hearing a rattlesnake shake it tail at you. A wise man shuts up and clears out fast. Now it’s hard to find a young person that doesn’t have a phone next to his ear. What on earth is so burning all fired interesting that we can’t wait till we see each other again to hear it in person? 9 The first phone that I can really remember clearly is when I would get permission to call my Grandmother…I dearly loved my Grandmother. I would pick up the phone and soon I would hear this nice lady on the other end say NUMBER PLEASE and I would say in my four year old voice 583, my grandmother’s number. And sometimes the conversation went like this; I’m sorry Stanley Poole but your grandmother is at church right now for a meeting of her Sunday school class and won’t be back till 4:00 and I would simply say okay and hang up! Who that women was I didn’t know. How she knew my name…I didn’t know. How she knew my grandmother, again I didn’t know. I didn’t know and didn’t question it because I was four. Now I am 72 and I realize that I didn’t know and didn’t question at 30 or 40 or 50; I was too accepting because I was too busy living life to notice or even care when things changed. 10 Miniver loved the Medici. Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one Pizzas were not Pizzas back then, they were Pizza Pie and I had my first one at a place called Ponza Pizzeria when I was about thirteen or fourteen. It put blisters on the roof of my mouth it was so hot and it was, to this day, the best Pizza I have ever eaten. We had things like Black-Jack chewing gum and Teaberry gum was my favorite. Candy cigarettes and wax coke-shaped bottles that contained colored sugar water, soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles plus peashooters…a 12 inch hollow tube of plastic that would send a spitball across the length of any classroom in America. It was a marvel of low-tech engineering that every self-respecting boy had to have. Today the kid that was caught with one would probably be sent to anger management classes and kicked out of school for exhibiting violent behavior. Why can’t boys just be boys anymore? When did that change? 11 Most movie theaters had double features with cartoons of Woody Wood Pecker or Tom and Jerry or maybe even Heckle and Jeckle the talking magpies sandwiched in between the showing of the “A” movie and the “B” movie not to mention the MOVIE TONE Headline News from around the world and maybe even a Travelogue of different places like Rio or Ireland. Darlene Grobe, a classmate of mine, sold the tickets and I collected them an acted as usher after the movie started. My girlfriend, Carol Ann Miller ran the concession stand. The price was 35 cents. When was the last time a theater showed a double feature? Sometimes we even had to sing in the movies. A cartoon would come on with animated barn yard animals or something and the audience would sing along following the bouncing ball. Sounds kind of cornball now but it wasn’t in the forties and fifties. Anybody over sixty probably knows what I am talking about. Anybody under sixty is probably scratching their heads in wonderment. 12 Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the mediaeval grace Of Iron clothing We had Howdy Doody and Rootie Kazootie two puppet shows for the younger kids and of course Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Tom Corbett Space Cadet. And in our later teens we had American Band Stand where we could rush home from school and watch the newest dances and hear the latest songs from a studio in Philadelphia hosted of course by Dick Clark. And we got to do this on a black and white TV that only got three channels if we were lucky. ABC, CBS and NBC was all there were. The shows were performed live in front of a live audience, no prerecorded shows, no do-overs, if you slipped up and missed your lines the whole world would know. 13 We drove cars with the names of Packard and Hudson, Desoto and Studebaker, Nash and Kaiser/Frasier and Crosley. I had a Desoto with Hydromantic transmission and fluid drive…it was a car that you could manually shift and/or it was automatic----it was also a piece of junk. Some things need to die out. We played record players and not CD’s. We had 78 rpm, 45 rpm and even the less popular 33and 1/3rd rpm vinyl records. We didn’t have fax or copiers we had mimeograph machines that were hand cranked after you loaded the carbon master into the tray. Our roller skates for the street were metal and came with a skate key to adjust to individual feet. We had typewriters and not word processors and typing was even taught as a class in high school. 14 Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it. We moved from Ice Boxes to refrigerators and we had metal trays shaped like cubes for your ice, but you had to run water over the back to get the cube to PLOP out and into the sink. Then someone invented the metal lever that you just pulled and it loosened all of the cubes for you. We even had Rubber Maid trays that just required you to twist them and all the cubes would spill out and today we have automatic ice dispensers. Washing was still done with ringer wash tubs and laundry was still hung out on a line to dry. Shirts were dunked into a pail of water that contained starch and then wrung out. When it came time to iron my mother had an old Royal Crown cola bottle filled with water and a stopper on top with holes in it…it was for sprinkling on the shirts because they didn’t have steam irons back then. 15 We had drive in theaters where you parked out in the open with your front tires sitting on a slight elevation to point you at the screen and a speaker system next to your window that would hook on the inside of your car. Malt shops and diners had little booths to sit in and on the wall would be a mechanical type of rolodex with all the songs listed on it with the correct corresponding alpha and numeric numbers. You could drop a nickel in the slot and punch say; E-25 and Wurlitzer across the room would select that 45 rpm record and put it on for you. Do we even have Wurlitzer Record playing machines anymore? 16 For those of you looking for a story in all of this…I apologize. There isn’t one! What you have before you is nothing more than a tiny list of an old man’s regrets an old man’s memories, his laments. And it’s a small list because I didn’t want to bore you overly much. I didn’t wish to presume upon your precious time as I know you are all busy…living life. For, if I truly wished, I could start compiling this list in the wee hours of the morning and not be finished when the witching hour struck mid of night. 17 But, before you go I would like to pose a question or two for your consideration. I read a lot, as I assume all of you do. And in reading for these last sixty years or so I have found many a memoir and all have the same refrain. Old people in general seem to remember their early life, their formative years as much more golden than their “Golden Years,” which is supposed to start in their late fifties or sixties. If this is true then it shows that technological advancement may prolong life, and may even make life easier, but it doesn’t seem to enhance the quality of the life. All it seems to do is give you a few more years to live in a portion of a century in which you are so out of place and out of your time that you are not – miserable – but- not – truly - comfortable. 18 To try to prove this theory of mine, to show you that all will eventually move out of their comfort zone and into a world they can no longer identify with, I ask this question. Do you prefer the music you hear today over the music you heard from your eighth grade year to say age twenty five? Tell me truth…which music was better? Which comes closer to representing the culture you love? And, secondly, which was the kinder, gentler, more civil culture? The one of today’s society or the one you were raised in? In short, what time frame would you really prefer to live in---for your selves and for your children? 19 Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking, Miniver coughed, and called it fate. And kept on drinking.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:38:12 +0000
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