I was Just Thinking: An Ode to a Simpler Childhood

Posted

I was just thinking that most people who own a computer have probably received an email with something similar to the following bits of nostalgia. I thought it’d be fun to pass on a few of those bits, accompanied with a greater number of observations I’ve learned over the years.

This pertains to and is dedicated to all the people who were born anytime before 1950.

First of all, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and possibly drank a beer or two while they were pregnant. Mine did.

After any trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs painted with bright colored, lead-based paints. We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles, locks on interior doors or cabinets and we brushed our teeth with toothpaste from a lead tube. In fact, every squeezable tube we used back then was made out of lead.       

As infants and children, we’d ride in cars with no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags and sometimes no brakes. Brakes were mostly mechanical before the forties, with safety depending upon rusty twisted wire cables.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. When we rode our bikes, if we had anything on our heads at all it would have been a baseball cap, not a helmet. 

When outside, we drank water from the garden hose and not from a plastic bottle, and we shared a soft drink with our friends, with everyone drinking from the same bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar, and we weren’t overweight. Why? Because we were outside playing whenever we got the chance, not sedentary with an electronic device in our hands, that’s why!     

We didn’t have PlayStations, Nintendos, XBoxes or whatever. There were no video games, no 150 TV channels to choose from (no TV, in fact!), no DVDs, no surround sound or CDs, no cell phones, no internet and no chat rooms. We had no need for Facebook because we had real live flesh and blood friends, and we went outside, found them and played with them.

In summers, we could leave home in the morning and play all day, just so long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. We’d better be back by the deadline, though.  You see, we were taught responsibility. 



We spent hours building what we called “go-carts” out of old wagon wheels and scraps of wood and then rode them down a hill, only to find we forgot to add brakes into consideration.  After running into the bushes several times, we learned to solve the problem by ourselves — using shoe leather (and they really were leather back then).

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits as a result of those accidents.

We made up games with sticks and rocks, were given BB guns for our birthdays, and although we were warned about it, I don’t remember ever shooting anybody’s eye out.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s home and then walked right into their house after only knocking or ringing the doorbell. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law, can you imagine that!   

While I’m not suggesting we revert back to all of those hazardous activities — we might be pushing our luck — those generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.

We had freedom, failure, success, and — as I’ve said — responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it? 

•••

Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.