times past

A few says ago, the cosmic one printed a list (from the top of her head, not from an email) of "remember when" things. It got me thinking. It also got me assuming that, either the US was way more advanced than old Oz or I am way older than Cosmic.

Her list went like this (and my thoughts on the matter when this way)(with a few of my own)

Remember when:

Having to cook on the stove all day before the microwave? (Remember when you have to split wood to keep the stove going and get hot water? But, oh, the wonderful smells that came out of that oven. Homemade cakes and biscuits and scones for afternoon tea. Baked puddings and jam and those special times when you have a rare chook roasting. MMMM)

Having to be near an electrical outlet to hear music? (Some of us couldn’t afford those expensive transistor radios and they were made in China anyway. What did they know about technology?) (We had Pop's old windup gramophone. We could play all the 78s we liked, anywhere we liked. And, there was always a crystal set.)

Remember when we had to iron every bit of clothes we owned? (And the iron's didn't have steam and all your clothes, and table clothes, were made out of natural fibres.)

Having to hang clothes on the line? (Dryers, too, were out of affordable range for most.) (I still hang my washing on the line. Or use a clotheshorse in front of the fire at night.)

Had to sit in a tub to bathe? (We always had a shower when I was a kid but we kids always used the bath. Showers were for grown-ups.)

Go out of doors to go potty? (yes, for the first 5 years of my life. Well, not the first year. I did it in my diaper, hehe.) (Backyard dunnies were the norm. Modern i.e. post war house used to have them on the back porch. Half my childhood neighbours still had the Lavendar Man call once a week. And those wads of newspaper/phonebooks on wire hooks instead of bog roll.)

Having to go to a restaurant to order take out. (The only take away was fish and chips and they were only open on a Friday.)

Having to actually go Inside the restaurant? (Restaurants? Only rich people went to restaurants.)

Having a choice of only one place to buy pizza? (Pizza? Isn't that a place with a leaning tower? Pizza didn't come to Melbourne until the 70s.)

Buying a soda, candy bar, and a bag of chips and getting change back from your dollar? (Or 8 aniseed balls or 4 nigger block {hey, that's what they were called in those days} for a penny.)

Having to write a letter with a pen on real paper? And then waiting for the mailman to deliver it? (But wasn't recieving them fun! Waiting at the letterbox for the postie on his bike.)

Having to have a ton of change when away from home to use the payphone? (What was the point of payphones? Half the people I knew as a kid didn't have a phone to ring.)

Having to wait and then pay to develop pictures only to find out that none of them came out? Oh well, it was just a first birthday, or first steps, or wedding. We can take them again, right? Ummm, no. (Slides. Remember slide nights? And all those wonderful B&W photos.)

But I think my favorite of all things to get nostalgic about was when a full busy day meant eating, drinking, playing and naptime. Oh, those were the days. At least those will be coming back. Not looking forward to the diaper, though. (I was at fultime school at 4. I don't really remember naptime.)

(Going to town meant wearing your hat and white gloves and your best patent leather shoes?)

(The bottle-o and the iceman and the baker and the milkman and the rabbito all came to your house to sell or deliver?)

(Buying a new dress meant choosing material, not trying on frocks? And a new jumper involved Patons and needles?)

(School kids used slide rules to do complicated sums and engineers still managed to land a man on the moon?)

(We all owned pretty hankies and little girls wore dresses and ribbons on their hair?)

(Sunday drives?)

(Playing cricket or footie on the street with your mates and having to be home before the streetlights came on? Those streetlights that got turned off again at 11pm.)

How dramatically some things have changed. I grew up in an era when kids didn't have rights, they had families. A mum and a dad whose sole purpose was rearing their kids. It was a time when women knew that raising the next generation of citizens was the most important job anyone could do, way more important than any career. It was a time when strangers weren't scary and we all knew our neighbours. It was a time of family and community.

Change is inevitable. It must be accepted. But not all change is good. Maybe we should all fight harder to hang onto those things that are best. We allowed social pressures to dictate what is important to us. When (and why) did the size of our house or the model of our car become more important than the happiness of our children? When did we decide that our own generation is more important than the next?

Sure, some of the changes have been beneficial. Technological advances have helped us all in many many ways. But, what is the point of being able to cure a million diseases if we can't afford a doctor or get an appointment? Of being able to view Saturn but not being able to see our elderly neighbour starve to death? Of having the cuisine of a thousand countries at the nearest take away but never sitting down to dinner with our family? Of having a telly in every room to babysit your kids while you go out and earn the money to pay for them? Of buying bikes and building parks for kids when we have let our streets become too scary for them to go out?

Yes, we had problems in the old days. I'm not trying to whitewash it. Yes, it was harder. Yes, we made do with less. But we had family. And we had freedom.

And what, pray tell, is more important than that?