Missing The Days of Yesterday

[mustanggt]

I'm a history buff and just love reading about the past. So thinking about living and experiencing things in the past has a lot of appeal to me. However I don't want to relive my youth because I like being my age and having the hard earned knowledge and wisdom I have accumulated. I do like the great memories from my childhood that have so much meaning to me. In particular all my family members that are gone now and I miss all of them so much.

I loved the fact that when we got up in the morning we could go and play till dark. We played all four sports, hunted and fished, rode our bikes and later motorcycles everywhere. The only time we played inside was when it rained. I miss the fact we were allowed to be kids and to learn from our mistakes. Kids today are ruled by "zero tolerance" in everything they do. I fear for my grand kids that they won't have the freedom, like I did, to be who they want to be. I hope and pray that their future is going to be better than mine but I have my fears.

I've been reading and watching videos about our space program back when I was growing up. I wanted to be an astronaut so bad. We'd take a blanket over chairs and table or use a big cardboard box and make a spaceship out of it. Played for hours. Couldn't wait to see the next blast off on our black and white TV. When we landed on the moon was such a magnificent achievement. I am so proud of that achievement but is that the last time we were that good? It just seems as though, July 20, 1969, is when we came to a fork in the road and chose the wrong path.

I am happy to be living in the here and now because that is where I am. I choose to make the best of it and enjoy life now because I can't do anything about the past. However, like Brad said, there were no cars like the cars from the 50's and 60's. Man that was some style they had back then eh?

 

[johnnyreb]

On July 20th,1969 I drove my young date out into the dark countryside with the top down to see if we could see the astronauts on the moon.

 

[nurseman]

I am reading this using Internet while flying, on an iPad that is thinner than a book yet holds more books than I can read in a year. I actually prefer the time we live in now. I guess since my youth was the 70's with polyester, gas lines , smog, and recession I am not nostalgic for much. But I do miss the old discontinued " to protect you" real fried McDonalds Apple pies once in a while. They could take a few layer of skin off your tongue if you did not let them sit for a bit but man they were good.

 

[jeepnewbie]

This has been a great read, thanks everyone for the enjoyment. I think I'm gonna go cut up some firewood for the fireplace, make a bed on the floor in front of it and sleep there listening to the crackle of the fire as I go to sleep. I know my kids will enjoy that.

 

[derfatdutchman]

Oh Nostalgia, you are a cruel Mistress.

 

[daimyo]

“It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” - Tsunetomo Yamamoto

 

[frank13]

Terrific thread...

 

[stephenw]

I can well remember one pipe I fell in love with back about 1972. It was displayed at a magazine shop and it was the most expensive pipe I had ever seen. I would have really loved to have been able to purchase that pipe but the price was more than a month's worth of living expenses. The pipe was a large Wellington and it cost the princely sum of $25.00. If I opted to give up food for a month I could have purchased that pipe.

 

[tennsmoker]

Wonderful reading and a really nice thread.
I grew up in another time and place, part of the time on a Georgia farm, part of the time in a small town.

We all knew each other and left our doors open at night in the summer to let soft breezes waft through the mill town house where my family lived.
Rode my bicycle everywhere and if I got in trouble at school, the principal pulled down a paddle from its spot above his door and began to let you feel the heat. Then he called your parents, told them you had gotten a paddling at school for whatever offense and he expected you to get another when you got home.
I did.
We went shoeless in summertime. At my aunt’s farm, we tossed her prize chickens from atop the chicken coop to see if they could fly.
They couldn’t.
We got chicken doo between our toes, scraped it off and ran up a red dirt road to a forest where we climbed tall Georgia pine trees and swung them to the ground. It was if we were flying.
We caught crawdads in the creek with our bare hands and then made them fight each other to the death.
To Brad: Our Georgia crawdads were not the delicious Louisiana crawfish, which I have eaten until I could barely move my legs.
Those were the days, my friends.
It’s the fourth quarter for me now. I just try to smoke my pipes, enjoy them as much and as often as I can.
To younger pipe smokers: time goes pretty quickly, actually. Treasure every minute you have, especially with your pipes and tobacco.

 

[crusader]

@Mr. Lowercase. My paternal Grandfather had one of those heater in his guest room that they had originally added to the house for he and his VFW buddies to play cards in. I used to be mesmerized by the dancing flame and the dry heat it put out in the fall with the Huskers playing on the radio and my Uncles collie laying by me reeking of deet from his flea color, yet I still have an odd fondness for the smell that and mothballs that Grandpa smothered everything that was in storage. The smell of mothballs and when a furnace kick on for the first time of the year always brings a smile to my face. Also the smell of a oily shop reminds me of his father in laws shop on his small used car lot.

My parents were from a small Nebraska river town that has pretty much stayed the same. The main difference is that instead of three grocerie stores (grandpas being one of them) there is only one, the school has been consolidated with two others,the only fast food place is a Subway replacing the town Tastee freeze and Great grandpas house and car lot was bulldozed for a Caseys gas station. I honestly do get a bit giddy when we occasionally pass through there and imagine my six generations that came before me lived there from the sod buster days and helped build that town. I grew up in Omaha but have a special place in my heart for small town ideals.

 

[crusader]

"We got chicken doo between our toes, scraped it off and ran up a red dirt road to a forest where we climbed tall Georgia pine trees and swung them to the ground. It was if we were flying."

I laughed!
This reminded me of the burb I grew up in. It was the early 80's and Omaha was Booming. We lived about a half mile from a creek and would use the dense foam insulation from all of the house construction to make rafts and sail down the creek ala Tom Sawyer. Fearless until I had my first run in with a leach on my big toe. I still hate those things

 

[captainbob]

I am age 65 and I miss the simple days when I could go into the local pipe shop with my pipe lit and go in their basement and watch them mix a batch of the local and popular Jerry's Blend in a wash tub, stir it and smell it. Then, dip my pipe into it and grab a bowl full of that fresh enjoyment! Those days are gone forever except in my kitchen...

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Those were the days!

 

[captainbob]

sparks... You got that right! I love it.

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[speedypete]

Who is this funny little man who calls himself captain bob? He seems to pop up at every show and promote some blend called CBB. What is CBB please?

 

[tuold]

If we could just go back to the 1700s when they wrote really good music! As I find myself nearing the 60 year old mark I also find myself waxing nostalgic at times. I wish I could have sent my own kids outside to play for the day merely telling them to come back for dinner around five o'clock like my parents did with me. I couldn't do that because city life seemed to have become more of a battleground than a playground as it was when I grew up.
There are many things I'd like to bring forward from the past but many more things I appreciate for the present times. Despite the present conflicts, we have made much social progress. On the other hand we have lost many of the simple pleasures and moved into a weird modern version of Victorian repression and social division. My children seem to favor progressive libertarianism in most of their views, so maybe there is hope for the future.

 

[thehappypiper]

I find this thread rather affecting, reading it in my Shanghai flat, with the pollution at 180 and 1.3 billion people outside who have almost nothing in common with me, who barely know my country of Scotland exists and who will never yearn for a good Islay malt drunk from a pewter hipflask beside a clean, cold loch before a supper of roast venison and sticky toffee pudding while watching the Northern Sun go down. To be able to talk to one of my countrymen, for whom defiance is almost the defining characteristic. So stark the contrast.

We all miss the past at one time or another. When things seemed simpler. When people seemed nicer. When our community, when our priorities seemed clearer. It doesn't realy matter that many things have become much better, we will always miss the apparent simplicity of youth. But I think that the most important thing we are lacking now, is a sense of hope. So much seems to have crumbled. The Western Dream has been sold.

 

[thehappypiper]

post scriptum: If anyone is interested in reliving the past, I thoroughly recommend The BBC TV show called The Hour. So much more substance than Mad Men. Dark, brooding and a magnificent portryal of The Fifties in England. It has just occurred to me how illogical it is for us to be so hysterical about Islamic Extremism, in the context of this thread. Certainly Boko Haram, ISIS et al are disgusting, reprehensible organisations, but we forget the enormous and very real threat of Russia and Nuclear War during our musings. As a young teenager I distinctly remember wondering what it would be like to be experience a Nuclear Winter.