Yesterdays Becoming Today

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse;

as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort

 to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.

                                                  ~  Washington Irving

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.

                                                  ~  Marshall McLuhan

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence;

 it is to act with yesterday’s logic.

                                          ~  Peter Drucker

It had been fund-raising time on PBS. Previews of shows to be aired, interspersed with sales pitches for people to join (donate), were advertised for several weeks before the pledge drive began. Many of those shows were singing groups from past times.

As I watched these “commercials,” rather than listening to the variety of music of the time, I was struck by changes in the way musical groups moved, sang, and dressed. And I began to reflect on the differences between the culture when I grew up and our present culture – against the backdrop of all the turbulence in today’s world.

People have referred to the fifties in various ways. Some see these times as idyllic because of the relief that we supposedly had fought the last world war – and that now things would be different. Except that it also was a time of rigid rules and the beginning of the Cold War. And I wondered how the strands of history since that time were being played out now, in the way countries are functioning – or not functioning.

Men ruled the world and women ruled the house.

Less than fifty percent of the population enacted all the laws.

Women felt lucky to vote – provided they were not black.

Discrimination was blatant and if drafted you went.

                    Today, the rules of life are much more complicated.

Boys took Shop so they could fix and build what was needed.

They played football, basketball, and ran track.

Girls took Home Ec and learned to cook and sew.

They cheered from the sidelines, wearing skirts not-too-short.

                    Today, women build and men cook gourmet.

No one traveled far, couples married young, bought a house.

Before they were twenty, babies began coming.

Wars were short with definite beginnings and endings.

Enlisting in the army or navy was the way to see the world.

                    Today, couples skip marriage and war is continuous.

Children were to be seen and not heard, and stay out of trouble.

Dad drove the car, and on Sundays families would go for a ride.

Meals were meat and potatoes – unless you were poor.

Parents hoped their kids would have more than they did.

                    Today, rapidly the middle class is becoming extinct.

Men wore suits and ties to church and women wore gloves.

Aprons were a must, dresses below the knees were standard.

Everyone knew their place, only a few challenged norms.

The moral standard by which everyone lived was honest hard work.

                    Today, we wear shorts to church, that is if we go to church.

Everyone spoke English, except maybe grandparents at home.

We were proud of our forebears, who had immigrated here.

But insisted we now were Americans and certainly not foreigners.

South America and Africa were large blank shapes on the map.

                     Today, we are multi-colored and beautifully diverse.

News-reels informed us of world events during Saturday matinees.

Local papers recorded who poured - and who was visiting whom.

Clothes-shopping happened in August just before school began.

And we hoped we wouldn't grow too fast through the next year.

                    Today, news happens in real time and we shop all the time.

Portable typewriters and luggage often were graduation gifts.

We added and subtracted on paper, rarely wrote checks.

No bookstores in small towns meant many homes had no books.

When computers first were invented, they filled entire rooms.

                     Today, we read Kindles and order on-line.

If we went to college, we used heavy calculators.

Requiring considerable strength to move them from desk to desk.

We carried state-of-the-art slide rules, useful as status symbols.

                        Guys them hung from their belt, while women carried theirs.

                    Today, solar calculators are the size of cell phones.

Telephones were party lines, used to hear the latest gossip.

Might not know who was listening, so took care what we said.

Long distance calls were kept brief, made only in emergencies.

Letters kept everyone current with relatives in other towns.

                    Today, Facebook connects and NSA collects our texts.

Today, children watch TV’s violence and reality shows.

Countries face off against each other with heated rhetoric.

Plane travel is increasingly adverse, terrorists plot and bomb.

Starvation, human trafficking, and climate-change are epidemic.

                    Yesterday, we believed life promised happy endings.

Now – about riding in stage coaches and shifting positions so as to be bruised in another place in one’s anatomy . . .