"The Good Ol' Days"

I was listening to the radio on my way home this afternoon. I normally listen to noozradio, but am Up To Here with nooz so I punched the Seek button. FM, remarkably, had little to which I cared to listen so I switched to AM. I found a somewhat weak station with a voice I didn't recognize at all waxing nostalgic.

The voice belonged to a Tom something-or-other and he was clearly of my vintage. He was talking about cruising the drive-ins, rolling down Main Street on Friday and Saturday nights, windows down, yelling stupid things at girls. American Graffiti. I went back there in my mind ......

But through today's lens, what the hell was so good about then and about that scene he painted?

We drove gas hogs. As a kid, I had little British cars, with no room for girls if I was cruising with a friend. For that reason alone, I always cruised with my friends, who had big American Iron. Gas hogs. But gas was cheap, maybe 25¢ a gallon. If we had a car full, we each chipped in a quarter and cruised all night.

We smoked a lot, too. Variously, it was Camels, Chesterfields, then Parliament With The Recessed Filters, and the local height of cool, (nope, not Kools), Kent With The Micronite Filters. We smoked like chimneys.

And drank. The time to which I time traveled was someplace in the early to mid Sixties. I was underage for most of that time. Who cared. It was common practice to pay a "bum" (how terrible is *that* to say?) a buck to go buy us a six pack or a pint. Smokin', drinkin', an' drivin'.

Immortal, we were,

Yep. The good old days.

When we were young and stupid.




Excuse me. I have to go take my Plavix and the six other pills that artificially sustain my decrepit, abused, inexorably, surely dying body.

I'm one clueless old broad. :silly:

Maybe I will then know ALMOST as much as "a teenager." ;)

We go from smart to stupid and back to smart as they grow up.

stupid us girls were. No good old days. They are the days When we made all our mistakes.

I skipped the high school drinkin' smokin' and cruisn' stuff because I was having too much fun playing with explosives.

My 20s, however, more than made up for it.

:P

:P

Apparently fail humor is fail. :(

Duke of Earl is a favorite but most of the Doo Wop favorites will do. :)

Ike couldn't get into a Republican meeting these days

The era I was time traveling was before the war got hot and before I went in.

Go Navy. Rah Rah Rah. :crazy:

two cars and the guys in 5-6 cars. Down Main Street, turn at the Elks and do it all over again. Then, onto the Diner (best french fries ever)and table-hopping for Saturday night dates. They were pretty good days...

Even in my buddy's 57 Dodge hemi (tank with rubber tires)

There were dozens of places to go downtown. Lot's of places, some just houses that you could go to. You always recognized a lot of people you knew. And strangers were always friendly. It really was peace and love. I never knew whose houses we were going to, but they were always open to anyone who strayed by and wanted to come in. You just walk in and mill through the crowds or just sat on the floor and shared a joint with a stranger. Everything was wide open.

So many parties. All the time. Live music was everywhere. There was a big park everyone went to, especially on Sundays and got stoned. There were never any cops to disturb anyone. We drank, smoked pot and others did a lot of the harder drugs. I never got into them. I remember the summer of Woodstock and how everyone was talking about it. I wish I would have tagged along with someone now. But I don't know if I had things to do or not. But I would have loved to have been a part of history...

but that big old war that was sitting there eating us up grabbed attention pretty quickly. We were pretty much the first generation to find out how hard the machine could come down (excluding the labor struggles of the 30s).

Would I trade that time for anything? Not on my life.

Yeah ...... actually I agree with you.

but many people are nostaligic for way back when. Maybe it has to do with being care-free.

My Mom and Dad (like yours, probably) were Depression era kids. Surely not a fun time, yet they had lots and lots of fun memories and a nostalgia for their youth, too.

Now we are they.

may not have actually really been good ole days, I think we tend to remember the good parts.

still 10 years in the future, all the little round bezels around the dashboard gauges would surely be waiting.

They thought that would scare us. Not a chance. Few were repulsed by it and no one was changed. In fact, the films were always the topic of conversation after they were shown.

"Hey, did you see that guy with the street sign pole through his chest and his lung hanging on the end?"

yes INDEED

No WalMart ..... Walgreen's instead. Instead of Twitter, each house had just ONE of these:

I simply do not remember receiving around eighty memos a day. No.

Sure, the cars were bigger, the gas was cheaper; even double your 25 cents is cheap compared to just a few years down the road. There were fewer people to drive them, and fewer cars per household.

While I was too young to be out driving in the mid-sixties, by the early 70s I was cruising down Van Nuys Blvd with a pack of friends. I remember more significant things about the early 70s, but life is about enjoying the moments, and it's good to have some good moments to remember. They're few and far between these days.

It was only a few years later that we saw gas shortages, long lines, and people abandoning their big American cars for economical japanese models in droves.

there were some mighty shitty things back then , too.
and some good stuff.
but that is why the 60s happened.

The first friend I lost to death was a heroin OD. Before we were 16.

I often wonder if I would have been better off if I did drugs.