Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Miss Soda Fountains but not Wool Pants

If you stick around and welcome a lot of New Years', you notice many things fade into the past thus becoming fuzzy-memories. Many of those disappearing fades, fashions and activities can be chalked up as good riddance while a few tug at the nostalgic heartstrings.

I surely don't miss those Sunday-go-to-Church wool dress trousers or those wool youth baseball uniforms worn on a hot-humid East St. Louis July summer days. I could only survive that wool when wearing cotton pajama bottoms between skin and wool. I also don't miss taking clinkers from the furnace stoker and spreading about the backyard alley way. I don't miss being the designated 'television-rabbit-ears-adjuster.' Thanks for today's remote control.

I do miss those 1950's model automobiles that sported those fender-skirts and whitewall tires. I still have a set of 'curb-finders,' which I saved since 1956. If whitewall tires make a comeback, I got my 'finders' ready to attach. I also miss the local corner drugstore where I could get a cherry phosphate soda. I also miss hearing those neighborhood evening sounds: kids' voices, newsboys hawking papers and roving push-cart vendors yelling out their pitch, "Red Hot...Gets Your Red Hots!"

Now...at seventy-eight years old, I find myself too often, too clueless. The age of technology challenges me at every turn. One no longer buys a television and simply plug it into the outlet. Land line telephones and Smart (cell) phones require an electrical engineering degree while Internet trouble shooting moxie creates a first-name relationship with all the Best Buy 'Geeks.'

Some times I feel out of place.
(Touch)Stranger in Paradise

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