There are many moments when I yearn to go back to the sixties, flip back the calendar to when the world revolved at a more leisurely pace and making up fun was simple. Back then a DA hairstyle was acceptable and almost a must, if you wanted to look cool. There was no confusion about hearing your favourite tunes – you just slapped that 45 rpm disc on the turntable and listened to it while attired in khaki pants, white socks and a pair of white bucks to match.
In that era you had to strategize before asking a girl out on a date, not put her on the defensive with a surprise. If lucky to get a “yes”, it was probably to a movie to see the latest Elvis flick in Dad’s car that was begged for on bended knee before he agreed. Then the same old lecture about minding the speed limit and keeping both hands on the wheel. After the date, maybe lucky enough to get a ‘real good’ kiss. Even more exciting than the kiss was bragging to the guys about it the next day.
If I didn’t get the date, I’d still cruise down Main Street with friends, sitting tall and honking at any other girls. Sometimes it was a drive into Pembroke to the A & W for a root beer and burger, served right to the car window by an attractive girl in a short skirt and on roller skates. How they ever managed to keep their balance with a loaded tray, I’ll never know.
The biggest worries for a teen back then were not having friends, wasting of valuable time going to school, having pimples and finding a steady girlfriend. Then maybe going steady, just maybe, it would reveal what the big mystery of sex was about!
One summer I managed to sneak “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” from my uncle, a book that had been banned from the public until recently. To impress my friends, I wanted to share the ‘good’ parts of the novel. However, being Catholic boys, they weren’t allowed to read it. The priest had proclaimed it a mortal sin to do so. I asked, “Did the priest say anything about listening?” When they said no, I said, “I will read to you then”. They were as passionately shocked as I had been the first time I read of such unheard things that Lady Chatterley performed!
I dreaded as many others, leaving elementary school for high school in Pembroke. If it wasn’t tests and exams to worry about, it was the city boys who acted day in and day out like they were superior to us country hicks. After a year or so this distinction ebbed, especially when those country boys began dating the city girls.
THEN I GREW UP – now having to worry about real war instead of cold war. But it was the threat of terrorism, if not nuclear annihilation itself that was always was there, present in one corner of your brain.
It was also very expensive and too inconvenient at times to be married with kids like many were, forfeiting every weekend to take them to hockey or soccer, almost wishing at times for them to be old enough to leave the nest, permitting enough slack to do what you wanted.
There was striking high-fidelity music, I-phones that took pictures and the possibility of travelling to the moon in the not too distant future. There was protests for and against everything you could think of. Even the threat from global warming was concerning if you were to survive long enough to experience its catastrophic effects.
Political awareness induced skepticism and political correctness made words to speak have repercussions unless cautiously thought about.
Honestly, I really want to give up the present with its designer clothes and designer drugs, credit cards and computer viruses. We have come so far and gained so little. I want to slip back to those great moments in the past; to go to a high school football game, to drive-in movies and to know innocence. I want to Brylcreem my hair and listen to rock n’ roll all day long.
Maybe I will partially! At the Riverdale Social Senior meeting last week, a musical bingo event is in the planning at the Hall and the music genre is ‘Golden Oldies’. I can’t wait!
