As we get older we think more about the past and how simple life was when we were young. Maybe we thoughtfully consider past world events that have accumulated to this day.
Bob Dylan’s song of 1964 said it well –Times they are a changin’. Some changes are ridiculous. Here’s one example. Last spring an honour roll student on Montreal’s South Shore was expelled for taking a pocket knife to school. The grade 12 student said he must have forgotten to take the pocket knife out of his backpack after doing chores on the family farm. The youth was expelled in the middle of his final year after the pocket knife was found in his backpack.
I’m glad I grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. When I went to school it was customary for boys to take pocket knives to school. Some boys even carved their initials into the wooden desks and both boys and girls stuck chewing gum on the bottom of their seats and desk. And get this, long before technology gave us realistic games for kids that allowed for simulated predatory gun fighting electronically, North American youngsters took their cap guns to school. Cap guns were fired off during recess. Playing army or Cowboys and Indians in the dirt was how kids spent their playtime in decades past.
When I was in Grade 9, a classmate wanted to buy a new .22 caliber rifle repeater and would sell me his single shot .22. Most farm boys had a .22 in those days. I didn’t.
The following Friday when school (Eganville and District High School) was out at noon for a football game, the classmate and I walked over to his house, which was on the other side of town. I bought the rifle, which wasn’t in a case, and walked through town down main street and hiked the three miles home holding the rifle. Police weren’t alerted that a youth was walking through town with an exposed rifle. This was in 1963. Can you imagine if that happened nowadays? Now to be fair there has been a lot of gun violence and murders committed over the years by guys with guns, so people are edgy when seeing someone with a gun.
I recently saw a photo of John F. Kennedy campaigning in rural West Virginia looking for support in a primary in 1960, precariously perched on a step-chair to deliver his speech.
Here, seemingly alone in a crowd, JFK talks from a kitchen chair as, mere feet away, a young boy absently plays with a realistic-looking toy gun.
There is a toy gun in a boy’s hand right near JFK. It looks like a squirt gun pointed at his mouth. The squirt guns existed before water bottles were commonly marketed, so the boy was drinking some water from his squirt gun. Kids were allowed to play with toy guns back in the day, even at school or public events. Toy guns were marketed as looking as close to real guns as possible.
In many aspects, this photo is proof of how the times have changed. Simpler times, as noted by the entire scene. Back in the 1950s and 1960s candidates cared a significant amount more about regular folks and the value of a potential voter. Gone are the days of a presidential candidate, or any politician for that matter, making a speech standing on top of a step chair.
Those were the days when life was so much more simple. I’m glad I grew up then.
