I'll tell you what's up, I was swallowed by Facebook. I got totally absorbed by a certain Facebook page and didn't do anything at all but read that thing and comment on it for about twenty four hours. I even got up in the middle of the night because something on there kept bothering me.
Somebody, who I am sure has the best of intentions, started a Facebook page about the town I grew up in. It is all about the history of that town and more specifically, the time period that I lived there. The nineteen fifties and sixties. Suddenly I am coming across names and places that are jarring the memories loose. Places we hung out, people I knew, and things that happened. For the first few hours it made me feel young again, but as I read more I realized I was old. Very fucking old. First of all, most of those old places don't exist any more. They've been torn down, or burned down. And just about every other person mentioned in a comment is found to be dead when the next person leaves a comment.
One comment in particular, after somebody posted a nostalgic look at our old neighborhood, bothered me. The commenter said, "Those were the good old days."
Not very original, and definitely not true. What would be more accurate is, "Those were some good days for us. We had a lot of fun living in our little world."
The thing is, the nineteen fifties and sixties were 'the good old days' for only a select group of citizens. If you were a black family you were confined to the inner city. There was no bucolic suburban alternative. If you were gay, there was almost nowhere you could live the promised free life that we were told all men were entitled to. It was not the good old days for atheists, for those who's thinking leaned too far left, or women who wanted more than 'barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen'. Don't get me wrong, I love this little nostalgic stab into my past. There are a lot of things I forgot about, and a lot of things I remember. One thing about this facebook page is that I am finding out the true stories behind some of the happenings at the time. Like the fact that one of my neighbors used to bring some of the boys into his house to show them his porn collection. My only problem with that is, why was I left out?
Who was that????
ReplyDeleteI, too, react strongly to comments like, "those were the good old days..." People just blank out all the oppression and horrible bigotry that went totally unchecked, for the most part.
ReplyDeleteThe porn king? Two doors to the east of our house.
ReplyDeleteThey were pictures of women.
ReplyDeleteYou had a porn king that lived on your street?! I just had the family that moved from Chicago, taught me to play hockey and had a pool. Oh, and a dog that bite me in the face once.
ReplyDeletep.s. can I be your friend on facebook if you say funny things?
Bit/Bite, sorry
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, we also had a kid further down the east end of the street who used to show us his dad's porn collection. It was old, from the 1930's, and it included a deck of dirty playing cards. I liked two of them. One had a naked woman splayed out on the running board of an old car. I liked that one because the car was cool. The other one I liked was the joker. It featured a sole man. I let you use your own imagination as to what the joke was on that joker.
ReplyDeleteHostess, I'm not funny, and don't say funny things. You just think I do. My Facefook page is very non controversial and you might be very disappointed, but sure. There are only about three of us in the United States with my name. I'm the cute one, request a befriending.
ReplyDelete