The one thing you can always count on is change!
It may not be the Change you were looking for, but things will change.
Here in Missouri it is changing from Fall to Winter, and as this new week starts I am kind of melancholy with the passing of Andy Rooney over the weekend.
My parent's generation was the tail end of the Baby Boomers, those born during the years of the Second World War, but Andy was from before that time. I know that a lot of Television Personalities poked fun at him and his crazy rants, but I know why 60 minutes kept him on the air.
He spoke to my generation and all of those before me who are still around. Generations from a different time, and a different world that didn't seem to move as fast as today. A time when kids could run around the town safely and play. A time when you knew who your neighbors were and you talked with them. When everybody could get on your kids to keep them in line, and kids for the most part behaved because they knew anybody could grab them and march them home to their parents for punishment. I said punishment, not a freaking time out or a counseling session about their behavior.
A time when there were winners and losers, and if you didn't learn what you were supposed to they held you back in school.
A time before television, and radio was King! You would use your imagination. Children had chores, most homes had wood burning stoves in them, and everybody knew what an outhouse was. Children read books, and played outside. You were lucky to have new clothes and nobody cared who made them.
You would pile in the back of the truck to go to the swimming hole at the nearest lake. Ice cream and soda were special treats.
Everybody knew who Glen Miller was, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin and so many more.
Andy's rants spoke to a different age, different generations. I remember radio programs, when Television was just starting out, when recording devices meant vinyl or tape, and remote controls were Science Fiction! I remember party line telephone systems. I remember when the first transistor radios came out and the only people who had computers were very large companies, and the military! Home computers were a pipe dream. I remember a day when Pong was the rage and only the rich people had it.
We shouldn't forget where we come from. We shouldn't forget our past! I will remember Andy Rooney, and I hope 60 minutes replays his rants about stuff for years to come. Not all the changes of today are bad, but there were some things that were not broken and shouldn't have been changed. We should slow down and get to know the people around us in our lives just as much as we socialize on the world wide web.
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1 comments:
Andy was one of a kind.
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