Good Old Days

Today, I was thinking about all of the ungodly people in the world in the day in which we live.  There seems to be so many in power,  bent on destroying freedom.  There are those who walk our streets trolling for some mischievous thing to do. There are people who want nothing more than to see what it feels like to commit a heinous crime.  What has happened to our society?

When I read some of the postings on Facebook about the good old days, it took me back to that time when I was a child with not a worry in the world.  The kids on my block were free to come and go to each other’s homes.  We didn’t have to fear what darkness lay in the minds of our friend’s family. Our parents didn’t worry if we spent the night with our friends and our friend’s parents never worried when their offspring were in our home. Sometimes , in the summer, we would even be allowed to sleep outside under the stars with a few of our friends.

I remember coming home from school on a beautiful spring or fall day, eating a snack, changing into my play clothes, doing a few little chores that my mother might have and then out the front door I went , scurrying down the sidewalk until I was directly across the street from my best friend’s home. I would stand and holler “Naaaaaaun, Naaaaaaaaun”, as loudly as I could until Nan would come out her front door.  We would stand across the highway from one another and yell about what we wanted to do the rest of the evening.  Often, we would round up the other kids in the neighborhood and ride our bicycles until our mother’s called us in for supper. After supper, we would assume where we left off, riding our bicycles until the street lights came on.  We had no fear of being kidnapped by some stranger driving by or being shot by a drive by shooter.

Summertime was the best time of all.  No TV ’s ; no video games to occupy us while we vegged away on the couch.  We played hopscotch, anti-over, chase, jump rope, jacks and lots of other games that exercised our bodies and our minds. We spread quilts under the shade tree and had a picnic or we sold lemonade from a little stand in our front yard. Sometimes, we would walk together to the town square; walk around it and window shop. Or we’d sit in one of the park benches under the shade tree in the middle of the square.  If we had a nickel or dime, we might have an ice cream cone from the Berryville Drug. Sometimes, we would wonder into the bandstand where the high school band played on Saturday nights and pretend we were tooting those horns like the band members did.  We would talk about  the coming country fair; discuss all the rides that we might want to take; the snow cones or popcorn we would eat and the grandstand shows we might get to attend if we saved our money.

How wonderful it was not to have to think about the bad things that were happening in our world. Oh, I’m sure there were a lot of things we never heard about because we had no TV’s, cell phones or internet.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our kids could all be that carefree today?

Our children and grandchildren don’t know what they have missed by not growing up in the good old days.

“Make our sons in their prime like sturdy oak trees, Our daughters as shapely and bright as fields of wildflowers.

Fill our barns with great harvest, fill our fields with huge flocks;

Protect us from invasion and exile— eliminate the crime in our streets.” Psalm 144:12 The Message