These are the good old days.
I just want to say that “Good Old Days” is the title of the theme music from Our Gang, composed by Leroy Shield. So I believe in the phrase as far as that dulcet-toned saxophone solo goes.
In school, when summers lasted forever.
Nowadays, whenever I listen to “All Summer Long” by the Beach Boys it almost chokes me up. Wonderful, beautiful memories of those days. (Except the albums from my time would be “The Cars” and Fleetwood Mac “Rumours.”
The “good ol’ days” was when I was young. No aches and pains, my parents took care of everything. All I had to do was ride my bike and hang out with my friends all day. Because in the “good ol’ days” it is always a summer afternoon.
When people talk about the good ol’ days being different, they are really talking about their own situation and perspective and that changes as you age.
I can’t think that any time before the introduction of the birth control pill could qualify as “the good old days” for women. I would not have liked to be a woman in a world without the Pill and other reliable and easily accessible methods of birth control. Being constantly pregnant and having lots of kids has no appeal for me, thankyouverymuch.
There were some other disadvantages for women in the old days, too. When my parents wanted to buy a house, the mortgage broker would not consider my mom’s income in determining their eligibility, because “she might get pregnant and quit”. My dad had to take a second job to earn enough money to qualify. I doubt he liked that very much. I certainly wouldn’t.
^
at least their actual amortization:income ratio is much smaller than creditors thought.
Well Ive had an operation that means I dont need glasses any more that was only possible in the last few years, my dad was forcibly adopted out because that was how they did it back then, my mother died of a cancer in her 30’s that now has 90+% 5 year survival rates. Dont even start me on mental health advances.
Screw the good old days. Only thing I miss from them is being younger.
Otara
I think a lot of people who are nostalgic for the era of their childhoods don’t realize how much their perception of the era is tinged by them having been children.
Look at me. I remember the late sixties as being a time of peace and security. Why? Because I was just a kid. I was oblivious to all the problems that were going on in the world.
I was told it was when sex was safe and Michael Jackson was black. Except I don’t recall enjoying the 70’s much–too much anxiety, what with the cold war and terrorists all over the place and the environment going to Hell, not to mention the rise of Christian fundamentalism and being told I’d go to the bad place for liking Led Zeppelin. And this continued into the 80’s.
The 90’s and 2000’s bit the big one, though from problems that were largely of my own making.
The late 60’s weren’t so bad, however–probably because I was too young to know what was going on.
I was a kid then too and the nuns made sure we got our curriculum filled up with news and analysis of the turmoil of those days: Martin Luther King shot. Racism, civil rights, and riots. Kitty Genovese, murdered in front of the whole neighborhood. Bobby Kennedy shot. Cesar Chavez y la huelga. We have to think about the poor people in Appalachia. Red China is scary to the missionaries on Quemoy. Violent and gruesome documentaries on the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi holocaust. Music consisted of left-wing folk songs. The Catholic Church I was raised in is long since dead and gone.
The good old days began when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, and ended with Watergate . . . reaching its peak with the Summer of Love ('67).
i’ll live in any time where there were antibiotics and anesthesia. the thing is i want fewer people in downtown, clean and quiet suburbs, and the hunting and fishing a few miles out is still good.
oh yeah, gas is cheap.
In the good old days, I used computers that had operating systems (eg VMS) that never failed on me. When we wanted a new feature of the OS we phoned DEC and told them what we wanted and they put it in.
Now, OS have far more things in them, fail all the time and there is no point telling MS what I want.
I was born in 1967, so I remember the 1970s. It was definitely the “me” decade; your life’s purpose was self pleasure. Drugs were everywhere, divorce was on the rise, and everyone partied 'till they puked. There’s not a whole lot of good you can say about that decade. Well, except for the music. The best rock and folk music was written in the 1970s.
The 1980s were the opposite. It was the Ayn Rand decade. People sobered up, joined health spas, and got MBAs. A definite improvement from the hedonistic and post-hippiesque 1970s, for the most part. But it wasn’t all peaches-n-cream; the Moral Majority infiltrated our political system, for example. But they were just a minor annoyance.
So I look fondly back at the 1980s. It was actually a fun decade. Admittedly the music was bad (especially heavy metal), but it was cool. And people were not constantly plugged in to a network. Life was good.
Yeah, but to those of us who survived, it was a magical time. I rode thousands of miles unrestrained in the back of a giant Chrysler station wagon. Loved every minute of it. Would I let my kids do it. No way. There are lots of things I won’t let my kids do now that I happened to get away with as a kid. That doesn’t mean that I can’t look back on doing those things myself as ‘the good old days’.
It does seem to me that there used to be less unwanted noise. There definitely was a time when car alarms and leaf blowers didn’t exist, and around these parts we are annoyed by one or the other, or both, almost daily. Today, in fact, it seems like the noise of leaf blowers and similar equipment went on for a couple of hours, which seems possible if the gardeners were doing several buildings on our block.
Me too. Mind you being a child and, later, a carefree young adult might have something to do with my sentimentality about this time period.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.
I thought the 80s were the Greed is Good decade. Doesn’t sound cool to me. I remember very little of the 80s; I was flat out being a new mother.
But the musical counterpoints to Greed Is Good were good.