Tell me, someone, please, when we were kids back in the 50s were the blackbirds as big as they are today? Or the candy bars as small?

Did every 16-year-old have a car?

And a sex life?

Did 12-year-old girls look, dress and act like they were 25?

And did guys start shaving when they were high school freshmen? And losing their hair as juniors?

Back then, did summer days get into the 90s as they sometimes do today? And did we lay awake at night suffering because we had no air conditioning?

Tell me, did people in those days hire someone to cut their grass and rake their leaves and wash their cars?

And did everyone have a snow blower?

When we were kids, were we afraid to drink water out of the tap?

Or eat fish out of the river?

Please tell me, would we have been upset if our grandmothers gave us a quarter? And was a dime not worth bending over to pick up?

In those days, were the baseball fields around town always empty and the video arcades always full? (Trick question – there were no video arcades.)

Did the Little League season end before the 4th of July back then, and school start before Labor Day?

And did Thanksgiving Day come and go without a single local high school football game?

When we were kids, were there ever stories about pet dogs mauling and sometimes even killing people?

Was life less interesting when we didn’t know every detail about hurricanes when they were still a thousand miles from Florida?

And tell me, when we were kids did women in their late 70s still have jet black hair?

When we were young, was “throwing the finger” as much a part of driving as using the turn signal.

And did we crank the bass up on the car radio until it made the fillings fall out of our teeth?

Was pop music less enjoyable then because we had no videos to go along with it?

Were The Beatles less talented because they did not dance when they sang?

And would Diana Ross have sounded better if she had breast implants?

When we were teens, were we less mature because we still played whiffle ball and were called home to have dinner with our families?

Were we deprived back then because there were no X Games or HBO or Texting?

Did we manage to get by with out cell phones and Face Book accounts?

Tell me, were we missing out on something in the days when we knew a ball player’s batting average but not his salary?

And did golfers and tennis players back then pump their fists every time they made a good shot?

In the days of our youth, did we all go thirsty because Cokes came in only 7 ounce bottles?

And did moms have nervous breakdowns because there was no such thing as fast food?

When we were kids, did folks go to church on Saturday and do their grocery shopping on Sunday?

And was the gas station the place you went for milk and bread?

And, tell me, was school ever cancelled for an inch of show?

In those days, was there anything wrong with song lyrics such as “Chantilly lace, and a pretty face and a pony tail, hangin’ down,” as opposed to today’s “It’s getting hot in here, let’s take off all our clothes”?

As tykes, were we worse off because we played in the sandbox in kindergarten and didn’t learn to read until first grade? Did we suffer by not having school psychologists? And was the truant officer really a bad thing?

Were our parents horrible human beings for always taking the side of our teachers, the school principal and our coaches?

And was every kid sitting on the bench the victim of a bad coach who didn’t like him because of his ancestry?

Tell me, in those days were doctors fools for making house calls?

And were men really chauvinists for holding doors for women?

In those days, did we ever hear the words cocaine, or crack, or terrorist, or school shooting, or assault weapon, or racial profiling, or hate crime?

Or even heat index, or abs, or light beer, or giga-byte, or rap, or carbs, or botox, or sexual harassment, or inner child, or reality TV?

And tell me, someone, please, back in the 50s were women who looked like Paris Hilton considered gorgeous?

Didn’t think so.

About the Author

Ed Ackerman is the editor of the Pittston Sunday Dispatch. He can be reached at 602-0175.

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