The good old days?

I have been thinking a lot about my childhood lately. Not sure if it was the death of Davy Jones or the fact that its March and I always get melancholy in this terrible month. But it does seem like life is so much different than when I was a kid.

At the risk of yet another 'YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN' post things are changing and not so much for the better.

When I was a kid we visited with relatives...not email, skype, facebook, or IM'd them. On Sundays Dad would pile us in the car and we would go to play softball or watch the older cousins fix their hot rods, sneak rhubarb and cherry tomatoes during the hot summer days or read 16 magazines debating Beatles vs Monkees.

And our parents knew the names of the cashiers at the grocery store, the mailman, the milk man(yes I am that old) the local police and the guy that pumped your gas.

You met your neighbors because you were hanging your laundry on a line or your pigs got loose. The paper printed who was in the hospital as well as who was cited for drunk driving...again. Party lines were standard so you had some respect for others privacy (or learned to be very, very quiet). Doctors still made house calls and the local pharmacist would open in the middle of the night to fill a prescription.

Now we buy everything on line from drugs to pet food and have no need to engage with the outside world. Libraries were places to go for information as well as local chit chat and a glimpse of an out of town newspaper...now we Google, Wicopedia, and Bing all our inquires.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Internet...almost to a point of obsession. I can go for days with out getting dressed if I want, and all information is at my fingertips. Some of my more 'interesting' searches would have left our town librarian scratching her head. (Victorian cross dressers? seriously??) and Face Book has connected me with people from years ago and created new friendships. So that's a good thing.

But some days I kinda long for a kitchen full of Aunts helping make my Mom's green tomato relish, or the days of cousins filling the rooms to watch tv.

But, I can message them on Face Book, and its almost the same thing.