That was the 63 years that was...

I grew older yesterday. And I was thinking about everything I have today that they didn't have when I was born. Television, for instance. Never mind cable, satellite, VCRs, DVDs, or even remote controls. Soap operas were on the radio. Mom listened to Ma Perkins, One Man's Family, and Helen Trent. Dear Helen, she was the longest suffering person in the whole entire world. I heard these sagas only peripherally, because I was supposed to be napping when they came on, same time they still do, after lunch. We didn't even have jet airplanes then. When they came along, during the cold war, we would have air raid drills at school, where we all jumped under our desks and covered our heads and our eyes so we wouldn't be blinded by the atomic mushroom cloud. Funny, I don't remember being particularly concerned about that. In my lifetime, man went to war, over and over again. FDR was president when I was born, and we were still in the war to end all wars, World War II. Then Korea, then Viet Nam, then the Gulf War, and gee, here we are again. I studied Western Civilization, from the dawn of man's emergence from the caves, and it is a never-ending saga of war. So I can say with some assurance that nothing has changed since I came along. Most of what has happened seems to be good, though. I like minipads that stick right to your panties, instead of having to have an elastic belt with a metal-toothed grip, that frequently gripped more than it was designed to. Birth control pills were nice, too. Cars are much more diverse, more than GM or Ford or Chrysler, which is pretty much what there was in my early days. Oh, there was Studebaker and Rambler, too, but only really geeky people drove those. And they were twice the size as today's puddlejumpers, even the big sedans on the road today. Seatbelts, what're they? Actually, they built cars from real steel and bumpers were real chrome and meant business then, we could get by without seatbelts. And helmets, another new thing. I rode my bike all around this county without a helmet. Fell off it a few times, too, but usually not on my head. A dog was just a dog. If it got hit by a car (no leash laws, either), you got another one. There were no dog dentists, or dog chiropractors, and certainly, no one was interested enough to be a dog psychic. Rock and roll, along with American Bandstand (long live Dick Clark) came about just as I entered puberty, and Sixteen Candles came out when I was, well, 16. A big Saturday night was cruising Fourth Street and getting a hamburger at Mel's, just like American Graffiti. Pizza was still on the horizon. I was a senior in high school before we had the first pizza, at a little Italian joint on Courthouse Square. I liked it because we still couldn't eat meat on Friday night, and you could get a pizza with just cheese and mushrooms. Yep, a lot of good stuff has come about during my little span of years. It could be better, but it could be a whole lot worse, too.