Will the Good Old Days Please Stand Up

Somewhere down on the east end of my a.m radio dial, I heard a preacher the other day telling everybody that this nation was headed down the tubes and what we needed was a big revival. “We all need to pray” I think is how he phrased it “in order to get this country back to the good old days”. You know me well enough by now to know that I am going to have a few questions, even over a simply one-liner like that. Not that I necessarily disagree with his premise, but I did get my forehead wrinkled by his solution.

“We need everybody in this country to pray for a return to the good old days,” he said.

One thing that comes to my mind has to be just which good old days is this guy talking about? I know if you’ve ever listened to G Gordon Liddy, the baldheaded Watergate felon turned conservative radio strong arm, the glory days for music, anyway, was the big band era. Well he did slip once and admit he liked Abba, but other than that bunch of Scandinavian blonde hairs, I doubt the G Man’s got a single musical end product in his house on the Potomac that’s not made of wax. Of course if it’s the music that the good reverend if referring to, I’d have to throw my vote to that second golden age of country- country music that is. Around 1975- Merle Haggard, Randy Travis, Alabama; my gosh can anybody hold a candle to their wind?

But I’m thinking what the rev had in mind was something a little bit bigger than that, probably more than just show biz. OK Fine. I was born in 56, lived my formidable highly impressionable early years in the 60’s. Did have to mow the yard- that and cut the mustard in that all boys high school I was attending. Other than that, I’d say my childhood was just about perfect. And what I think I liked the most was the summers I spent up on the family farm with my grandparents. All the eggs and biscuits I could eat, a smooth running pick-up at my complete disposal; as long as I kept her on the back 40. And cute little Jean Ann “What’s Her Name” living right there across the street; with me going through the change. Not that we ever did anything. In fact, I believe the only time we ever touched was when I tackled her trying to run the double-reverse in a Sunday afternoon football game. Kids don’t seem to play like that anymore; but we sure had a good time back then. In fact, that entire summer seemed perfect. Thinking back, that was about as good as it got at least from where I was sitting. Wonder if that’s what that preacher was talking about- my summer of 1967. If I’d thought it would have helped in the least bit, maybe I could have talked grandma into letting everbody stay there. Course there I go again; just looking at things from my perspective.

OK maybe your version of the sixties was just a bit foggier than mine- if you were even alive then. So just when those glory days here were in Uncle Sam land?

I lived through the eighties and I’ll vouch that it wasn’t them. I mean glory days and leisure suits should not be used in the same sentence. Plus, you remember how bad the hair was? Maybe it was the fifties. I don’t know much about how the Dow Jones was doing back then- what was it at- 75? Seems though like things were simpler- everything in black and white; literally. No that couldn’t have been them because we got ourselves into Korea for some reason. And I do recall colored people seem to have been taking it on the chin pretty bad then too. Of course it wouldn’t have the forties either. We lost so many in the WWII, but them that made it back sure bought a lot of houses.

The depression took up most of the thirties, the twenties and thirties I've read. That left such a bad taste in people’s mouths, at least regarding work and money. My dad just turned 83, and he still talks about how tough it was back then. Now the twenties, they sure sounded fun. The roaring twenties I think they called them. Flapper dancers, vaudeville, breweries springing up everywhere. Oops- that’s what got all the holy rollers uptight to begin with; and that only brings us back to square one.

Maybe it’s the eighteen hundreds this preacher has in mind. It’s hard to get a personal rendition on what it was like back then, on account that 99.9 percent of the people who lived then didn’t make it to the 2000 New Years count down. I don’t know though; as much as those couples bitched on Frontier Life on PBS up in Montana, I don’t believe most of us today could handle that lifestyle very good anyhow. So I’ll have to say I have no clue- at least in America- what age this fellow is grabbing for.

But I guess my other question is this- ok suppose we do figure out just which years we want to dial our time machine into, what are we suppose to ask for or pray about anyway? And how are we ever going to get that many people agreeing to something like this? You know how hard it is to get a consensus? From 352 million people? I remember before he kicked the bucket, you couldn’t get Siskel to agree with Ebert about anything, at least when it came to Hollywood stuff. And that’s just two fellers. And this dude expects everybody in the country to drop and give him 20?

Again it goes back to the bigger question. We probably won’t get any agreement just to where we’re going, and you probably won’t be able to get everybody along on the same ride. Seems to me like- wouldn’t just one guy- with a real good prayer- be able to get us all back into some sort of civil shape that could make everybody happy? Just one person, with a good attitude and some real prayer power; why he ought to be able to move mountains. That’s what they’re always promising. Just one guy- or it could be a girl- though it seems more like a guy’s job; one guy praying on behalf of the rest of us, getting us to move down that straight and narrow in lockstep; how about one of those dynamic and tv hogging preachers we see every Sunday; or maybe somebody like the pope or something. Just one fellow, giving it all he’s got, with one of those long winded prayers for our nation, our people, our children, our safety, our jobs, our health, …….

Hey wait a second. I think we’ve already got somebody doing that.

Oh well- back to the drawing board.