We Survived Them All
Our generation had a lot of qualities. Tough, dumb and lucky might explain 90% of them. A friend recently said that all of us survived our young and dumb days, by the Grace of God.
Today’s parents are worse than helicopters. IF they rode IN the helicopter with them, it would be an appropriate term. Many today, wouldn’t dream of letting their kid out of their sight for just a few seconds. We grew up in an age when we left on our bikes after breakfast and didn’t return until the streetlights came on.
We survived building forts, jumping off roofs with a sheet like Superman, cotton boll fights, lighting M-80’s and smoking grape vines or rabbit tobacco. For my city slicker friends (both of them), you will have to get a good ole boy to tell you about the art of smoking grape vines or rabbit tobacco.
In 1978, disco was in full force and Gloria Gaynor recorded “I Will Survive.” She sang about those of us who are in our seventies who survived cholesterol, lead paint and cars without seatbelts.
When was cholesterol discovered? If we had grown up with it, we would have fried it in lard and smothered it in sawmill gravy. The same was true about gluten. I realize that Dr. Gluten must have discovered it and and named it after himself. Before that, we enjoyed food, especially cereals, tater chips, waffles and basketti. He went and ruined our meals but like Gloria sang, we survived.
We grew up in the days of visiting the service station, to be met by a man in a bowtie who asked one question followed immediately by another “Filler up?” “Do you want regular or ethyl?” For the youngsters in their sixties, ethyl wasn’t the head cheerleader but the name for the premium grade of gas. Later, some pencil-necks in Washington decided that we needed to remove the lead from gasoline. For our corn farmers, they were selling millions of bushels of corn to the refineries to mix it with the gas for better mileage. The biggest complainers were the moonshiners who had to now pay more for the corn.
We survived the days of lead gasoline and cars without seatbelts. I can remember the days of “lap belts,” before the shoulder harnesses were required. Today, those same lap belts are sold on E-Bay for those of you prepping for a colonoscopy. The night before your Roto-Rooter exploration, you have to take a mixture that tastes like 20 Mule Team Borax and goat urine. The lapbelt goes on your commode to keep you from being launched through the shower door when the flammable mixture hits its mark.
Think of the school playgrounds where we grew up. Not the ones today with a rubberized mat beneath and monkey bars which are barely four feet off the ground. We had swings whose seats were supported by metal chains and packed dirt underneath that was harder than Japanese arithmetic. But, we survived. Even those who swung sky high and jumped when the swing was at its apex and lived to tell about it. All of us can remember the playground dare-devil who did a complete 360 over the support bar. And survived to tell about it.
How about the other killing playground machines which would cause Wilberforce’s manbun to stand on its end today? Merry -go-rounds. See saws. Metal slides that got so hot that the lunchroom ladies used them to fry baloney for lunch.
Any Little Leaguer can relate to this: we would pile 7 knotheads in the bed of a pickup truck while 3 others sat on the bench seat in the cab next to the coach/driver who was chain smoking Winstons. Of course, the old Army duffle bag with the wooden bats and catcher’s equipment, served as a bench seat in the back. After the game, the coach pulled the pickup to the Frosty Freeze, Dairy Bar or Dixie Dip and bought the entire team, their choice of ice cream cones or nanner splits. If that wasn’t Heaven, you could at least see it from there.
But we survived.
In junior high football, the players dug through old worn-out pads and found one that seemed to fit. There was no certified trainer to check for proper fitting. There was no checking for cracks in the helmet shell or the canvas webbing inside. A cracked helmet was a badge of honor.
As a high school junior playing quarterback, I broke my collarbone, partially due to the fact that I was wearing shoulder pads that were too big for my strapping 145 pounds. As for our physical, the doctor listened to our heart and lungs, felt for hernias as we turned our head and coughed. After those 30 seconds, came the next word: “Next.”
In biology during the section on the circulatory system, other students took a lancet, wiped the finger with alcohol and proceeded to stab the other one to draw a drop of blood. It was put on a slide along with a solution to determine the blood type. After all these years, I don’t know of a single biology student who bled to death.
Without going into great detail, we survived no water at football practice, swimming without waiting 30 minutes after a meal, farmhouses with asbestos shingles, eating green apples sprinkled with salt from the cow’s salt block and wearing dirty underwear against our mother’s will, even after a wreck.
Gloria Gaynor never knew who she was singing about years ago.
Those of us who lived through the disco’s days also remember another disco tune:
“Staying Alive.”
Yes, We survived.