Things I Miss

For most of my life one thing has been a constant - the more memories I have collected, the more I have lost. Strangely, that trend seems to be reversing itself. Memories long buried seem to be resurfacing. What has begun bubbling up is turning out to be mostly pleasing, smile-inducing things I miss. Sure nostalgia colors most of these longings, but what else are memories for? Such as:

Calvin & Hobbes - The best comic strip ever (sorry Charlie Brown) ended its 10-year run way back in 1995. Since then it lives on only in bookstores and school libraries, but has refused to fade away. Bill Watterson's brilliant depiction of a boy and his stuffed tiger is still fresh and insightful. And the cartoonist's staunch, principled refusal to license his creation is in stark contrast to the Schultz family's pimping of Peanuts to sell everything from life insurance to greeting cards to boxer shorts. Good grief!

 Audio cassettes - I realize the compact disc and mp3 recordings are superior in every way, from sound quality to storage capability to ease of access. I mostly just miss the sound an audio cassette makes when it's shaken. Don't you?

Muscle cars - I never owned one but certainly envied those who did. Being totally ignorant of the inner workings of the internal combustion engine, I was humbled by those who could dismantle then easily reassemble a car's guts. Muscle cars were symbolic of a rebellious youth culture that now seems mostly relegated to gaming consoles in darkened basements or pale-faced, sun-deprived vampire teens who gulp down YouTube videos like so many energy drinks.

Spf 5 or 10 or 15 - I was cruising the skin care aisles of Target last weekend looking for suncreen (f/k/as suntan lotion). Usually good for at least one scarring burn each summer (shoulders, belly, top of feet, blistering ears), I wanted to get ahead of the curve this year. Still vain enough to want a little color, I was hoping to find a sun protection factor number low enough to allow for some browning. Nope. The lowest spf number available was 30 and there were only a few bottles of those available. The rest were all 50+. I can only draw one conclusion from this - any skin coloring attained by people of the Midwest this summer will be purely accidental. Side note - I don't recall any spf numbers in childhood, do you?

Dirt roads - I grew up in homes near or next to dirt roads. The sound of car tires racing across gravel was pleasing and still rings in my ears. And the bi-weekly appearance of the county road grader was a chance for the kids in the neighborhood to see honest-to-goodness earth-moving equipment, not to mention a chance to wave furiously at its operator like he was the grand marshal of our own personal parade. 

Hitch-hikers - Perhaps I equate the disappearance of hitch-hikers with a loss of national innocence (as if we ever really were). This is probably a disconnected analogy, but there was a time when people did traverse the country with just their thumbs - akin to Depression-era hobos riding the rails. My only experience with hitch-hiking was positive, borne of pure necessity. 40 miles from my college home in May 1988, I stuck out my thumb on a steamy Sunday afternoon. Within minutes, a man about 10 years my senior took pity on me. Driving entirely out of his way in order to return me to Morris, Minnesota (I think he was avoiding a pissed girlfriend), we gabbed for an hour, sharing stories and a few Old Milwaukees he had stashed in his trunk.

Old Milwaukee - I have never actually liked the taste of beer despite having consumed plenty of it in my 20's. Maybe it's the "bite" each swig has or the fundamental lack of sugar. Either way, I do miss those cheap beer brands of my youth - Pabst (sewage), Schaefer (complete with floating particles), Blatz (including the day-after "splatz"), Stroh's (awesome blue can, awful blue taste), Schlitz (malt liquour bull), Milwaukee's Best (poorer man's Old Mil), and what I consider the best of the worst: Old Milwaukee (with its never-changing label). 

Cars that don't all look alike - Maybe this has been a complaint throughout each era of automobile manufacturing. Or maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon. Probably both. But for the last 30 years there seems to be almost no originality in the look and style of new car design. Sure they are equipped with more gadgets and gizmos, but they all seem so . . . boring. Perhaps it's just the reality of today's car market - to be competitive and cost-effective, cars and trucks have to be assembled with speed and efficiency. The result? Same old sameness.

Low budget graphics in sports programming - Does anyone else want to harm that robotic, animated football player on Fox's NFL broadcasts? His only redeeming quality is a jersey numbered "34" - an admiring, posthumous tip of the cap to football legend Walter Payton. Frankly, I get overwhelmed and annoyed with every little computer-animated statistic that slides onto the screen (the Patriots are 33% proficient in 4th quarter redzone scoring in indoor stadiums on Thursday night games), each complete with its very own unique (and unnecessary) sound effect. Let's resurrect those shitty, flickering scoreboards overlaid at the bottom of the screen and lousy slow-motion replays where the handful of cameras miss most of the key action. And where are announcers Hank Stram and Lindsay Nelson? I miss the way Hank's hair grew more full and lustrous the older he got. Reverse aging at its best.

Privacy - The U.S. Supreme Court has found that the Constitution implicitly grants individuals the right to privacy against governmental intrusion. Not new information. But in our glorious 21st century the American people have tweeted, posted and commented the following response, #wedontcare. Listen to our phone conversations? Big whoop. Gather our text data? Knock yourself out. Put citizens on watch lists? Nothing to hide here. Enact common sense gun control legislation? Whoa, government instrusion into my inalienable right!!!! Address mental illness in America? What! More Big Guv'ment sticking its nose where it doesn't belong!

Heroic, courageous leadership - I'm not saying that our state and national leaders were better "back in the day" than they are now - but they were. I'm not saying that today's state and national governments are controlled by a narrowing group of monied special interests who don't have the people's well-being in my mind - but they are. Once upon a distant past, Americans admired their political leaders. Oh sure, depending on one's political affiliation, leaders were hated too. Today? Political leaders are either tolerated or deeply reviled. Admired? Almost never. Disappointing? Continually. This change is not a result of something wrong with the electorate but the elected - and their puppet-masters who cry, "Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain."

Kennedy/Lincoln/Roosevelt mash-up

Peace - The most widely respected and admired U.S. military figure of the 20th century was Dwight Eisenhower. At the conclusion of his Presidency in 1961, he warned the American people in his Farewell Address:

 The conjunction of an immense military establishment . . . is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Ike said a mouthful, and that mouthful resonates to this very day. We no longer pursue peace or are a peace-loving nation. The military-industrial complex has become a massive, government-subsidized jobs program and self-perpetuating juggernaut. A staggering chunk of every tax dollar collected is chewed, swallowed, and digested by the defense industry.  Our all-volunteer armed forces are everywhere - even as the supporting VA is wholly inadequate to meet the needs of  veterans. But as the war in Iraq concluded and the war in Afghanistan is concluding, does any American really believe that troops won't be committed on some other foreign soil, and soon? The United States government's overseas adventures since 1961 have grown outward from Eisenhower's cautionary tale to an enduring nightmare. The waking reality is that as our government continues to export "freedom" abroad, we seem to becoming less free at home. A mouthful we are being force-fed, but also are choking on.

My Grandma - The best for last.

Lots of things to miss. No doubt these will fall off as other memories return. Who knows, maybe one day we'll miss things like that awful sound that dial-up internet made, or the concussed NFL after it goes the way of the horse and buggy, or Florida after its coastline recedes under steadily rising ocean levels, or livable wages when poverty continue to tick upward, or Richard Nixon's moderate Republicanism, or Jimmy Carter's basic decency, or smartphones once the cell phone implants turn out to be cancer-causing, or cleavage after the fashion industry decides to give modesty a go . . . or . . . or . . .