Roger Kimball lists eight amusing anecdotes on how things were more sane in the 50s:
7. Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1956 – Ants die.
2006 – BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny’s Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
Add yours in the comments.
My nephew did this the other day – nothing happened.
At least there are still parts of Canada where sanity prevails…
rude ignorant punks tease down’s syndrome child, 2 brothers go to park and beat the crap out of them
1975 – boys go running home to dad, dad comes over to our house, gets the facts, goes home and gives them another smack, boys come over to house, say they are sorry, and the two families become friends
2007 – the 2 brothers are arrested, convicted, lives are ruined…the punks are allowed to terrorize the park, go on to gang activity, and wind up in prion for murder
1975 actually happened, and more than once
prison
In 1956, with the help of my father, I constructed zip guns (using firecracker powder to fire marbles in gun barrels made from 1/2 iron pipe) and pipe bombs (packing 2inch iron pipe with powder and capping it). We were not stupid and we bore no grudges. These were experiments to see how big a bang or how far we could shout a marble. Conclusion: they were failures and brought home to us how difficult it would be to construct a real gun or bomb. Of course, both me and my father would be locked up if we tried such things today. Another thing: like most rural people we always had a few sticks of dynamite around to blow up stumps and boulders. This was available to any person with a need from the friendly farmers co-op. Those were the days when people were trusted to have the sense to know how to use dangerous things. And, we did have the sense both to test and to use them in a correct way.
Fifty years Ago??
“I’ll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it’s going to be impossible to buy a week’s groceries for $20.”
“Have you seen the new cars coming out next year?It won’t be long before $2000 will only buy a used one.”
“If cigarettes keep going up in price, I’m going to quit. A quarter a pack is ridiculous.”
“Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?”
“If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.”
“When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 29 cents a gallon. Guess we’d be better off leaving the car in the garage.”
“Kids today are impossible. Those duck tail hair cuts make it impossible to stay groomed. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair as long as the girls.”
“I’m afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying ‘damn’ in ‘Gone With The Wind,’ it seems every new movie has either “hell” or “damn” in it.
“I read the other day where some scientist thinks it’s possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas .”
“Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn’t surprise me if someday they’ll be making more than the president.”
“I never thought I’d see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now.”
“It’s too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet.”
“It won’t be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work.”
“Marriage doesn’t mean a thing any more; those Hollywood stars seem to be getting divorced at the drop of a hat.”
“I’m just afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business.”
“Thank goodness I won’t live to see the day when the Government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to government.”
“The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on.”
“There is no sense going to London or Toronto anymore for a weekend. It costs nearly $15 a night to stay in a hotel.”
“No one can afford to be sick any more; $35 a day in the hospital is too rich for my blood.”
“If they think I’ll pay 50 cents for a hair cut, forget it.”
An old timer friend sent these gems , just to remind me some of this stuff was likely true.
Joe
1950 … 1975 … 2007 …
Unfortunately government must keep on expanding and expanding, if the people who are in government and who are connected to people in government are to successfully avoid having to do real work. And because sometimes people notice and complain when government gets bigger and bigger and they get poorer and poorer, occasionally we who get rich off of government will have to pretend to be conservatives, and pretend that we hate government and that we love the little people. While we pull the wool over their eyes, beat them to a pulp, rifle their pockets, and then denounce the people who complain as “traitors” and “liberals”.
Nothing personal. It’s what we do.
1960s – I remember a couple of us walking through town with .22 rifles over our shoulders, out to the garbage dump to shoot bottles. Concerned citizen: “You kids be careful”. Response “Yes sir”. Kids grew up to be responsible citizens.
19990s – last time I heard someone try carrying a gun through town, it was just a BB gun, fellow walking with his wife and son in Chilliwack. Concerned citizen called the police, who assaulted him, threw him to the ground, cuffed behind his back, their pistols pointed at his head.
Awww don’t worry folks things will be much better when the Christian Facists or the Muslim Facists take over!
at least the christian “fascists” will not try to kill this atheist if I do not pray to their God…cannot say the same about the islamonutjobs…..btw, is a facist someone who does facials?
1956….unwed mother-to-be informs family…sent to unwed mothers home..baby put up for adoption…kept quiet because it was an embarresment.
2007…unwed mother given abortion behind families back because state says mothers over 14 do not need to inform their mothers that they are pregnant,and are aborting
Christian Facists?? Really? Where? Islamofacists, however, are busy little beavers – just check-out today’s stories on jihadwatch.org
******at least the christian “fascists” will not try to kill this atheist if I do not pray to their God*****
let me introduce you to Timothy McVeigh
YIKES! You’re right facists are giving facials whilst the fascists are giving Nazi salutes.
I also agree that I’d rather be living next to an intolerant right wing Christian than an extremist Muslim. One will get mad at you if you tell them you think there is no god, the other will kill you.
The liberal left have abandoned reason and have replace self-sufficiency with dependency, justice with injustice and then call it a tolerant progressive society. The result is we can no longer see nor hear any evil.
We all long for a simpler time; we need to be careful that someone doesn’t offer us a cure that is worse than the disease.
Scenario: Dave fails Grade 10 Canadian History
1975: Dave goes to summer school, has a great history teacher (for a change), passes with an A+ and starts a 30 year love of the history of our country.
2007: Canadian Whaaa?
******at least the christian “fascists” will not try to kill this atheist if I do not pray to their God*****
let me introduce you to Timothy McVeigh
And yes there are some exceptions to who I might want to live next door to on the Christian side!
I remember taking rifles (minus their pins) along to elementary school for a science fair project (early ’70s); openly carrying knives that today would get me arrested; home-made grenades (famous “almost” last words – hey! the wick went out…); tin can mortars…
I don’t think so, GYM. He’s dead. As in capital punishment. From reading your shallow posts, I’m afraid that I’m forced to conclude that you seem to be a few bottles short of a case.
Timothy McVeigh did his evil deed on April 19, 1995–nearly 12 years ago. He was a heavy meth user and so probably psychotic. He did not carry out the Oklahoma bombing under the auspices of any church. His atrocity was recognized for what it was and he was firmly condemned by both Christians and the state. (He was an American.)
On the other hand, Islamic terrorist bombers have murdered TENS OF THOUSANDS of people all over the world, with the blessing–if not at the instigation–of their religious leaders. I don’t notice their political leaders or even fellow citizens complaining either.
Your attempt at a parallel is pathetic, a common attribute of the leftie silliness I so often read here. I try to anticipate criticism before I post. I think you should do the same.
The idea that CHRISTIANS are fascists–Margaret Attwood’s intolerant misconception in her futuristic Handmaid’s Tale–is infantile and bigoted. I’m thoroughly tired of it. (As I pointed out the other day, the people who give by far the most $$ and voluntary time to society at large are–wait for it, GYM–CHRISTIANS.)
Your slur has no basis in fact. Smarten up and, if you’re able to understand this concept at all, give respect where respect is due.
Not all Christians are fascists, just some are. Those who are would never call themselves that anyway. They would just say they want the “dominion” of God’s law on Earth. They want Evolution thrown out of schools, they want gays arrested, treated and if needed hung if they practice their evil again. They want academics to stick to subjects that do not conflict with “gawds” word.
Yes they want a return to a simpler time, and to get there they will change the laws as needed to arrest who they need to, and to kill if they have to. Does this represent all Christians? No, absolutely not, but they are out there, just listen to Jerry Falwell and Canada’s Miracle Channel, you will hear the creeping thud of the jackboot as it marks time waiting for the West to surrender its liberties in order to go back to a simpler, safer age.
First they will come for the “deviants”, and then they will come for you.
Thank you, lookout, although don’t “credit” Atwood with popularizing “the Christian fascist” slander in literature. This stupidity was old 60 or 70 years ago, when Heinlein wrote “If This Goes On—” (see Revolt in 2100). The smell hasn’t gotten any better with age.
I’m only 21, but I’ve got a few that I remember:
My dad, 1989: “Check it! Just got this computer from the bank second-hand for the low low price of $4000. I’m paying in installments. Of course, all my computer-savvy friends say I’m insane, because I’m never ever going to need half a megabyte of space on my hard drive.”
1997-1998: “Asia will never be a financial power. Look at the crises all over the place! Look at the way the Japanese economy has stagnated. And who else could there possibly be?”
2003: “Paying ~$2500 in tuition is way too much. The universities will empty if we increase it beyond this, because only the upper 1% will be able to afford it.”
***
My favourite sequence of events was this:
1990: Kid – “Teacher! Jarrett brought a water pistol to school”
Teacher – “Shut up, kid.”
2007: Jarrett is normal.
Or even better:
1999: Columbine shootings.
2000: Teachers in my high school playing a “survivor” contest where they’d duck out of class to shoot each other with water pistols. The irony is lost on them.
Roger, Tenebris.
And, Cardstonkid, I’m having a problem with your perception.
Please give some concrete examples in Canada of “the creeping thud of the [Christian] jackboot as it marks time waiting for the West to surrender its liberties in order to go back to a simpler, safer age.” (Utter rubbish.)
I could give you examples of just the opposite: check out Chris Kempling and Scott Brockie, whose Christian beliefs collided with the pro-homosexual creed of the modern Canadian state. The Charter was used in both cases to jackboot these responsible, law abiding Christian citizens.
You say, “Not all Christians are fascists, just some are.” What a gross exaggeration! In Canada, I’d surmise that the proportion you designate as “some” would be minuscule. And what kind of political power do these “Christian fascists” have? Likewise, minuscule. (I’m not sure I could say the same for other religious fascists in our midst, who seem to be totally protected from scrutiny–including by people like you–due to PC squeamishness. And boneheadedness.)
Your post surprises me and its misconceptions are most disturbing. As I said, concrete examples, please.
Cardstonkid – grow up.
McVeigh was a lapsed Catholic at best, and his accomplice Terry Nichols married a Muslim and attended a radical Islamist-dominated university in southern Philippines 6 months before Oklahoma. The bomb they used was typical Islamist design. They were not Christians by any stretch and certainly acted more like al Quaeda wannabes.
My advice to you is stop mouthing radical chic bull, find out the truth and start thinking for yourself.
“Not all Christians are fascists,”
Facism is pretty much dead except for a few far right groups still kicking around in Europe. Next to no christians are facists but almost all facists were christian.
I guess this guy didn’t get the memo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni
1956… Toronto Maple Leafs suck.
2007… Toronto Maple Leafs suck. (more)
…but almost all facists were christian.
The definition of a Christian is to be a Christ follower.
You’re saying fascists are Christ followers?
1965 Carry a knife to play chicken or stretch at recess.
2005 Carry a knife,get permanent recess from school.
when i was about age 12, my mom would send me to the store to by cigarettes, which at that time were around 65 cents a pack.
almost all facists were christian
So Jose, who are the fascists today?
1975 Take my shotgun or rifle on the schoolbus in the morning. Wander into the Principals office and lean it up against the wall. Take a different schoolbus to the area I wanted to hunt. Hitchhike home after dark.
Try that now.
Peter Palmer, grow up! (Next will you tell me I’m a poopy head?)
Tim professed to be Christian, are you claiming to be Jesus Christ in that you seem to know who “real Christians” are? Seriously though, wether he was a “good” Christian or not I would not want him as a neighbor. Since he was a mass murderer you need not convince me he was a bad Christian, I am pretty sure he was.
I recognize the importance of Christianity in the West and the debt our civilization owes it for the ideas and freedoms we enjoy. That is not the point or the issue, the point is that there is a minority in the West that are trying to mobilize the conservative Christian movement into a political vehicle that in its core is reminiscent of the 1930’s Nazi movement.
While I recognize the importance of Christian thought in the progress of Western Civilization and the value its core beliefs have had for developing a prosperous free market democratic era, are you able or willing to concede that many Christians would be sorely tempted to follow a movement that would return the West to a simpler more moral time? Especially if the offer for this change came in a moment of national crisis? I recognize and concede that this movement is small and in the minority now, but will it always be so if we fail to see it for what it is now before a time of crisis arrives?
The biggest challenge the West faces at this time is waking up the liberal left who fail to see any danger in pacifying extremism in all its forms. They will stand idly by just like the German intellectual leftist’s did in the 1930’s. If we recognize ignorance and fill the vacuum of a rudderless society then there is a chance we can have a golden age without the black and white simplicity that the adoration of 1950’s has come to symbolize.
When I was about 11, a trip to the corner grocery with a note for a pack of Chesterfields [47 cents], was routine.
Once or twice the errand was run without the parents knowledge. Forgery was a strong suit.
Good thing too. I got so green around the gills that smoking never became a habit. = TG
Not all non-Christians are terrorists, but most terrorists are non-Christians.
Not all non-Christians are mass murderering despots, but most mass murdering despots were non-Christians.
Not all whites were slave-owners in the States, but most slave-owners in the States were white.
Not all hot liquids are freshly made coffee, but most freshly made coffee are hot liquids.
Not all whites were fascists, but all fascists were white. Not all Germans were fascists, but most fascists were German. Not all men are fascist murderers, but most fascist murderers are men.
Woohoo, simplistic reductionism is fun, eh Jose? Not all of the stupid comments at SDA are from Jose, but most of Jose’s comments are stupid.
Cardstonkid, you don’t document some astonishingly out of order comments and you contradict yourself.
You write, “. . . . the point is that there is a minority in the West that are trying to mobilize the conservative Christian movement into a political vehicle that in its core is reminiscent of the 1930’s Nazi movement.” Who are these people? Where are they? What fascist things are they doing? How will they force people in a democracy to do what they want? I think you’re WAY out of line here. Either give credible evidence of such a radical thesis or give it up.
Then you say, “The biggest challenge the West faces at this time is waking up the liberal left who fail to see any danger in pacifying extremism in all its forms.” That’s more like it, if you ask me. And are the liberal left likely to be Christians? No. They’re the ones most likely to disparage–like you sometimes do–the Christian faith. And, as penny pointed out a while ago, it is largely Christians, who have NOT fallen for the PC dispensation these days, who are trying to alert the West about the dire threat from Islam.
Your thoughts seem quite muddled. Perhaps you could amend them so they make sense.
When I was a Kid I used to take public transit to go to my Police-youth target shooting matches…got on the bus with the gun in the open and the bolt out in my pocket. Only once did a bus driver ask me if the gun was loaded….that was because he was unknowledgable of firearms and I explained that with the bolt removed the rifle was inoperable….still this never would have stopped me from putting the bolt back in and loading it from the ammo I carried in my other pocket, but this never occured to me (or him) because the consequences of doing something irresponsible, and my parents taking away my priviledge to target shoot was a prime motivating force…I wasn’t the only one, there were over 1000 kids my age group in the youth shooting programs between the ones run by the JayCees, Cops, Boy Scouts, Sea Cadets, Public Schools and some church youth groups.
Both my high school, and junior high had a couple of lanes of indoor rifle ranges…as did many Urban Canadan schools…rifle safety and shooting proficiency were mandatory classes in PE and cadet training…and this was the late 60s early 70s.
I used to ride my bike with my .22 strapped over my back through 18 city/suburban blocks to get to a few fields outside town where I was paid to shoot crows and ground hogs for the local farmers…never a bad look or complaint from anyone….as a matter of fact, I often met a city cop, who patrolled the city outskirts, who would ask me how I did that day…”how many crows you get today Dannel” ( He called me Daniel Boone for some reason)…once we even had an impromptu target match at the local sand pit at the edge of town… when I beat him 4 times out of 5 he let me shoot his K-frame S@W service revolver.
My childhood interface and association with police was a positive one. In those days the police were really part of the community…our friends and neighbors and they took an active hand in helping the communitie’s yout grow up with a sense of civic responsibility. The police were truely the embodikment of Sir Robert Peel’s police function…part of the community.
Consider what any of those normal 50s-60s activities would get you today. Consider the reaction and nature of the police funtion today.
The “culture of safety” (this is soviet style nanny state regulatory civil repression) has made the last generation of Canadians chronically paranoid and dysfunctional as a empowered responsible society.
The media was a hand maden in creating the hysteria (gun hysteria sells as good as todays climate hysteria) and the gun prohibitionist lobbies, state and police functions rode this hysteria into creating a regulatory grid that eleviates you of any right to act as a free individual where ANYTHING considered “dangerous” by the nanny state is concerned…wuth this removal of free will we lost our need for individual responsibility…the nanny state took that from us.
What was once understood to be individual freedom with the requisite personal responsibility attached has now become state-enforced paranoia and an over-bearing spirit-crushing regulatory regime which assumes every citizen, particularly kids, are raging out of control beasts that need the boot-heel of the state on their neck so they do not follow their natural instincts and become mass killers.
There is little respect or trust one can give to a police function which isolates itself from the civilian community and now acts more like an occupying military force than part of the community…this is not the fault of police…this “state enforcer” conditioning has been indoctrinated into them by an ever belligerent nanny state.
A couple years ago I had a cop knock at my door with my kid in tow asking if “this was my child”.
I answered yes, and he said I had to be careful not to let my kid play with a plastic squirt gun in the open unless it was day-glow orange or something, because kids doing this are at risk of being “injured” ( he meant shot) by police following a “firearms caller” (obviously from some hysterical neighbor driven paranoid by all the state-sponsored anti-firearms hyperbole).
May jaw dropped in awe and I responded by saying that I was unaware there was any law either in federal statute, provincial statute or local bylaw dictating the color scheme of a child’s toy squirt gun. I also reminded him that neither I nor my child were accountable to the irrational fears of the police, the state or the public nor am I responsible for the incompetance of police who are too poorly trained to handle situations involving children with anything but military tactics… or who have such a lack of familiarity with firearms they can’t tell a plastic toy from a glock or a 7 year old boy from an armed criminal.
I went on to explain that what this cop had done by taking a minor into custody without just cause or charges, amouted to unwarranted arrest of a minor and possibly child abuse.
Needless to say the next words from his mouth were, “are there guns in this house?”
An obvious allusion to that fact that this cop was now vindictive because I had exercised my civil rights and reminded him of the limitations of the law and his authority. He was totally aware he could ( and would) destroy my life with the carte blanche powers of the firearms act search, seizure and storage provisions if I answered yes to his question….none the less I saw him scribble my name in his book and I suppose I’m now on some unofficial police data base and earmarked for future police abuse as a “trouble maker with the wrong attitude”.
Ahhhh for the 50s 60s when Canada was still a free dominion with civil rights….instead of the paranoid, police state we have today.
1973 went into the local hardware store in drumheller, saw a real nice .22 revolver. my father has given me $45 to pay fees at cadets for the year. i bought the pistol. went across the street with it to show my father. got marched back to the store to return it. was in deep deep sh*t, not for buying the gun but for spending the money on what it was NOT intended for.
oh yeah I was 12 at the time and i remember the clerk asking if my parent would be ok with it.
Read this somewhere….
1960’s: On a summer day we’d play outside all day long and then run behind someone’s house and drink water directly from the hose. We never worried about being ‘hydrated’
1990s-2000’s: individual water bottles, hydra packs etc.
WLMR- Your post of 10:22AM
You aren’t really Bollocks, are you? Say it isn’t so.
buying beer in the old ALCB or Saskatchewan liquor store. you had to have good nerves to be underaged. fill out the form, hand it to clerk one, get the beer from clerk two, slide it along the stainless table to clerk three to ring it in. everyone of them could ask for ID. of course you had to have had accompanied your dad to the store and actually observed how to do it.
some stores smelled like branvin or red devil , which accounted for about 50% of the sales.
I got my first shotgun at the barber shop when I was 16. The year was 1960 something. Also read Argosy and Field & Stream while I waited to get my hair done. Probably a ball game on the radio playing too.
2007 and now I play 20 questions when I want a regular haircut and no, I don’t want the mousse. No guns or even fishing rods but I can get a tint.
Remember how you could stand on the corner with a group of friends, or walk around and window shop, or just be in a group. Today, you are picked up for loitering, or accused of being in a gang.
Carstonkid said: Tim professed to be Christian
Actually, I think McVeigh might disagree with you on that one:
In his letter [to the Buffalo News just before his death], McVeigh said he was an agnostic but that he would “improvise, adapt and overcome”, if it turned out there was an afterlife. “If I’m going to hell,” he wrote, “I’m gonna have a lot of company.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/mcveigh/story/0,,504876,00.html)
And most Canadians–who couldn’t name even one Charter case if offered a million bucks–think the Charter has set us free?
What a sick joke.