# Other, simpler days...



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The nostalgia bug is hitting me. I remember those rare days in grade school when we were bussed out to Farmer Jones' field to pick strawberries. We were lectured on how to recognize the berries that were ripe for picking, given our flats and baskets, and set to work. It was wonderful! In a few hours diligent work, you could earn two three dollars (if you didn't eat your work), enough to buy that wonderful replica 1911 Colt 45 cap gun, the one at Lord's Variety that cost $1.49 -- hard to save for from the meager allowances of the time.

Farmer Jones of course sold the strawberries and profited from our work. Nobody cared. But everybody did just fine from this arrangement. Not even remotely possible today!

All you geezers out there: What else has changed?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Well, I think it is only young people who don't think much ill of the word 'geezer'  I'm surprised at how little grey is on my head, though if I don't shave the beard is Santa Claus white - without, I am often mistaken as having a good number less years than I do, but I'm certain I qualify as a card-carrying 'geezer.'

Most important in memory, I think anyway, was being entrusted from very early childhood with a responsibility of self which seems to me now almost obliterated.

The family had a summer place in Michigan, a tenant-farmed 20 acre fruit farm where we summered, as well as went to some winter weekends and holidays. We were about two miles due west of Lake Michigan and the beach. Summers, bro, me, and four brothers from down the road would pile into the station wagon to be driven to the beach down a two lane road. At least four of us would ride on the dropped tailgate, feet a-dangle above the pavement. The youngest of us (I was one) was age five or six.

Without any lecture, statement of rules, everyone understood there was no 'messing around' while sitting on that tailgate. The ride was slow and steady, and in all the years we did this there was not one mistake, no one fell off, got carried away to even be near perilous movement which might threaten to become a bad situation.

Currently, the younger of the kids would be in added baby seats, no one could ride on the tailgate. If that happened now, neighbors would call the police, the car would be stopped, the driver / parent arrested for criminal negligence, the children taken in to social services.

Too, we had those field trips, cutting bittersweet to bring back to sell at an autumn school fair, toured factories (Marshmallow / Crackerjack are two I recall.) A middle school project, concurrent with that year's history study of the medieval era, had all students assigned to a hands-on project of producing a product near the same manner as in that era. I and my 'lab partner' were assigned cobbling; we were given the address of a shoemaker where we could buy a block of beeswax, gut twine, an awl, and the appropriate needle; we were also given a resource where we could find smaller pieces of leather. We had to look up patterns, and were expected to, and did, make at least one pair of shoes each. All other assignments were similar. As you said, you learned about both business, and in that context, got an active experience of one small aspect of medieval life. I wonder if people now would shriek in terror at handing a fifth-grader an awl and a long needle 

Growing up in an urban area, we biked on the streets without helmets, played on playgrounds where the jungle gym was metal tubing with joiner connections, the ground beneath concrete, not tanbark or rubber matting. No one got really injured or hurt. Me, I also played on those urban exterior iron fire escapes, eleven floors up, sometimes more.

In high school, at an arts academy near the northern tip of southern Michigan, located on a thin strip of land between two inland lakes, during a free period after classes I was allowed to check out show shoes or cross country skis, cross the road -- going off campus to the 'boys side' of what was the summer camp, same school -- and explore the opposite land and shore, walking over cabins I had stayed in when a student at the summer camp, near a frozen lake, the entire adventure done entirely unaccompanied.

And here I still am. Today, none of that would be allowed, any mishap would result in an enormous and lengthy litigation, the insurance for liability has skyrocketed the tuition of both the summer camp and the academy. I'm certain that is part of the reason college tuition is so high now as well.

Decades later, as example, a young single mother took her child to the city playground, sat on a bench and allowed her two year old to climb to the top of the 'big kids' slide, from where the two year old fell, landing on its head and sustaining severe brain damage. _The mother sued the city and was awarded several million dollars in damages,_ after which a number of the city playgrounds were ripped up and removed, and later, the play equipment was 'less' in height, scope, and padded on and beneath to an extreme.

Somewhere between my childhood and that 'later,' it seems a lot of what was thought to be a collective common sense just up and died. Pity, that.

Thanks, I feel a little better now ;-)
*[ADD:*
The word _nostaligia_ is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain, ache", and was coined by a 17th century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition-a form of melancholy-in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.
~ extracted from Wikipedia....
Memory, then, with ache / pain / anxiety as part of it.

Sentiment = 'distilled emotion.'
*End Add]*


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## Guest (Apr 26, 2013)

PetrB said:


> The word _nostaligia_ is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain, ache", and was coined by a 17th century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition-a form of melancholy-in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.


Yes, and a musical trope in the hands of Liszt, Wagner and Mahler who have all made various uses of the Swiss *ranz des vaches*. It seems if such _ranzes_ were played to these Swiss mercenaries they would become so homesick ('nostalgic' for the homeland) that they would throw themselves off whatever rampart they happened be on. Mahler wrote a song about one such mercenary (or soldier).
I did try that out on some Swiss people I know and I am relieved to tell you that nobody committed suicide. Did make a tear or two well up, though.
I understand the same thing can happen to people from Scotland when hearing the sound of bagpipes. It seems to create nostalgia and melancholy (another word with roots in the Greek language). Such is the power of music. 
Apologies for the tangential posting.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB, I very much enjoyed your post. Nostalgia is always tinged by sadness. We remember our youth as carefree and happy, although it was not always so! And we regret its loss.

But your post (and mine as well) suggest a more objective truth: There's more than one kind of freedom, and more than one way to lose it.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Copland, orchestral version of the choral number, _Promise of Living_, from his opera, _The Tender Land_
Advisory ~ The video with this is beautifully done, chock-a-block with very apt stills and video clips... the combination can be quite moving.


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