Idyllic

Read this comment today on a YouTube video: "my gosh this takes me back.......when life was simpler and I was oblivious to the meaning of song lyrics..."

I understand what that person means.

I was born in a time when Big American Iron ruled the roads and a party line was your telephone system.

When it seemed like the snow only got deeper every Winter. One year the snow was so deep, all I could see were the tops of my parent's cars in the driveway. They owned a 1977 Lincoln Continental and Mercury of 1970-something vintage. Well, I suited up and went out and had me a great time sliding from the roof, down the windshield and over the hood to the ground. I was less than...9 years old. Probably 6.

I remember opening the door to the spare bedroom at my parent's house when I was real little...probably 4. It was all loaded up with blankets, boxes, stuffed animals and odd stuff.  Well, the windows in that room had side-panes that were colored glass, so the light was this soft blue swathing the room. I got on my hands and knees and spent a while crawling under the blankets and stuff; when I made it to the closet, I felt like Indiana Jones!  

Or when we would have a school field trip to the local skating rink, and the rink would play songs like "Party All The Time" by Eddie Murphy and Rick James or "Break My Stride" by Matthew Wilder. And I could never skate to save my life, but I tried.
It seems like I remember always seeing the girl...that one that was the drop-dead gorgeous girl out of the entire school. And she never paid me any attention, but that didn't stop me from having a huge crush on her.

Growing up in the 80s, things seemed so alive, so powerful, so dynamic.

My folks owned a catering business when I was a baby till I was in middle school. So I grew up around a lot of parties, weddings, banquets and various business functions. And I loved it...the whole atmosphere...the lights dimming as dinner is ready, candles lit, soft music and the friendly burble of chatter as everyone mingled. Not to mention the blow-your-mind aromas issuing forth from the steam table.

And I tried to follow in those steps, working in a professional kitchen at a prestigious country club in 1999. There isn't nothin' like the thrill of being on the line on a Friday or Saturday night for dinner time! Especially in July, when the thermometer we had, clocked 125 degrees Fahrenheit one day. In-sane, and I loved it.  We would get a couple hundred pounds of ribs and steak each week. And on Friday, when Chef Johnny would light the big flattop in the downstairs kitchen, and lay out a couple dozen steaks at a time...
I'm telling you, that smell was like ambrosia. When it wafted up the stairwell into the kitchen and the dining room, the show was on!

I remember my Ma taking me to visit her workplace as a little kid. She had just hired on at General Motor's B.O.C. Orion Assembly Plant in Lake Orion, MI. This was back in either '85 or '86. And back then, the plant had the freight trains actually back themselves inside the plant! There were these gigantic doors that would open and the tracks ran almost all the way through the plant.

Man, that was a sight to see! Several thousand people on each shift, in a factory that was over 90 ACRES under one roof, just cranking away, radios blasting, robots blazing, cars and chains clanking...call me biased, but to me, THAT was America. That still represents to me the hardworking soul of a country that won two World Wars, and had become an industrial powerhouse. Whether it be farmers or auto workers or trades...these are the people that have built and kept this Nation going, time after time after time. And I am damn proud of them.

I just wish that something...that there was a way to extract some of that magic into our present day world. Because we need it. The examples I've mentioned may ring bells, or they may leave you cold. But I hope you realize that the magic I'm referring to was more than just these experiences. To me they are symbolic of the atmosphere back then.

Call it nostalgia if you will. Perhaps it is. But anyone who was there knows its more than that. It was going to the old pizza halls they had back then, like one called "The Roaring Twenties" in Okemos, MI., near Lansing, our capitol city. It was so awesome.
There was a huge, old pipe organ installed on a hydraulic platform that would raise out of the floor with the organist already playing it. Ah, it's hard to articulate things well enough.

But it was the atmosphere of life then. And now? Americans have forgotten where they came from...who they used to be, how many millions and millions are out of work now, etc, and losing their spirit, their will, their identity.

And the younger generation will never get to see the things I've seen...