When I woke from a deep sleep to the song "Don't Worry (Be Happy), ever-so-gently wafting through the air, I was in a disoriented state, and that caused this article to begin to compose itself!
You see, I was recently offered a "feature" from 'Alexa', Amazon's nosey saleswoman, called something like "deep-sleep snore detector", and I was all in! Originally when it heard me “sawing logs”, it played some stupid chime in a repetitive fashion which I promptly changed to, ‘Don't Worry (Be Happy)’!
Since people don’t get a deep-sleep when snoring, the routine will gently wake you just enough to stop the ‘snore’! I vaguely remember a part of a dream, a business woman frantically enters a corporate building, hands me a funny looking key, saying, “My car is just outside!”, and runs for the elevator!
It obviously wasn't a car key, it looked more like it might be a key to a safe, or safety deposit box? It was flat, metallic, and laden with many deep slices, not from a key blank with finely cut teeth. Just then, the snore detector eased me into a half-dream-state with “Don't Worry (Be Happy).” Like a fine-tuned cello in a symphony orchestra, this cryptic series of events began the ‘igniting of my writing’!
Actually, this article was writing itself! Shortly after penning the lyrics for my song, ‘725’, about growing up in the sixties, with killer lines like;
Sunshine was our clock
We had neighbors on the block
Hardly had to knock
No one used the lock!
Bonus: here is a link to my song ‘725’ on Youtube. Note* you can jump the ads when SKIP appears on the screen! (You’ll thank me later!) ;-)
Then, another incident serendipitously sprung itself at me!!
When I was installing a computer upgrade, (one of many that people are going to need after Microsoft ‘puts the kibosh’ on Windows 10, scheduled for this October), I chanced upon a uniquely special recording!
My customer asked me to convert, her audio CD, (that an historical society had helped her make), into a more modern format that she could conveniently share with her family members and friends.
Being an audio production director by trade I began ripping it, then taking out obvious clicks, pops, unnecessary gaps, and minor stammers so that the piece would be more enjoyable.
Not really listening to the whole thing but jumping through making those quick edits where there was obvious noise that I could visibly see on my digital editor, I heard her mother recounting a moment in her life. This is a generation before me!
I heard her mother say that on ‘grocery day’ all the women would bundle up their kids, put them in the strollers, and wheel them down to the grocery store. But here's where it gets crazy!
She said she would park her stroller with her child bundled up in front of the grocery store on the sidewalk, go inside for some quick shopping, and return for her child 10 or 15 minutes later!
Her daughter, of my generation ask why did you do that? She said, when I came out of the store there were a whole line of babies and strollers, everyone did it, and we never thought a thing about it!
Today, you would be put in jail, your baby would belong to the state, and he or she would be handed off to DFCS (the Division of Family and Children Services)!
I'm not saying this to cast any aspersions on the woman’s actions from two generations ago living her life in what was her normality, just the opposite, I'm pointing out how far we have come, from a loving, trusting, honest, existence, to what those people of her time would have termed 'Hell on Earth', or our today!
My customer’s mother laughs It off, as that's just how it was back then, but the undeniable fact is, that is not how it is today! The next question is why?
Why was it okay to leave your baby stroller outside of a grocery store with your most precious possession in it, and the generation later, why could my mom show me, a kindergartener how to walk 10 blocks to school, and why could all the neighbors, leave their houses unlocked and let the neighborhood kids run in and out, amok?
How is it possible that every ‘stay-at-home-mother’ acted as Mom for every neighborhood kid, complete with corporal punishment when necessary?
Some say, that was barbaric! How dare they lay a hand on those children! Just think of how much damage that would cause! They might grow up to be serial killers! It seems quite the opposite, as serial killers were pretty much unheard of in those days.
The truth is that we had such a high standard of conduct, that anyone broken enough to be a serial killer was cooling their heels in an insane asylum, as they were known in those days, or a sanatorium maybe by today's terminology?
I'm not saying things were perfect, there were social issues, but somewhere, somehow, something set us on a permanently destructive track. Some of this can absolutely be tied to corporate greed, and powerful people ‘cultivating customers’.
One example I recently mentioned in a previous article, is John D Rockefeller! He set medicine back maybe a hundred years and I think it is just now coming back to its natural track, (hopefully).
To shorten this article (it was running over 7 minutes!) I will only accuse the bad guys without much if any documentation. :)
Next week:
Bad guys that steered us off the track:
If you want to be sure someone is in my list, Comment below and I will feature them too! LOL
Reading and reminiscing...Such low anxiety times...Enthusiastically awaiting your follow-up.
I am writing a book called "Memoirs of a baby boomer" that is loaded with impossible things we did!