The Town

The town was a good place to spend your childhood. Beyond the place, it was also the time. There were certainly more exciting and romantic times in the country's history, but many, even those born earlier, are of the opinion that the 50's through the mid 80's was the best time to be an American. It was about community, and in many ways community was about local businesses. The butcher and the bakery and the produce stores were local family owned and still offered better quality YET were still price competitive with supermarkets. The customer service in clothing and appliance stores was superior to the relatively new phenomenon of shopping malls yet still price competitive. This is a broad statement, but most owner operated smaller stores on "Main Street" in middleclass to upper middleclass neighborhoods today are more of a "boutique" nature than somewhere you could shop almost exclusively to feed and cloth a family of 4 or more on a median salary, especially w/ only one parent earning while the other maintains house and home. The local grocery remained all but unchanged from the 30's through the 60's. Then... 7-11? 24 hr. Pathmark w/ drugs, hardware and auto supplies? How about 24 hour gas stations w/ milk, eggs, sandwiches and cough medicine. Again, generally speaking, now there is little reason for close neighbors to be out and about at the same time on the same "Main Street" except to gather for planned specific social and/or political purposes. Who Even Has The Time For That today when both spouses must work full time, frequently somewhere well out of the neighborhood, even the town, just to financially maintain the household? Besides business: Men would regularly gather at the local "barber shop", women would regularly gather at the "beauty parlor". People would go to work in or relatively near the town they lived in, sometimes even the town they grew up in. They'd regularly gather, unplanned, with for the most part the same group in the same places nearly everyday for breakfast or lunch. Who has time for lingering in such places now, especially on "work days" except retirees? "Classic" contemporary Americana has been redefined, and in many ways, the beginning of that re-definiton was taking place during our childhood in our town. Our parents adulthood, and our childhood, was truly the last of Norman Rockwell's America. As good as childhood was, adolescence, though relatively safe in our truly middle class town, didn't offer much to engage and inspire (though we did practically invent the garage band). For better or worse it remained fairly unaffected by the political, social, and cultural transformations taking place in the country while we read about it and watched it on the news. What I remember feeling most at that time was a certain isolation and restlessness. Or, is that just the nature of adolescence. OR.... was it just me?