For me, the world I live in has come around gradually. I remember some of the 30's, getting Borden's Milk and White's Bakery delivering bread and pastries in a horse drawn wagon to our front door. I remember the ice man going down our alley delivering ice to those who still used the old icebox.
I remember our neighbor, Mr. Guild, sending someone down to the nearest bar with a clean glass gallon jug to get him a gallon of draft beer. I remember buying all our groceries from Earl's, across the street, a neighborhood grocer. We never drove to a store, we had Earl's and one block down, Milletts Delicatessen. We still had a trolley going down Brown Street, on the tracks in the middle of the street.
On a number of occasions I walked, with my brother, past the bike shop of the Wright Brothers, often saw Charles Kettering, who invented the self starter for the automobile, and lived not to far from the National Cash Register Company, who manufactured equipment for world wide distribution of cash registers.
We listened to the radio, had two newspapers delivered, a morning and an evening paper. I remember my Dad thoroughly going over the paper and listening to H. V. Kaltenborne and Walter Winchell. We listened to Peter Grant doing the news from WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Breakfast Club came to us from Chicago every morning. I liked being sick, sometimes, and staying home from school, and listening to the "soaps," Stella Dallas and Ma Perkins, Love of Life and a whole day full of "radio images."
I went to bed around nine at night, sometimes on the weekend stayed up till ten. I remember one year, trying to stay up, till midnight, it was almost sinful. I remember how daring that was. Almost as daring as being dared to dip a radish, in dirt, and eat it. I thought I might die from that, I still remember the crunch when I tried to chew it.
Two real treats I remember from those days. Some evenings, after my Father, who was a Doctor in General Practice saw his last patient, we would drive across town, to Somerlots Pharmacy, and have a chocolate soda. I remember too, the time we drove out South, through Oakwood, to Stroop Road, a new concept, a drive-in, the Custola. They had a new frozen ice cream treat, hamburgers and hot dogs. My first drive-in hamburger. We sat in the car, a Packard Clipper, and a girl took our order and put a tray on the window, and we ate in the car. Will never forget that hamburger, none has tasted as good since.
And in grade school, I still remember the day that my Captain Midnight Decoder Ring came. There was something going on at Emerson Junior High School that I was attending, I think a basketball game, and Mom and Dad were also going to the game. That was the day my Decoder Ring came, and Mom brought it to me at school.
I remember the day they bombed Pearl Harbor, and have a youthful knowledge of WWII. I was a Junior Commando, planted a Victory Garden in our small back yard, collected pods of some kind that they wove in to material for parachutes, saved grease, and collected scrap metal. I remember our Ration Cards, and the C sticker on Dad's car, which enabled him to get more gasoline because he was a Doctor and made house calls and had to drive to the hospital. I had my name painted on a B-25 bomber for something I did.
I got through childhood, high school, a few years at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, four years in the Navy, and all I have seen and heard and experienced since then.
And today, I sit quietly, in awe, of the news on television. All that is going on domestically and around the world, children kidnapped and murdered, suicide bombings, war, and I am even frightened for my future, with all the pro and con of health care and all that is going on internally, here in this country. I often think that in one day, today, there is more on the news to be frightened of, than all my previous years on this planet.
Life used to be so simple. I had the advantage of youthful innocence, but we didn't live under the threats and stress that we do today.
"Backward turn backward, Oh time in thy flight. Make my a boy again, just for tonight."
