I will spare you the incoherent rant that keeps percolating through my brain. A few of my five regular readers agree with me about these things but others do not and I am not feeling up to troll-poking tonight. But fer kee-reist!

Instead, let’s return to that proverbial “simpler time”. You either know about that from life or those internet memes. For the life of me, I can’t find one of those memes right now. Usually, I am inundated by them by those who only post photos or memes on facebook. Today I can’t find one. Anyway… Yes we did play outside all day and nobody could reach us and we knew to come home when the streetlights came on (and for meals, roight?). And when The Commander blew the blasted train whistle (a downside of that being that certain beach relatives would take the train whistle as a signal for “Cocktails are now being served.” >wink<)

Yes, those were good times and I miss them. But I don’t miss the polio virus and running water as my dad used to describe it (you run down to the beach with a bucket, fill it up, and run back up) or outhouses (although I do enjoy fancy composting ones with picture windows). And fer kee-reist, having smartphones with us when we landed in Seattle oh so many days ago now allowed us to find our way to a Panera for MUCH-NEEDED utility food and re-grouping and then on to Anacortes to find a liqwire store and catch a ferry…

I think that part of the reason so many people are remembering the “good times” is because they *were* good times for those people. Like me, they had parents who wanted children and were able to make enough money to care for them. When the streetlights came on or the whistle blew, there was a warm place to return to and someone to take the slivers out of your feet and tuck you in for the night.

I don’t know that those good old days *were* all that good for everyone. Some of those people made it through all of that and became “successful” “baby-boomers” like us. Others maybe not so much.

The photooo is part of a letter I wrote to “Funny Grandaddy” when I was in second grade (in 1962). I left off the first page, which had “Dear Grandfather”, and then told him that I had been having fun with riddles and proceeded to write eight riddles and eventually tell him the answers. You are happy that I didn’t include that. I did get my tonsils out. I needed to get them out. I was waking up about once a week with a sore throat — tonsilitis or strep throat or whatever. It was time. I remember a lot of stuff about that experience but will spare you for now. Twinkle did have kittens — it was her first litter and two of them died. We did buy a new vee-hickle that year. It was a Chevy Corvair and it was sort of a lemon. Fun fact: my second high school boyfriend bought that car but, by the time I was going out with him, he had a Gremlin. (The GG had a Gremlin when I first went out with him too… Oh well.) I cannot believe that I had $100.37 in my savings account back then. Grandparents must have been involved. I do not at all remember the thing about if we buy a car, somebody has a baby… Mother? What? Where are you?

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