It’s the nature of most of us to look back at the past as an ideal time. We put on our rose-colored glasses and gaze backward with longing to the days of our own childhood, when we seem to remember that education worked, food came out of a garden instead of a test tube, and every child had two parents who lived together.
This idealism leads us to collect antiques, seek out vintage clothing and rush to events called “old-fashioned” — old-fashioned dinners on the ground, old fashioned festivals, old-fashioned church revivals.
Oddly enough, the women in my family never seemed to feel nostalgia and never taught it to me. Someone must have stomped on their rose-colored glasses before I came along, because I was never led to believe that life “back then” was better.
I distinctly remember my California grandmother’s comment when someone suggested she buy antiques during a remodeling project: “I’ve had to make do with a bunch of old junk all my life. I’m certainly not going to pay good money to haul more of it back into my house now!”
My own mother echoed her sentiments. “There was nothing much good about the ‘good old days,’” she said.
That’s a pretty strong indictment, especially for someone of my generation to hear. We grew up watching Andy Griffith patrol Mayberry without a gun. In the 1980s we decorated our houses with country claptrap from bygone years. We wanted to live in that simpler time of yesteryear. What could my relatives be thinking?
Then I remembered a few things about those good old days myself, and I realized that most of us couldn’t survive in that era now even if we could recreate it.
My mind turned to outhouses. And chamber pots under the bed for those too wimpy to brave a walk through a pitch black night to relieve yourself in the outhouse.
For another thing, we require instant gratification today, and if my memory serves me, there was no fast food, no fast microwave and no fast anything in those Good Old Days.
When we ate at my Alabama grandmother’s house that I wrote about last week, lunch was not a spur of the moment affair as it is now if you live near a KFC.
To produce this lunch, my great-aunt, who did most of the cooking, slipped out the backdoor, selected a sacrifice for a platter of fried chicken, and launched her assault on one of the pullets clucking peacefully at the side of the porch.
Seeing the rapid descent of Aunt Bessie, the hapless chicken sped off, flapping and squawking. But a Rhode Island Red was no match for my determined aunt, who knew exactly when to zoom in, grab lunch by the neck and swing it around her head a few times until it gave up the ghost.
Then she slapped it across the tree stump that served as a chopping block, and with her trusty axe, separated Red from her head. I might mention that you won’t find many chickens longing for the Good Old Days either.
Then came 45 or more minutes of plucking, quartering and frying, which could only take place after stove wood had been hauled in and the fire stoked high enough to melt the lard (and the occupants of the kitchen).
All this took hours and was without benefit of federal meat inspection— and without quite enough plucking for those of us who objected to a mouthful of pinfeathers in every bite.
We’re also too knowledgeable of proper sanitation now to go back in time.
After lunch in the Good Old Days, you might have to retire to the aforementioned outhouse. This was not a 2025 model porta-potty with sanitary blue chemicals working to subdue germs. This was a drafty shed. Inside, you found a raised plank seat with a round opening cut in it, positioned over a hole dug in the ground. From this hole emanated a most disturbing odor.
The object of this exercise was to complete your business while holding your breath and without falling through the hole or even looking down into it, both of which could spell disaster.
My grandparents’ outhouse was the deluxe model with two “seats” without a partition between. I have never understood that.
With a little thought I could remember more reasons to avoid the good old days: low wages, three-mile walks to school, uninsulated houses so cold in winter that the water froze in the goldfish bowl. I experienced a bit of those times, and I don’t think I’m tough enough to go back to that kind of life, despite some of its advantages.
But occasionally, while I’m chewing on a fried chicken leg I just grabbed out of a drive-thru window, I do wish I could look down yesterday’s street and see Andy on patrol in a town where there is no crime and the most frightful thing that can happen is a trip to the outhouse.
