Lifestyles in the 40s and 50s-About the times...

There's no question that life in the 40s and 50s was vastly different from today.

In most neighborhoods then community life pretty much revolved around the church as it did with Dinah's family and mine.

We both remember the "drugs" of that day-being drug to Sunday School and church. My grandmother, for example, was a faithful member of First Baptist Church and there was seldom a Sunday when I wasn't drug to "Mama" McClatchey's Sunday School class and the church services afterward.

In those days, black people and other minorities certainly didn't the rights that they have today and, except for Babe Zaharias, no one would dream of having a woman compete with men on the golf course as Anika Sorenstam did recently.

Advances in medicine have pretty much wiped out deaths from diseases like the pneumonia that killed my mother in her early 30's and there's no doubt that even the poorest among us enjoy luxuries that only the privileged few could even dream of having in those days.

All those are good changes in our society for sure.

The value of many other changes wrought in the 60's and 70's however, in the name of ideals like total equality, "enlightenment ", freedom from the involvement of religion in civic affairs, conversion to a multicultural society and the extension of civil rights to children at the expense of the rights of their parents are a lot more questionable, however, to say the least.

Without further moralizing, I'll just try to lay out a few of the most obvious and well documented comparisons of today's society with the one I grew up in.

..There were lots of rifles, and even firing ranges, in our high schools but no one would dream of using them to slaughter their teachers and their classmates.

..Teachers then dealt with problems like whispering in class, throwing spit balls and talking back.

Today they cope with drugged out students who have guns and knives in their backpacks, gang rape,drive-by shootings, violence on the playground and death threats.

But they also have to stay on the alert lest some child mumble "under God" in the pledge of allegiance,draw a sketch of Jesus in kindergarten or try to present them with a Christmas card.

..Our biggest kid thrills then were movies like Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man, radio shows like Inner Sanctum and trying to sneak under the Fairgrounds tent to see Sally Rand do her fan dance.

Nothing much seems to thrill kids these days since they're exposed on a daily basis to vulgar language,raw violence and sex in their video games, at movies, on television and the internet.

Marijuana, teen aged pregnancy and teen age suicides are no big deal, and doing heroin and cocaine are as common as smoking "rabbit tobacco" or a corn shuck cigarette was back then.

..The only war demonstrations I saw during World War II were Memorial Day parades, Easter Sunrise services closing with " God Bless America" and the large grassy area in the middle of the Broad Street parkway where people gathered to throw their pots, pans and used tires into a large roped-off area surrounding a World War I cannon to be recycled in support of the war effort.

Try something like that today and donors would have to step over moonbats puking out all over the median and half the tires would be stolen.

Compare this kind of demonstration with San Franciscans throwing up all over the streets on "Sick Out Day", students all over the country jamming traffic by sprawling out on freeways, burning and shredding the American flag, vandalizing war memorials and hurling threats and insults at the wives and children of our service men and women.

..The most despised individuals then were people like Adolph Hitler, Hirohito and Benito Mussolini.

Students and most Hollywood celebrities today target our own leaders, George Bush, Richard Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

.. Our icons were Franklin Roosevelt, George Patton, Colin Campbell, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Deanna Durbin, Superman, Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, The Green Hornet and Sheena;Queen of the Jungle.

Today's kids dote on Pokemon, Eminem, Brittney Spears, "Jackass" movies, MTV, rock bands, Ozzie Osbourne, Puff Daddy, Madonna and Sista Soldier

...Popular 40's songs...."The Old Lamplighter", "I'll Be Seeing You", "My Blue Heaven", "The White Cliffs of Dover", "Pennies from Heaven", "Smiling Through", Kate Smith's "God Bless America"..

Bands...Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Wayne King, Count Basie, Louie Prima....

..Today's favorites: " I Shot my ho'", "Eat me Alive" and God knows what else since I don't listen to that kind of garbage.

Bands...Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Great White and hundreds of other assorted drug-driven distortions of the basic concept of "music"

...Our sports heros; people like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bobby Jones, Joe Louis, Stan Musial, Jessie Owens, Frankie Sinkwich, sometimes got into trouble by doing things like using an occasional cuss word in public or smoking cigars around children.

Many of today's millionaire superstars resemble the Saturday night lineup at the local police precinct with their spiked parrot hair and their drug, burglary, child rape and spouse abuse charges.

But of course, opponents like the ACLU and other civil liberties groups will claim that the 1940's represented a very dark chapter in this country's history with our government trampling on human rights, stifling free expression and pushing us headlong toward a church-state.

I do have to admit that my own grandmother, my teachers and my scout master trampled on my human rights and stifled my freedom of expression too many times to recount.

Where were the ACLU and today's liberal courts when my grandmother was brutalizing me with those green switches on my bare legs and making me dance around like some crazed Indian screaming "Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama"!!

And when she forced me to drink cod liver oil mixed with orange juice because I told her I was too sick to go to school?

And when she dragged me off to Sunday School when my foot was hurting like everything!

Where were they when Mrs. Rigsby smacked me on the back of my hand with a ruler about 14 feet long and studded with cut glass?

And when Pop Schaffer led the entire 11th Street school student body in singing God Bless America whether they wanted to or not?

And when Mr. Patterson made me and his son James sit in a dark closet until I suffered permanent trauma and screaming nightmares and practically suffocated to death-just because we dribbled apple juice on the Scout troop off the church balcony and made everybody think we were peeing on them?

Where were the ACLU, the plaintiff lawyers and all those crusading, dragon slaying, sign waving civil libertarians then?!!!.

And to be completely honest-at least from the perspective of an " old zealot"; surveying in his twilight years all the mindless damage these people have done to this country and it's founding principles -why in God's name are they still around now.......??!!