PAX Centurion - September / October 2014

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • September/Octoberr 2014 • Page 23 How did we survive? For those of us who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, it’s amazing we’re still alive By James W. Carnell, Pax Editor Expires December 2014 (Editor’s note: this article is compiled from remembrances of an old article in the Pax – which I can’t remember due to approaching senility – personal recollections and contributions from those of us who were born a long time ago in a land faraway. Special thanks Kenny Peters, A-1.) H OWDIDWE SURVIVE? We drank water from garden hoses and household taps, we had NO cellphones, we played hockey and baseball without helmets and rode in cars without seatbelts. According to today’s standards, we should all be dead. For those of us who grew up in Boston in the 60’s and 70’s and even the 80’s, life was indeed different. I was remembering the other day as I sat in a stalled cruiser at a red light, watching an army of pe- destrians walk across an intersection in downtown Boston, oblivious to the world, tapping away on their cellphones, texting and yapping mundane conversations to people on the other end of the cellphone. Yes, life, in my opinion, was certainly better, easier, and cheaper back then, although we didn’t know it at the time. If you told anyone back then that you would eventually pay money for bottled water, we’d look at you like you had three heads. Why would anyone pay for water when it came for free from the tap?We drank it from the garden hose too, and surprisingly, most of us have not grown a third eye or become deformed. (Mentally, perhaps, but not physically…) But we survived…. You could tell the days of the week from the meal that was served on the table – and you damned well better be home on time to eat it, because there was no such thing as a microwave to heat something up after the fact. Sunday was always a roast beef or chicken of some kind, and everyone ate dinner together after Mass, or you would die. (The stores were closed on Sundays because of the “blue laws”, so you couldn’t go shopping; now that I think of it – that wasn’t a bad idea.) On Monday, Sunday’s roast-chicken leftovers became some- thing called “chicken a la king,” which has been banned by the CDC inAtlanta for the damage it caused it to our gastrointestinal systems. Leftover roast beef went into a tabletop, hand-operated grinder that screwed onto the kitchen table and churned a disgusting mash mixed with potatoes and other leftover crap and became an abomination called “hash”, which my mother claimed came from God and I should eat it or die, right after she slapped my head for daring to criti- cize the vile concoction. I believe it was about that time that my faith in theAlmighty began to wane. But we survived.... I forget what Tuesday was, but I’m sure it came from a can or was boiled to death, as the Irish are fond of doing to food. Wednesday was always “Prince Spaghetti Day,” because again, it was something the Irish could boil in water without killing it. Thursday was usually meatloaf – again; ground meat stuffed into a loaf pan and cooked until it was dead, Friday was always fish sticks or cakes, and Saturday was always beans and franks. That was the subsistence diet of the average Boston youth back then. But we survived.... We were not fed a school breakfast, lunch or dinner by concerned educators. We walked to school with a brown bag or lunch box, consisting of either peanut butter and jelly, bologna and cheese, or tuna fish. The only thing that the school provided was milk, and we all had to pay for that. (Woe be unto you if your weekly milk money [five cents a day!] wasn’t paid!) If you forgot or lost your lunch, you suffered the indignity of having the rest of the class donate a por- tion of their lunch to you as you sat there, ashamed and humiliated by the teacher. Tonic (a.k.a. “pop” or “soda” for you communists who immigrated here fromNewYork or Jersey) was wrapped in tin foil to keep it cold, but you couldn’t drink that in school. Corner stores carried “penny-candy”: fireballs, double-bubble gum, licorice, etc. We had no school buses- we walked to school, believe it or not. I wonder whether the current epidemic of obese children that Michelle Obama is so con- cerned about could perhaps be attributed to little porkers being shuttled around on nearly- empty school buses while being fed breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner by school employees. But we survived.... We had onlyVHF-TV channels 2, 4, 5, 7 and UHF channels 38 and 56. Somehow, we always managed to find something on TV, like Major Mudd, (IBBY: “with an I and a B and a B and aY means I’ll Be BlastingYou”) Bozo the Clown (until recently he inhabited headquarters, corner office, now serves as a 6’6” consultant on TV presenting himself as an “expert” on crime matters. HA! ), or the de- testable LawrenceWelk Show that our parents made us watch every Sunday night. There was “Gunsmoke,” “Have Gun, Will Travel,” and “GreenAcres.” Telephone numbers (rotary phone) began with two letters followed by five numbers – ours was CY (2-9) (Cypress) 8-2760. (How come I can I remember that but not what I did 10 minutes ago?) Today we have about 800 cable channels, and we all complain that “there’s nothing on.” So much for excessive choice… We took the bus everywhere, or walked. I remember being ladled down with 80 lbs. of hockey equipment, and daring to ask my father to consider giving us a ride in the freezing cold fromMattapan to Bajko rink in Hyde Park. (He had a 10-ton Plymouth Fury III that could seat 42 kids and got three mpg, but who cared: gas was about 49 cents a gallon.) Talk about the “three-heads” look: he asked if I had a dime and whether there was still a bus stop on River Street, and then returned to reading his paper and smoking his cigarettes perched on the tall brass smoking-stand with the heavy glass ashtray and a 16-oz. Schlitz. Dad was always a brilliant conversationalist interested in stimulating intellectual discourse. In the 60’s, Boston Edison went on strike for a protracted period of time (3-4 months?) We did not go on welfare, nor seek public alms. Neighbors, friends and relatives brought bags of groceries over, and debts and bills were re-arranged or put off to a later time. Nor did we ever, ever call the cops. To have the cops come to your house was humiliating and embarrassing.You solved your problems in-house, and out of the public view. Today, there are multiple calls to the same addresses over and over and over again, and the callers seem proud of how many times they have the police come to their house to solve their stupid, juvenile, ridiculous problems.…. How did we survive without bothering the police with our stupid problems? The latter-day cellphone system consisted of mothers screaming out of their back porches to the next mother, who would then scream the message to the next mother, and so on, and so on, until little See Survive on page 28