Five Things I Kind Of Miss

Note: I’ve been sititng on this one for a while. Truth is, I know it’s not profound, meaningful or perhaps even good. Lately my brain is in “spring” mode and there’s a whole lot to plan for coming up in the next couple of months.

Anyway, enjoy it for what it is, a fluff piece LOL.

Modesty

First and foremost, I miss the days when the most personal thing you’d hear on a TV ad was a mother and daughter talking about a “… not so fresh feeling.” Look, I’m far from being a prude, but now every twenty minutes it’s ads for boner pills and deodorant for “down there” because apparently people don’t know how to wash their dirty crotches.

And another thing: I’m tired of seeing people’s asses and guts hanging out of their clothes. You’ve got guys swaggering down the street with their pants barely hanging on, dirty ass boxers on display for the world to see. And more than once I’ve needed eyebleach after witnessing someone’s big gut spilling out of their shirt and down the front of them like a big, meaty apron. After swallowing down the bile, all I could do was think, “Did she not seriously not realize that shirt is two sizes too small?”

I’m not lobbying for a return to three piece suits for men and ankle length dresses for women, but for chrissakes people…

Local Newspapers

Remember when newspapers weren’t just a source of advertising revenue and offered content? I do. Once upon a time it’d take you almost an hour to read the Sunday paper, chock full of not only news but op-ed sections including letters to the editor as well as columns written by a host of people on a wide variety of topics. That’s all gone now and what’s left is barely enough to line a parakeet cage with.

Happily, a while back I found a “local” newspaper, The Sayre Morning Times, that is actually a pretty nice little paper. They occasionally have news more local to me, but honestly I also enjoy reading articles about what’s going on in small towns a little further away. They only publish Tuesday through Saturday and deliver it the same day through the postal service.

I subscribed on a trial basis and, other than issues with the USPS delivering it now and then, have been happy with it. Reading the paper has become an evening ritual, even if some days the national stories are a little dated and the comics aren’t as good as the days of Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. The fact they are in business gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, people are putting down the digital devices and picking up actual papers again. And it’s nice to open a real newspaper in the evening after supper. 

Still, I wish we had a better newspaper here closer to home. 

The “Noon Whistle”

You city folk may not know what I’m talking about here but if you grew up in the country, at least into the nineties, you probably remember a time when the local fire department’s siren would go off every day at twelve o’clock in the afternoon. It was a quick thing, one cycle only, signifying that it was 12pm.

For a brief moment I thought perhaps this was a local thing, but I was quickly reassured that it was, in fact, more common than young Chris knew back in the 80’s as evidenced by this article. ( By the way, Woodstock, Vermont is gorgeous, I highly recommend it. )

It was how we knew the fire siren worked. It was how we knew it was lunchtime or we had to be home for some other reason. It was how the farmers knew it was break time. It was a part of growing up in a small rural town and I miss it, silly as that may sound.

Only Having Two TV Channels

Growing up, we had two channels for the most part ABC and NBC out of Elmira. When autumn came and the leaves fell off the trees, we’d get the CBS station out of Binghamton, but like the other two channels, it wasn’t very good reception. 

Back in the 80’s, we didn’t have cable tv out here in the country and sattelite dishes were way too expensive. It wasn’t until 1994 that we finally got a mini-dish through Primestar and not only did we suddenly have a crystal clear picture, we had something like a hundred channels to choose from. When I got home from work that first evening, I sat up til the wee hours  flipping through the channels, marveling at the sudden improvement in both visibility and what was available. 

It’s that availability that sometimes seems more a burden than a blessing. Although some of that burden is partly because what so many networks offer is complete trash anymore. Many an evening I find myself still flipping through the on screen guide trying to find something to watch and just like The Boss sang, there’s fifty seven channels and nothing’s on. So I generally land on one of two or three channels we watch most often, or a radio channel, which feels especially stupid considering the cost of the cable bill. 

Many’s the time that I’ve thought how it was so much more simple when we had only two channels to choose from. You watched this, that, or you shut the damned thing off and read a book. 

( I’ve intentionally left out out the entire concept of streaming, which offers so many great options that I don’t know whether to shit or go blind some evenings. But including that completely ruins this segment. )

Hills Department Store

I miss a lot of those department stores no longer in business, really. But of all of them, Hills is the one I miss the most. It was one of those “if we don’t have it, you don’t need it” kind of places where you could get just about anything in one trip. Also, as a kid, I felt their toy section was the best of all of the area department stores. I can still hear their jingle, “Hills is where the toys are.” 

Man, I can still smell the popcorn sold when you first walked in the store. 

Hills disappeared long before many of the other department stores in our area suffered at the hands of Amazon, internet shopping, or simple mismanagement. Speaking of shitty business decisions, I also miss Sears and K-Mart ( honestly, that CEO should be tarred and feathered ) Between those two stores, one could get just about anything they needed in life whether it be a pair of pants, a new pillow, or a decent set of tools. 

And yeah, we’ve got Target, which is alright I guess, and of course there’s good old Walmart, which I absolutely despise. ( If you see me voluntarily shopping in Walmart, you know I’m desperate. ) But there’s something about Hills that I really miss.

What’s something you miss?