A Different Era

I grew up in a different time. It was a time of prosperity, but it was a prosperity of having much less than we do now. We have so much more today, and yet we whine and complain about how unfair life is, and how we are so oppressed. It's time for a look back and a look forward while we look at today and realize how lucky we really are. Let's take a look at three different areas that are important to quality of life. Let's look where we were 50 years ago, let's look at where we are today, and let's look at where I see us 20 years from now.

Housing

My first recollection of a place to live, was when my family lived in teacher housing on the grounds of Farmington High School in Farmington, Connecticut. The teacher housing was where the tennis courts are currently located. Provided housing was part of the benefit package that was offered to Farmington public school teachers. We lived in that housing when my father taught at the junior high school, which was located in the new wing of the campus of Farmington High School. He had to walk a total of about 300 feet from where we lived to where he worked. I believe that there was provided housing on the grounds of the Noah Wallace school, where he taught when he first moved to Connecticut, and that he and my mother moved to the housing on the grounds at the high school when they moved the junior high from Noah Wallace to Farmington High.

From what I remember, there were about 30 housing units located on the high school grounds. They were row style housing that had been officer housing at some military base in Rhode Island, that had been shipped to Farmington and re-assembled on the high school grounds. Our unit was an end unit, and had two bedrooms, one bath room, a kitchen with a kerosene space heater for the entire unit, a living room, and a dining room enclave. We lived there until I was four years old, and my parents bought their first and only house in 1959. They lived in that house until my father passed away in 2008. My mother and I were recollecting the other day about the barracks. I can remember the layout very well. I remember the stove that had a deep fryer that didn't work. I remember the shower stall in the bathroom. There was no tub. I remember my father lighting the kerosene heater in the winter, and I remember the smell. I remember the old washing machine that had a ringer attachment that you cranked by hand to get the water out of the clothing. There was a floor drain in the middle of the kitchen floor, and my mother would roll the washing machine out of the corner, hook it up to the sink, and put the hose from bottom of the washer into the floor drain. Everything was done manually. Then, there was the refrigerator that had to be defrosted once a week too...and don't forget the TV set that was black and white, used vacuum tubes, and received three channels. Did I mention the party line telephone service?...

Food

I don't remember eating in a restaurant until I was at least in elementary school and my dad took the family out to dinner once a year. It was quite uncommon for middle class people to frequent restaurants. Even people working in offices used to brown bag their lunches unless they had company expense accounts. Today, a lot of people eat out frequently, and they are not rich people. I know I do. That's because there are many ethnic restaurants out there that are fairly reasonable in price. You don't just have high end places like most restaurants were in the 50s and 60s. Personally, I think what started the lower price restaurant trend was McDonald's. Soon, you had all sorts of other fast food chains, and then you started to see Indian, Mexican, Salvadorian, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, etc. You can get a nice sit down meal in an ethnic restaurant for the same price that you will get at a fast food place. Then you have the chain medium scale places like Bennigans, Applebys, and Chili's to name a few. They offer good food at a reasonable price along with excellent service. Places like that didn't exist when I was growing up. Chinese food came out of a can that said "Chung King."

When you went to the grocery store, you bought groceries. If you wanted meats, you went to the butcher. Meatown was the local butcher shop. I used to go in there with my father, and he would buy what was on special for the week. Most of the time it was chicken, hot dogs, cube steaks, pork chops hamburger, and occasionally roast beef if it was on sale. Steak happened about twice a year, and was a real treat. Chicken, of course, was bone in. I had my first boneless chicken breast when I was in my 20s. Fresh produce was pretty much only available in the summer, and most of the time, you got it from a local farmer. The Eaton family farm over on Meadow Road had the best corn in the world. People would come from miles around to buy Mr. Eaton's corn and tomatoes. Smith's orchard and Wadsworth's orchard had great apples, peaches and pears. We ate well, but we didn't eat anything fancy. There were a lot of casseroles, and on Fridays it was fish sticks and tater tots. Add canned vegetables to any meal, and you get the typical Clemmer supper. Brown bagging it to school was usually peanut butter and jelly, along with a thermos of milk and a Hostess cup cake or Twinkie. Yes Michelle Obama, I ate Twinkies and I'm still alive.

Recreation

Most of the time, my sister and I would spend a lot of time playing outdoors with our friends. That's how we stayed in shape. We would ride our bicycles everywhere. As we got older, we would ride our bikes a couple of miles to downtown Unionville, and occasionally to downtown Farmington.

Once I became junior high school age, I took up skiing. I lived for the winter. I can remember going to Mt. Snow once per season. Most of my skiing was at Sundown and Butternut Basin. For four years in high school, I remember the Canadian ski trip up to the Lorentian Mountains , with Mt. Tremblant being the great place to ski that it was.

In the summer, my family would go to Cape Cod or Maine as I got older. When I was younger, we used to take vacations visiting other family members. I have a feeling that was done to save money. As I got older, I would return to Maine with my parents for a week of relaxation and sightseeing. We used to go all the way up the coast to the town of Calais, which is right on the Canadian border. From there, we would head to St. Andrews By The Sea, Eastport, Lubec and other places up there in Washington County, Maine, and New Brunswick, Canada. I have not been up there since I retired from the Air Force. I'm working way too many hours in retirement to take a vacation. I need to change that. If I don't, I'm going to die from stress. My current form of recreation is more work.

Today, it gets harder every day to have a lifestyle similar to the one I had growing up. While I have currently more material things, I'm not sure the quality of life is the same as it was when I was a kid growing up in small town America. I miss the age of store brand string beans that came out of a can.