Mixed Feelings

Summer vacation, going to the shore for a couple weeks, always caused a little of this. What was I to do, NO TV, well almost NO TV, I could always sneak a little in, down the street at the Raymonds. All us kids would complain in the beginning about doing without, only to hear from our Mother about when she was a kid, how the entire family would gather in the evening by the crystal set listening to the serials. Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, the Shadow, Blah, Blah, the Good Old Days. We did have an old radio, no telephone, we played a lot of fish on rainy days, I would have preferred War, out voted by four sisters. My Mother would drift into stories of going to the movies for a nickel just after the crystal speech, planting some seeds of hope, some entertainment for us on a screen. Flash Gordon, the Purple Martian, these serials, my mother said, were a prediction of her future as she was a child, I remember her pointing out to us kids, that reality usually shows up, thirty to fifty years after the Science Fiction. I wonder about Science Fiction, why is it that in all the wonderful change these works predict, the one constant, guns, they are always included. Why is it that these writers of Science Fiction can’t visualize a Future Without Guns. We were listening to the radio one night down at the shore, I remember my Mother was knitting, when news about the Gulf of Tonkin broke in, I was to young to get it, she was upset, another war, that’s two, what ever happened to the War to end all Wars? Realistically, maybe a little Science Fiction, (let’s loose the guns) would do some good right about now. Last night, here in LA, there was a service, for a young woman who was murdered, by some homeless career criminal. Last week there was a young man, beaten to death by his Step Father. I can’t help but to wonder, if either of these kids, would have been the one to change the world. Ah, the Good Old Days, I have mixed feelings about my generation! they say, if you had a good time, you probably won’t remember. I guess I am an oddity, that I had a really good time, with all the extra spices, and MOST of it, I remember clearly. It was about living simply, about sharing, shunning greed, about peace, love, about avoiding the traps of materialism. I wasn’t the only one, out having fun, the streets were thick with people. I really think, most people of my generation, did forget.