The Old Days

Reading Ivan Labelle’s column got me to thinking when he talked about being 4 years old and watching a black and white TV. We had one of the first TVs in the area; my sister and I were also the first to get brand new tricycles, just before my father left for good. The year was 1952. That TV lasted until our first colour TV, bought for the 1972 Canada versus Russia The Summit series, and it lasted that long because we could fix it ourselves. If we suspected a tube was burnt out, we would take it to the nearest drug store, which had a tester; plug in the tube bulb, press the button, and if it did not light up, it was burnt out and replaced with another purchased from that drugstore.

With our cars, we did our own tune-ups. On a Saturday morning and with our best friends, we’d change plugs, wires and carburetors ourselves, were proud when they all worked, and gained an understanding of how and why they worked.

Today we have 70” inch TVs and electric cars, and when they break, we throw them away, especially as many places don’t even know how they work, nor seem all that interested in understanding why they don’t. Get a new TV (now the whole TV is available in drugstores even) and for the car, well, take out a loan if you need to get it fixed. Laptops, cellphones, printers are all disposable, cheaper even to buy a new printer than to pay for the ink cartridges.

My first new bike, at 13, cost $42 tax in, and I paid for it by running errands and saving a nickel at a time, for close to two years. That bike never spent a day outside in the elements or was thrown like trash on the front lawn: it was washed and cleaned, all the time it was my pride and joy; because I worked for it, it had value.

Today little nothing has worth. If it is broken, okay scrap it and move on, next wrong colour and in the garbage it goes. These days, same as people even refusing perfectly good ‘traditional’ food and why? Because they have never been hungry enough, or maybe never had to work to buy their food … so it is not valued..

All this to say “Give me the old days when people and things mattered, and nothing was taken for granted.” Maybe I’m just dreaming, but let me dream about these ‘good ole days’ when people did matter and care for each other, and things were not just things to throw away, but rather kept, used and valued for what they could offer us.

Who out there thinks like I do? Email your thoughts to: [email protected] attention Stephen Douris.