Published: July 20, 2008 01:01 am         

It’s not your father’s life, but don’t say that to me

You know, I really get ticked off sometimes. Well, lots of times, actually, but in this case, it’s when people say, “This (automobile, culture, or whatever) is not your father’s (automobile, culture, or whatever.)” Or your mother’s. Just the other day, in a medical TV show about the modern dangers of sunlight on skin, someone said, “This is not your mother’s sun.”

It always sounds so superior and condescending. Like, poor Dad, poor Mom — they got it all wrong, as usual. They need to be updated.

In fact, I promise never to use any form of that phrase in this column, and I apologize if I ever used it in the past. I hate the expression. It’s arrogant.

There is a great deal of scoffing in our culture these days. And the most wonderful people sometimes express it. A young person very dear to me was talking about music, recently, and referred to “normal music.” I was confused. “What kind of music isn’t normal?” I asked. “Oh, you know,” she said, rolling her eyes, “like Beethoven and stuff.”

I’ll admit right here and now, that I am sometimes guilty of the same sort of easy snootiness. (In the case of music, it would be in the opposite direction.) Still, my hackles (whatever those are) rise when I hear the past dismissed as if it were no more than a can of beans.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of the things that are so easily dismissed these days seemed like very good ideas at the time. And if popcorn ceilings and melodic music no longer fill the bill, well, they met some very real needs in their time.

Take House Hunters on HGTV, which I watch compulsively. I’m nosy and I love seeing other people’s houses. But I get really annoyed when a young couple who just got out of college walk into their very first house and motion to the chandelier, or a refrigerator that’s, say, five years old, and say dismissively, “That’s gotta go.” And heaven forbid they should buy a house that does not have granite counter-tops in the kitchen.

Pardon me, but when MHTB and I bought our first house, we were just glad to have a kitchen. It never occurred to us that avocado appliances (they were the rage then) were absolutely required. (Nowadays it’s so all stainless steel!) We barely had the money to buy a house, let alone redo everything before we even moved in. Or as they say, nowadays, “upgrade it.”

Okay, it’s not your father’s house, that’s true. But sometimes Father had the right idea. For instance, when did people first start believing that shoes were not to be worn inside? That it was a peachy idea to put down snow-white carpet and force family and guests to remove their footwear at the door? This may be fun for the young, but it can be a disaster for those of us who have to wear orthotics or else fall over onto the hall table at once. (Some of us aren’t so hot any more at standing on one foot to take off our shoes either.)

And is it really such an artistic improvement to have great piles of smelly sneakers blocking the front door? Father (more likely Mother) opted instead for the old entrance mat which cleaned off footwear well enough for folks to walk about the house without leaving great globs of mud behind. Oh, yes, and sensible dark carpets.

Here are some other old features of our father’s time that seemed like a good idea at the time — like those little York peppermints you got at a store’s cash register for one or two cents apiece. Have you noticed? They’re 20 cents now. Postal boxes on most every street corner, and, for that matter, two mail deliveries a day. Daily milk left on your own front porch, with cream in the bottle that froze on winter days and provided a unique and memorable ice cream, if we kids could get there before our mothers did.

A war that made us proud. Front porches where you could talk with your neighbors on hot summer evenings, and keep an eye on the kids playing in the street. Schools you could walk to. (My grade school was located on a city street that had the Pennsylvania railroad running down the middle between rows of urban houses. I don’t remember a crossing guard, although we walked across the tracks four times a day. Don’t remember losing any schoolmates, either. )

All these seemed like good ideas at the time, and some of them still are. Whatever, they made the world of our time, and they helped to make the world of your time.

Hey, folks, cut the contempt. This may not be our father’s or our mother’s world — but we’re riding on their shoulders.

Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on alternate Sundays in the Times-News.