he Good Ole Days

From My Perspective
By Toni Walker

Ahh, the good ole days! I can remember as
a kid thinking that “the good ole days” were
just an old persons perception of times gone
by, and a way to make us kids feel bad for the
things we had that weren’t available in those
“good ole days.”
As I have gotten older, I have learned that
I was partially true in my assumption about
those golden days of one’s youth. They are
pretty much based solely on opinion, yet
their purpose was not solely to make us
“young’uns” feel bad. They were our parents
and grandparents way of sharing the story of
their lives with us.
As I have begun to get older, I have started
looking back on what I consider to be the
“good ole’ days.” Back in the good ole days, I
didn’t have a lot of electronic devices. No cell
phones, ipads, tablets, or computers. I
remember the first computer we had at
home; I thought I was big stuff when I mastered
so many levels of Tetris! The first gaming
system I had, the Atari 6400, is now considered
cool again. Only this time around,
there are no cartridges to keep up, and the
system is called “retro!” Wow! (That almost
makes me feel as old as hearing the music I
grew up listening to on the “oldies” station!)
Speaking of music: if I wanted a copy of
the latest tracks from my favorite singers, I
couldn’t go to the computer and download it.
I can’t tell you the number of hours I spent at
night and on weekends sitting by my clock
radio in my room with my tape player, waiting
for the song I wanted to come on the
radio! That’s right, I “downloaded” myself
onto my bed, and would wait until the intro
to my favorite new song started, then quickly
hit record, praying I got the whole song!
I know, I know, kids today don’t know anything
about “tapes.” Let me tell you something
else that today’s child has no knowledge
of: video stores! Yep, that’s right. I would
go to the video store in the afternoon, especially
on the Fridays, when it was not football
season, and pick out a VHS tape to watch the
latest movies at home! The closest movie
theatre was in Texarkana, and we were not
always able to see the new movies there. But
you could bet, as soon as they hit the shelves
at Imaginations Video, we were all on it! And,
the good thing was that my friends were
mostly in the same boat I was, so none of us
had seen it! Now days, if you miss something
in the theatre and have to wait until it is On
Demand or hits Netflix or Redbox, you have
to be careful not let anyone spoil it for you!
The security light outside was my curfew,
especially in the summer. I rode a death
machine three wheeler as fast as I could, with
no helmet, for hours on end, and flew over
gullies and ditches with the best of them on
said death machines, and I am still here. I
walked through the pasture to my best
friend’s house, and went to one the ponds,
where I spent hours fishing or running in the
pasture, without adult supervision. Gasp!!!
How did I ever survive?
Now, there are some old timers that will
read this and still believe that I don’t “get” the
concept of the good ole days. And that is ok.
They have their golden memories, and I have
mine. I would venture a guess to say that my
kids will have their own version of the good
ole days, as well. The thing to never forget is
this: as long as they are made up of OUR
memories, there is nothing more “golden” in
the world!