Someone recently delivered to me the unsolicited opinion that I am too sentimental. I flatly deny the assertion but if I even thought there was some small bit of truth to it I would plead guilty to the charge.
This got me thinking about sentimentality and I began looking back to what seemed an easier time when no one would think to tell a man he was too sentimental. A time when a penny was a penny and could buy most of what a kid might need. When $500 would buy a brand new car and $1,000 a house, $4,000 a farm. A time when a man could take a dollar into a bar and stumble out ten beers later with his eyes looking in two different directions and his legs operating as they did when he was learning to walk. A time when the woman you would marry sat for years one pew behind you in church, when every house had one single clock and not twenty and when fast food was food you ate in a hurry, not food prepared quickly.
These were the good old days, I guess, and while I remember them, I don’t miss them. I am surprised to learn there is someone spreading the notion that I do. As we used to say in the old days to people like that, ‘Pshaw!”
The best time to be alive is now.
©2021 Jim Hagarty
