The Good Old Days Were A Pain In The Cul
USC professor Charles Fleming doesn't agree with some sour friends who were going on about how much better things were in the old days in France. On the LA Times op-ed page, Fleming writes:
When I first traveled to France in 1978, mailing a letter meant going to the Bureau de Poste to purchase a packet of aerogrammes -- the prestamped, Gauloise-blue pages that folded into their own envelope. They were as delicate as butterfly wings; a heavy mist rendered them unusable. Receiving mail meant standing in line at the American Express office -- traveler's checks and passport in hand -- and begging a clerk to please check one more time.Making a telephone call meant another trip to the Poste, to stand in another queue. You'd request a cabine with an international line and wait hours in a cavernous room, hoping to hear your name and cabine number called. The brief conversation over a crackly, echoing line cost a fortune. Local calls were hardly any easier. Public telephones did not accept coins or calling cards; they required a special token, called a jeton, which could only be purchased at the Poste or a licensed tabac.
Now, instead, you send texts and e-mails from a laptop, iPhone or BlackBerry. To telephone, you can call from anywhere using an inexpensive international calling card or purchase a cheap European cellphone and buy telephone time on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Changing money back then was another ordeal. Getting cash required going to American Express, or the Banque de France, standing in line, filling out forms, signing your checks under the watchful eye of a solemn clerk and then waiting until a different solemn clerk counted out the colorful franc notes -- attached to each other by a straight pin. The 100-franc note was broad enough to use as a picnic blanket. If you were in Italy, you left with a bundle of lire as big as a bedroll.
Today, you visit an ATM that offers a menu of instructions in English, recognizes the same bank card you use at home and happily spits out fresh euros. And you don't need much cash anyway because shops, restaurants and even some taxi drivers take credit cards.
Everything is easier. I remember rising at dawn and waiting in line for hours to gain admission to the Prado, the Uffizi, the Vatican or the Louvre. Now I buy museum tickets online and don't stand in line at all. I recall gargantuan lines at train stations too, where hundreds of travelers waited hours to find out whether a sleeping car was even available -- and then unfolding blanket-sized francs to secure one. I remember arriving in strange cities at strange hours and marching about for ages trying to find a suitable, affordable hotel room.
Not anymore. A month before I left Los Angeles, I'd already bought reduced-rate promotional tickets for the family on the French TGV train. It was all a mouse click away, as were the house exchanges we arranged last spring.
Is there some loss of old-world charm? Sure. But, things are so much easier, as they are in so many realms, thanks to technology. I'm so grateful I'm living now, and not at some earlier time in history -- especially since I'm a woman. I have reliable birth control and all these devices and clever products at my disposal that mean I can spend my time reading and thinking instead of laboring. I get a big packaged roast or a packaged, ready-to-heat turkey leg (I think it's a leg, and it's good and cheap!) from Costco that I put in the microwave for under 10 minutes, and I've got tasty food for the better part of a week. Yes, that's right -- not only do I not have to chase my dinner around the barn with an ax, I don't even cook; I heat.
I think nostalgia is just a natural part of the human condition. People like to romanticize the past.
I love romanticizing the Victorian and Middle Ages, for example, but I know that my romantic ideas of what they were are probably very different from the realities. Still, though, fantasies are fun.
NicoleK at August 22, 2010 11:52 PM
"the prestamped, Gauloise-blue pages that folded into their own envelope. They were as delicate as butterfly wings; a heavy mist rendered them unusable."
I remember those! That's what my husband used to write to me when we first became pen-pals in 1974. Postage in Japan was exorbitant, and as a student it would have cost him too much to send letters on writing paper. Damned hard to open!
crella at August 23, 2010 2:21 AM
But think of all the healthful exercise you would have gotten chasing dinner around the barnyard!
alittlesense at August 23, 2010 5:10 AM
Who needs all that exercise when you don't eat carbs?
Amy Alkon at August 23, 2010 5:23 AM
"The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." ~ B. Joel
Honestly, I'm too enchanted with technology to give in too much nostalgia. Give me my XBox, smartphone, and internet.
Elle at August 23, 2010 7:30 AM
I remember growing up we had a "party" telephone line, which meant you could hear your neighbor's phone calls and they could hear ours. Every now and then there would be a flare up over someone using the phone too long. And if you wanted to make a phone call overseas, you made an appointment with Ma Bell, and the operator would connect the two parties, and due to costs my parents were limited to a few minutes.
Eric at August 23, 2010 8:18 AM
Oh- and my grandfather gave me his Gurka boot knife when I was maybe 7 or 8, which I carried everywhere, including onto an airplane to England via Freddy Laker airlines! It did get confiscated at school, but was given back to me with a stern warning to never bring back on the school grounds again and a note home. (The same grandfather who let us play with his table saw to make projects like birdhouses and such...)
Eric at August 23, 2010 8:22 AM
I remember when most of my friends were going from Paris to Rome to Istanbul to Kabul. Those were the days.
KateC at August 23, 2010 9:09 AM
fut me firmly in the "sure, except..."
see, Amy, you and I can remember when it was the way it used to be. When I spent $20 in quarters in a pay phone to call my girlfriend long distance in the phone room in my dorm. It cost me more to call her than it would have to drive. So the NEXT time we wanted to talk, I drove my old ford pickup the 100 miles to see her, and it was MUCH more eventful than a phone call.
But. When I was in Europe in '83? Sure there were plenty of things that were a drag, or at least had their own inscrutible rule. Galtweshalt Exchange? A subway that can be ridden at all hours? Polezi on every streetcorner with machine guns in East Berlin? When the Cold War was cold, and so everyone had a better understanding of what the communism actually entails.
Yeah, we can't step in that same river again, the water has flowed. But knowing the times before it was better, gives you a backdrop to understand them.
Just think, our grandkids prolly will have implants rather than a cell phone you hold in your hand, and so forth. They probably will never be able to consider a time when you went to the library instead of the internets.
Things Change we just remember the good stuff and try to forget the bad...
SwissArmyD at August 23, 2010 10:13 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/08/23/the_good_old_da.html#comment-1745689">comment from SwissArmyDMy talented and exciting friend Little Shiva moved to Belgium, and we're now in better touch than we ever were, thanks to technology (Skype, booking train tickets over the Internet to visit when Gregg and I are in Paris, etc.)
Amy Alkon at August 23, 2010 10:40 AM
I used those aerograms when I was in yeshiva in Israel. I know someone who uses them still.
kishke at August 23, 2010 1:56 PM
The good professor seems to have had many more problems than I ever had in Europe.
I made long trips in Europe in 1972, when I was a student, as well as in 1976, '79, '83, and '89. I had travel agents make most hotel and train reservations, but had no problem getting reservations at stations when I needed them. I didn't bother with the stupid phones, got fast service everyplace I ever went to exchange money, and never had to wait in line very long for admission to museums. And it was all a lot cheaper than it is today.
As for food, I'm glad I don't have to catch dinner, but you might want to rethink nourishing yourself long-term on the packaged, instant, processed, chemically-preserved, and microwaved junk that passes for cuisine these days. The Weston Price Foundation and many other sources offer information on why you might be suspicious. We have made great strides in eliminating infectious disease, but we seem helpless against degenerative disease, and the modern diet is a chief cause. Authorities like the FDA make war on those who prefer traditional foods like unpasteurized dairy products.
As for nostalgia in general, for every bit of so-called "progress" I've seen there's been a loss of something else that was equally if not more important. I was born in 1951 into a proud, optimistic, confident America. I scarcely recognize it now.
Remember when it used to be fun to travel around the US? Well, the magnificent nationwide passenger train network we had in 1960 or even 1967 is gone. Amtrak is poorer, in extent and in quality of service, than what we had as late as 1970. Driving anywhere long-distance or near cities is tedious and stressful, and the once-glamorous airplane is now no more than a flying bus.
I see the same trade-offs everywhere. The countryside around my town is now filled with subdivisions and shopping centers built with money borrowed at Fed-maniputlated interest rates artificially held down to zero or less when you figure in inflation and taxes. Many of these developments should never have been built.
Towns and cities are still declining and in some cases ungovernable thanks to decades of leftist dominance, no matter which party is nominally in power.
Oh yes - birth control. A good idea; too bad we can't get the right people to use it. Intelligent people sense, even if they won't admit it, that it's too risky to have kids nowadays since tax consumers now enjoy more security than taxpayers. Until that changes, the birthrate among taxpayers will continue its decline.
Selective nostalgia is a good antidote for many modern ills.
Robert at August 23, 2010 5:24 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/08/23/the_good_old_da.html#comment-1745813">comment from Robertyou might want to rethink nourishing yourself long-term on the packaged, instant, processed, chemically-preserved, and microwaved junk that passes for cuisine these days.
Um, I read Sally Morell and others on Weston A. Price, and I'm quite informed about the science of healthy eating. I'm buying a big slab of meat and microwaving it, not macaroni and cheese.
Amy Alkon at August 23, 2010 7:05 PM
There is one thing I'm genuinely nostalgic about: the future. When I was a child, my father worked for NASA. He was confident that we would have thousands of people living in space by the time I graduated from college. Everyone assumed that the pace of innovation that existed after WWII would continue, and that the 21st century would be far better than the 20th.
I see no evidence today that such will be the case. No one looks forward to the future anymore. Most people ignore it, and the people who do think about it mostly fear it and try to prevent it from coming. We keep setting our ambitions smaller and smaller. We're doing far less, with far more resources, then our grandparents did.
Cousin Dave at August 23, 2010 8:14 PM
I enjoy going to the local renaissance festival (usually several different weekends) and being in "character"; i.e. costume and such.
But I am glad most of them take the master of the card and lady of visa -- usually.
But I know it is a fantasy -- in the real village I'd be stepping around (or slogging through) horse, cow and pig manure. I'd have to worry about the diseases in the local village. The reason beer consumption was so high was that it was the only stuff that was safe to drink for proof against various worms in poorly cooked food. The reason that tea was so treasured was that the tea (heating) killed most gut stuff. (And trust me -- barley water sucks.)
In the last century they used mercury and Potassium Iodide to treat syphilis.
The list of commonly vaccinated diseases has gone up: I had chicken pox and the mumps the natural way as a kid -- they both suck. Both are now history if we can keep up the immunization rate. (And I'm old enough to have the smallpox scar on my arm.)
www.merck.com/mmhe/sec17/ch189/ch189b.html
I also make my money off the current tech -- so I look back very little as a the tech progresses.
But I do take a look at political history -- and I don't like what I see.
So I'm all over the board on current history. The big thing is never forget the past. Otherwise you are doomed to repeat it.
Jim P. at August 23, 2010 10:05 PM
Everyone assumed that the pace of innovation that existed after WWII would continue, and that the 21st century would be far better than the 20th.
I had to read a paper about innovation for a class. Its main argument was that we are actually innovating more now than ever before. The difference is now it is very diverse -- a million small things rather than one big obvious thing. It noted that most leading edge technology was being used for NASA. Now it is other places -- cell phones to call home rather than talk to the orbiter.
Also, many things were going from 1 to 2 and now it is 100,000 ti 101,000 - so in absolute numbers it is alot more but a tiny fraction as a %.
Finally, much of it is out of site. I just read about a new way of manufacture the lights for fiber optics that is expected to be only 10% of the current cost - you might see this as additional bandwidth for less money.
I will have to see if I can find what paper that was.
The Former Banker at August 24, 2010 12:20 AM
"I'm buying a big slab of meat and microwaving it" It a question of how much that meat has been fucked with. Also the nuker can damage quite a bit of the nutritional value of meat and low starch veggies. I've pretty much switched to that as a diet. Once you try cooked meat vs nuked meat or steamed veggies vs nuked veggies the difference is quite graphic; both in color and taste.
I find my self being nostalgic about some of the most unpleasant times of my life, I think it's a facet of being human. I remember traveling back in the 80's, though in eastern Europe it sucked then still does. France was a blast only if you had the money to do it right. Just like here. You want a great travel experience, pay the coin and it's great. Boston to NY: You have Fung Wa/Bolt Bus etc which is $30 and unless you are a starved dwarf it sucks. You have first class Bos to JFK for $1500 and you get free booze, a real meal, personal entertainment center and a leather recliner. Train travel is the same, you can get a private room with a bed or you can go steerage.
vlad at August 24, 2010 7:44 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/08/23/the_good_old_da.html#comment-1745974">comment from vlad"I'm buying a big slab of meat and microwaving it" It a question of how much that meat has been fucked with.
In a different economy, with newspapers not struggling the way they are, I'd be buying unfucked-with grass-fed beef. Right now, I'm in major economizing mode, and I hope this will change soon. (I just finished a tight, 15-page proposal for the faster book I'm going to write before the research-intensive one. Have to write two short chapterettes, and providing my agent is behind it, I'm hoping she'll be able to sell it in September.)
Amy Alkon at August 24, 2010 7:59 AM
"I'd be buying unfucked-with grass-fed beef." Never said grass fed, actually it's real bitch to cook properly even for someone who does it regularly. You get power lifter arms just beating the shit out of it with a hammer to break up the tougher connective tissue. It's leaner with far less marbling. I was more talking about the fillers commonly used in Wallworld meat, usually wrapped in nasty bacon (from the Pleistocene era). Also the "Juices" they marinate cheap meat in, think corn syrup and a bunch of shit you need the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics to understand.
vlad at August 24, 2010 9:01 AM
I understand there are good parts and bad parts about the past. Whatgets me is the people who think it was all good. My grandmother does this, yet she remembers people being rasist towards her because she's Italian-American.
I remember as a kid having 3 TV channels, no VCR for quite a while, and a wood stove that we had to chop the wood for, and living way out in the country so that a run to go to the store was a big deal. I don't miss any of those things. Summer vacations were nice though - remember having so much time you didn't have to worry about what to do with it, the days just stretched out.
KrisL at August 24, 2010 6:44 PM
I don't feel like the world has changed all that much since I was a kid, except for computers.
NIcoleK at August 26, 2010 1:00 PM
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