From alt.culture.us.1970s, reprinted with CJ's permission. What I Miss Date: 12/20/1999 Author: CJ Green As I sit alone in my room this late autumn night in 1999 - 36 years after I was born and mere days before Y2chaos and the end of civilization as we know it - I start wondering what happened to all the things I used to love so much in this world. I feel guilty that I didn't put up a fight to hold on to these beautiful things. I didn't even see them taken away.   I miss the sky in my hometown in Idaho in the late spring -- huge, fluffed with cottony cumulus clouds, and such a dark, brilliant blue at the zenith you could almost see into outer space. The sky does not look that way anymore. So many people have moved to my old hometown that their car exhaust has painted the sky the same gunmetal blue-gray as over the big metroplexes they left behind. It must make the new residents homesick.   I miss the rich golden color of the afternoon sun in the early 1970s. This sounds weird, but the sun has not been as beautiful since. Watch a movie or TV show made prior to about 1976, and you'll see what I mean. I suppose the sunlight of the 1960s and previous decades was just as beautiful, but I don't remember what it looked like. I didn't miss it then.   I miss AM radio, and the fact that almost every song you heard was about something fun or beautiful like love, dancing, surfing, driving, partying -- having a good time. When we felt rebellious, we could listen to Led Zeppelin or The Who. When we wanted to get some male-female action going, we had Barry White. Now we have White Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and Snoop Doggy Dog -- a rogue's gallery that makes Keith Moon at his most whiskey-swollen look like Pat Boone at an ice-cream social.   Yeah, I know rap music is the voice of the discontent and pain of inner-city blacks, and "alternative" rock expresses the discontent and pain of . . . suburban white teenagers. Well, discontent and pain are part of life. So are joy, gratitude, mercy, compassion and trying to make one's self a better human - at least for some of us. The majority of today's music consumers and producers seem to have forgotten that other emotions besides misery, hate, and resentment can be felt and expressed.   I miss going to a movie for grownups and not being assaulted with blood, gore, explosions, convulsive editing, mindless chase scenes, mindless characters, and profanity every three words. I'm no angel. I don't attend church as often as many people would like me to. I say the f-word when I'm mad, like most guys and a lot of women I know. But no one I know talks or acts like people in movies today. These films are irrelevant -- even as escapism.   I miss when kids played out in front of their houses until evening twilight, when their parents called their names to come in. Now kids sit in front of monitors shotgunning virtual beings to electronic bits, sequestered from the hail of real bullets on their streets and in their schools, safely away from the slobbering armies of molesters waiting for them outdoors. You couldn't keep me inside when I was a kid. Whether it was tag, British Bulldog, stickball, kickball, or dead duck - I played like my life depended on it. Maybe it did.   I miss when heroin addicts were considered pathetic low-class losers even among other drug users, instead of the ultrachic role models whose clothes, cologne, and records we are expected to buy today.   I miss Gee-Your-Hair-Smells-Terrific shampoo. Whatever happened to that stuff? It smelled great! I miss the Apollo program. The human race has never accomplished anything like it, and judging from the behavior of those who hold the public's purse strings, we probably never will achieve anything like it again. I remember when the coolest job you could ever have was that of an astronaut. It meant being fearless, clever, honorable, athletic, personable, and good at math and science. Even if we didn't find all these qualities in ourselves, we at least appreciated them. We still have astronauts today, and they still do remarkable things, but we don't hear about them much. Up until the Apollo program, though, every space flight was a trip to the unknown. We rode along with those astronauts -- sweating, gritting our teeth and thundering crazily towards God-only-knew-what.   I miss in-dash eight-track stereos. As annoying as their habit of cutting out in the middle of songs was, the tapes were indestructible. You could drop a Pink Floyd tape on the pavement, back your motorcycle over it, leave it on the black dashboard of your Dodge Challenger for an entire summer, and when you popped the tape back in the deck it would play like it was brand new. Try that with a DAT. Of course, eight-track didn't offer anywhere near the fidelity that technology gives us today -- but back then, we didn't care.   I miss building things -- model ships, cars, and rockets; a fort, a treehouse, a jump ramp for my bike (a la Evel Knievel). What kid builds anything anymore? Who teaches them?   I miss laying in bed in the evening and hearing nothing but the rumble of a truck somewhere off in the distance, thinking about nothing but the fun I had that day.   I miss getting holiday visits from cousins my age that I hadn't seen in a while.   I miss family dinners.   I miss The Beach Boys, Abba, The Chi-Lites, and the Electric Light Orchestra.   I miss Senator Frank Church.   I miss looking forward to the future and to all the promise and excitement that it held. I miss the feeling that life and love were mysterious gifts to be cherished. I miss the all-pervasive sense that I was safe -- that despite whatever trouble I had heard about in the world, everything was going to be okay. Somebody would straighten it all out. Eventually.   Somebody would make sure that the world would stay a beautiful place forever. Somebody would make sure that whatever good, cheap, and decent pleasures we could find in life would not be taken away, would fight to make sure that we never settled for less.   I guess I didn't realize that somebody was supposed to be me.   Copyright 1999, C.J. Green Visit us all at alt.culture.us.1970s Website designed and maintained by Tiny Dancer (tinyd@bell.net) Graphics courtesy of