Good Old Days

I have been feeling slightly nostalgic for the good ole days. Remember those? You probably have to be over 40 to remember them at all, but they were some good times. Remember when Saturdays were spent doing chores with your family? You got up in the morning and watched a few Tom and Jerry's and Scooby Doo's while your mom made you pancakes for breakfast. Then, she sent you to clean your room and not just shove things under the bed, but dust and vacuum. Then, you probably got sent to weed the garden, clean the garage, mow the lawn, rake the leaves or at our house, shovel snow.
I grew up in the mountains of Colorado so there was a lot of snow to shovel, feet and feet of snow for months on end. If you were really lucky though, you got the job of knocking icicles off the eaves of the house. This job wasn’t for wimps; you would have to be extremely careful because those babies have been known to kill people. That was the warning my dad would give before handing you the shovel. And to think this was a coveted job at our house!
After a really big snow we could sometimes walk right onto the roof and then we might get to shovel all the snow off so it wouldn't collapse, crush us, and kill us dead in our sleep. No, my dad didn't really say that, not in so many words, but it was understood. Growing up in Colorado had all sorts of risk in the old days. We didn’t wear helmets to ride our bikes. We drank out of the garden hose, rode in the back of the truck, and I don’t think sunscreen was even invented.
Chores in the good ole days were different, too. They required something they don't make anymore. At least I haven't seen it in stores and most kids haven't had the luxury of using it....it is called elbow grease. If you were having trouble completing your job, which was most likely something really tedious like scrubbing the bottom of the boat, it was probably due to the fact that you weren't using the proper amount of elbow grease. Who scrubs the bottom of their boat anyway? Men who grew up in the 1940's and 50's, when they had a lot of elbow grease around.
I usually got to daydreaming a lot while trying to finish cleaning the hubcaps on my dad's car. He had a lot of crazy jobs that could not be done without a healthy application of elbow grease. Whenever I got a little lost in dream world, he would say, "For Pete’s sake, hurry it up! Let's not make a career out of it!" I didn't know who Pete was, but he sure was referenced a lot and no, I did not want to make a career out of cleaning hubcaps or stacking firewood.
Once I sent my four year old son to spend 3 weeks with his grandpa. He learned a lot about chores and elbow grease. I took him shopping with me when he got back and while I was looking at some clothes, he said, "c'mon mom, don't make a career out of it!" Glad to hear that things at the homestead had not changed since I was a kid.
Nowadays, kids don't know what a Saturday is supposed to look like. They don't know what chores are anymore. How are they supposed to grow any character? What is going to put some hair on their chest? Well, in my dad’s house, either cleaning out the fireplace or eating jalapenos. Don’t ask me why having hair on your chest was a good thing, either, I never figured that one out.
Now kids spend Saturdays with a whole lot of adults watching them play. The whole glory of finishing your job right, the first time, so you didn't have to do it again, was so you could go down to the woods or the river without any adults watching you. Can you imagine your mom and dad tagging along to the Capture the Flag game and then chasing you around with a water bottle? No, the best part of Saturday was going to play WITHOUT your parents watching.
Things are all backwards now. It used to be that your parents would go do things with their friends, like go fishing or have a bbq or get together for a picnic and the kids just tagged along and played with whatever other kids were there, too. Now, kids have all the activities and the parents tag along. Not my cup of tea at all.
Last weekend I noticed another interesting phenomenon. When we were kids we learned how to behave and play nice with our siblings and our neighbors. No longer is that the case. Kids now have to learn lessons on how to behave on a soccer field with all their peers and every adult in town watching. I think I would rather be a kid in the old days without all the public humiliation.
Back then if you screwed up in a kickball game, your brothers and friends might yell at you for about 5 seconds and then you would go on playing. Now, you will get a yellow card and 3 coaches and every parent on the opposing team will yell at you until you are removed from the game. I am not making this up; I witnessed it at a U10 game last week. The best part? The adults quit the game! They walked off the field and forfeited because they didn’t like the call by a 14 year old referee. I think I would choose being yelled at by my brothers any day over that.
Although I didn't much like chores when I was a kid, I look back fondly on Saturdays because they were spent with my family. We were learning important things during that time, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, work ethic, and pride in our homes and our families. Our lessons were learned with our siblings and our parents. Then, when we went off to school and later to high school sports, we had already learned how to behave and had a good solid foundation.
I sure do miss those good ole days with my dad as foreman of the job. So, I made up a list of great character building chores for my kids to do this weekend. Who knows they might even want to make a career out of it.