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What a difference a score makes.
Of course you know what a score of years is, as in the Gettysburgh Address that kids learned in school back when I went, but for all I know, may not ever hear about now. A score of years, as in "Four score and seven years ago....", is twenty.
A score of years ago was not even a very long time ago, to those of us who are approaching the total of the Gettysburgh Address, anyway. It was 1988. Life was already getting complicated and computers were already here. But we didn't know what was coming.
A score of years ago:
You had a dripping faucet in the bathtub and called a plumber. For $35. he put a new rubber thingie in the faucet and fixed the drip. A score of years later, you call a plumber for the dripping faucet. For $35. he looks at it, informs you it doesn't do any good to fix old faucets, and writes you an estimate for $500. to $600. to remove the whole faucet assembly and replace it with a fancy new one through the wall access panel of your closet. The new state of the art faucet assembly will last 30-40 years, you are told. Who cares? You won't be around then. He leaves and your faucet is still dripping.
You turned off the TV news at 10:30 and went to bed, in my case with a good book to read for a while until you were tired. A score of years later, you are about to turn off the computer and go to bed when suddenly it goes black or freezes or dings with error messages or threatens to blow up, and you will be frantically trying to get it back up so you can turn it off without worrying; or, alternatively, you will spend the next four hours on the phone with a person in India whose heavily accented English you cannot understand. At any rate, forget going to bed.
You were aware that it was a presidential election year, although (amazingly!) the hopeful participants therein had not been campaigning for two years and left you (not to mention themselves) exhausted and sick of it already. Qualified people were running for office, it was understood that the Commander in Chief of the United States Military should probably be a male (considering), and some respect was generally shown to both the candidates and the electorate. A score of years later, it's another election time, but it's lasted 2 or 3 years so far and we're nowhere near the goal. As for qualified people? As for respect? Forget about it. We have a bunch of vicious dogfights going on, not a word of truth is eminating from any of the ones left standing, and today's electorate would probably elect Oprah if she was running.
You were able to go to the grocery store and buy actual, real, uncontaminated food that was not all tofu and chemicals. A score of years later, you may find some real food in a few pricey places that are now called "health food stores" but you can't afford enough to keep you alive. Not that it matters, because the food Nazis haven't agreed on a single food that is good for us - except possibly tofu, which will kill us. That is probably the point.
You were able to live to the ripe old age of 80 or 90 and enjoy yourself as much as you were able, often dying of simple old age. A score of years later you can't, without being told you had several new "diseases" which would require you to take 8 or 9 new drugs for which the "diseases" were invented for the rest of your life at a total cost of approximately a million dollars, because there is no such cause of death as simple old age until they develop a drug for it and call it a disease.
You could express your opinions without accusations of being politically incorrect or hate speech, because the First Amendment was still observed. You could buy ammunition for your handgun to do some target practice without being investigated by the FBI and the IRS, because the Second Amendment was still respected. You could watch TV by simply turning it on and tuning in to the local stations without missing anything you should care about. You could send your kids to school and be pretty sure they were learning algebra instead of how to put a condom on a cucumber. In fact, you could raise your kids to the age of 18 or 20 and be confident they would move out to make lives for themselves as adults, leaving you with that "empty nest syndrome" that you secretly considered your award.
I know by now that everyone who's ever been in a room with me is tired of hearing about the 50s (the 1950s, that is) and the 5 cent tootsie rolls and how great, how simple, everything was. Okay. Could we possibly just go back for a score of years? I'll take it.
Thanks for reading.