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| Most of us have our own personal “good old days.” It doesn’t matter if those days were really good in every way or not. If we were young, relatively healthy, had our basic needs met, and were able to cope with whatever bad things came our way, then our childhood was likely some sort of “good old days.” Another “good old days” might include perhaps the happiest time of being a young married with children—even if that time had a lot of problems too. We tend to remember the good things and wash away the bad when we look back. It doesn’t matter if you grew up during the depression or World War II, and it doesn’t matter how screwed up everything was—those times of your life were very likely your “good old days.” | | My childhood seems like the “good old days” to me even though my father was mentally ill, and was often violent with, and beat, my mother. He was institutionalized for a time in the now closed Pontiac State Mental Hospital in Michigan for Paranoid Schizophrenia. He had some pills which would keep him calm. He was convinced they were poison, however, and he seldom took them. (Reading the labels now he was right perhaps on that—but they did keep him calm the few times he took them). | | We kids didn’t have much money or guidance. I managed to get into my share of trouble. I guess I have a deep understanding and compassion for other kids in those kinds of situations now—violent dad, absent dad, abusive live in boyfriends of the mothers, abuse, neglect, etc. Let’s just say I’ll never be one of the “zero tolerance for kids” folks. | | There were good times, nonetheless, and it all seems like ten lifetimes ago now. Everything seems kind of funny to me now looking back. We just had to adjust to the bad things, and it affected us, but when I think back to childhood it all seems “good” in some way too, no matter what happened. A lot of it was not good, and a lot of it was very hurtful, and I too hurt people, but I think that “wistfulness for lost youth” is common in a lot of people. Life seemed very promising then. If things weren’t good you thought you would be able to do better. The world seemed open before you, and life unknown lay ahead. | | When I first started my apprenticeship as a Machine-Repairer/Machinist in the 70s in Flint we sometimes washed machine parts—and inadvertently our hands, in 1-1-1- Trichlorethelene. This was a very harmful solvent that strips grease off machine parts very quickly, but also takes the oil out of your skin. It can also be directly absorbed into your body through the skin and cause problems with internal organs. I had some qualms about it after the first time seeing what it did to my skin, and decided to get some rubber gloves the next time we washed some parts. One old Journeyman took a look at my rubber gloves and said, “C’mon Jeff, don’t be a pussy. Put your hands in there.” It seems very naive and funny looking back now, but there was a lot of ignorance about the hidden dangers of chemicals back in “in the good old days.” | | I remember a few occasions when a pretty woman would enter the plant and some of the men would catcall and whistle when she went by. She “just had to take it.” I could see some of the women were red-faced and hurt by it, but it was “ok.” That was “the good old days,” and that’s “what she got” for being in a factory “looking like that.” There was also a lot of sexual harassment in one of the restaurants I worked in. No one seemed to make much fuss about it. That was “the boss’ right” and was “just the way it was.” | | A few of the real “old timers” in the factory—ones who hired in the plant in the 40s and 50s--had whisky bottles hidden everywhere—often in containers that looked like something else. Occasionally someone would drink some harmful solvent in an unmarked bottle that they had gotten confused with Vodka or something, and we were warned of that danger. |
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