When I Was Your Age

 Remember when your parents or grandparents would start something with “When I was your age” or “Back in my day”? It didn’t matter what followed, you just knew it was out of date, completely irrelevant, and had absolutely nothing to do with whatever it was you were trying to talk your parents into or weasel out of them. 

The funny thing is that I now frequently find myself thinking about “when I was that age” or “back in my day.” The only saving grace is that my sons are grown and don’t have to listen to my memories. You however, dear reader, are stuck with me.

The summer-like days we've had lately have me thinking of summers and things “back in my day.” As I have said before, my hometown of Maysville, Ky. was pretty small back in the mid-70s, and there wasn’t a lot to do. It didn’t matter though. Children made their own fun then. We didn’t spend summer days at the mall, texting on our cellphones, or posting selfies to the Internet. Instead, we played ball with our friends, visited their houses, or rode our bikes until dark when our parents would call us home. Then we would gather in one neighbor or another's backyard for an impromptu cookout. The adults would enjoy a cold beer while playing Jarts, and we kids would down one too many pops while avoiding the small weapons our parents were throwing about.

Mom and Dad kept an extra refrigerator in the garage just for such occasions, and it was always full of Barq's Root Beer, Shasta Ginger Ale or Faygo Red Pop, as well as beer for the adults -- Hudepohl, Schoenling, Burger, Wiedemann and even the occasional Little Kings Cream Ale, all "local" brews from just down the river in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Covington, Ky. That's the way beer was done then, made and sold locally.

Then beers went national, even international, and the small, local brewery almost disappeared, along with many of those brands.  But nothing is small or local anymore. We can't send the kids to Sherman's Store for a quart of milk.  We drive miles to Kroger or Walmart instead.  Families eat at fast food restaurants, the kids text their friends about how lame everything is, and that passes for the family dinner. Teens chug energy drinks instead of red pop, and all I can think is that's not how we did it in my day.  

Maybe we'll round a curve, though. PBR is hip again, and microbreweries and brew pubs are all the rage.  We're seeing a return to smaller and more local.  Maybe we'll even see a return to the family dinner and the backyard cookout, only without the Jarts.  Then I can say this is how we did it in my day.