I’m not big on “long time” – I remember it as a lot of hard time – but there are instances where I suddenly regret some aspect of life from that era that’s no longer around. Whatever happened, for instance, to parental control of children? Used to be that if a youngster behaved poorly in public, he/she would be corrected by complete strangers and the reprimand would be sheepishly accepted by the youth. Although I wasn’t a particularly wayward lad (I grew up with a strict mother and four serious aunts at Hague) I remember a few instances when my friend Joe Henry and I got a quick short lecture when we were rambunctious in public.
It was as if, with my mother and her sisters not around, other adults took over my training. These days, many young people seem to be on the rampage,