What The Heck Are You Talking About? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The world is moving on at breakneck speed and that's a good thing...Or is it?

Yesterday, just after eating my bowl of cream of wheat and reading my newspaper, I decided I needed to go to the library because I wanted to read the biography of John Wayne. Since it was raining I decided to wear my galoshes. As I got off the streetcar I remembered I had to make a phone call, so I stepped into a phone booth.
    (There was a time when phone booths were everywhere. Actually, they still are everywhere but now they are called Automobiles.)

    How soon we forget what we never knew. The youth of today never heard of many of the terms used in the above paragraph...
     Cream Of Wheat...Huh?
     Newspaper...Still a recognized term but it won't be long before it won't be.
     Library...What is that? Need to Google it!
     John Wayne...From personal experience, I know the youth of today do not know who this man was.
     Galoshes...Must be some kind of Hungarian food.
     Phone Booth...They did see Superman jump in and out of one of these in his last movie but they did not know what he jumped in and out of.
     Streetcar...Today they call Uber or use the car their parents gave them 5 minutes after you got their Driver's License. Actually, this is quite understandable because there are hardly any street cars out there anyway.

    In my youth, I knew what streetcars were for sure. I rode a streetcar and a bus every day to and from High School. It was a different world...
     It costs $.07 to ride and I got a piece of paper with 4 tear-off stubs on it that allowed me to transfer to 4 different streetcars or busses.
     I lived in New Orleans and one time I looked outside my streetcar during the fourth transfer and saw cactuses and a sign that said, "Welcome to Albuquerque". (I admit I exaggerated a bit with this one.)
     If you just missed a streetcar, you looked down the track to see if you could see the next one coming and usually you could see the next one coming.
     You would think to yourself, "I hope it's not full".
     Many times the next one was full.

    You really did not want to wait very long because the mosquitoes were trying to carry you off into the bushes to finish you off. For some reason, you were Mosquito Safe on the streetcar because they were not allowed to ride streetcars (or they did not have $.07).

    Would I kid u?
    Smartfella