Whatever happened to the "pump jockey" in uniform and bow tie. Whatever happened to the milkman, the diaper service, the neighborhood butcher, English speaking taxi drivers and generally whatever happened to courtesy.
When one lives for a fairly long time he sees good things come and go. Things that back then we complain about eventually remember with fond memories.
Years ago, and I mean many years ago one could leave the milk bottles outside the door with money in it without worrying that someone would take it.
If one drove up to a gas station the attendant approached, dressed in a nice uniform and pumped gas. At the same time he cleaned the windshield and checked the oil. At most of the gas stations there was fairly good mechanical service available For quite a while competing gas stations gave free gifts to people, like glasses, kitchen utensils, green stamps or S&H stamps just for their business. Also, gas was about 25 cents a gallon.
Some friends of ours who had babies used the diaper service. They put the soiled diapers outside the door and the service replaced them with crispy clean ones. Well, not too crispy but clean anyway.
If one sat in a taxi and gave the address the driver invariably knew where that was. He also spoke good English and didn't take the passenger on a sightseeing trip just to make the fare last longer. Oh yes, and the driver was never occupied on his cell phone or texting while driving.
Sometimes they even got out of the cab to open the door for the passenger or help with packages.
If one went to the neighborhood butcher he already knew his costumers, knew what they liked and was always courteous.
Those were the good old days!
These are only memories by now and only seen in the movies.
Today one drives up to a gas station it is self service, at least in New York. We are hard pressed to find a station that offers mechanical service as well. Competing gas stations just compete, that's it. Their prices are the same and really there is absolutely no advantage to go to one over the other. It's just a question of convenience, like which corner it is on.
A couple of times I needed direction so naively I thought I ask the guy at the gas station. Not that he didn't know the area he didn't even understand the question.
So, if one is lost in the fog and in the distance there is a dim light of a service station, watch out. This is not an oasis, avoid it because they can not help.
Taxi drivers in New York are rude, drive like they are in downtown Karachi or Hong Kong and don't know the city at all.
For them only Manhattan exists. The other four boroughs are foreign country. But even in Manhattan they get lost. They get confused on which street and avenue runs in which direction. One tries to talk to them it turns out they don't speak English. But they are their cell phones all the times yapping away in their native tongues.
Getting out of the car and help, forget it. It will never happen.
They were know to take the hapless visitor on an unwanted "sight seeing" trip between points A and B.
There used to be public telephone booths like the one Doctor Who uses. They are no longer around. Now the public phones are out in the open and are vandal proof for obvious reasons.
This is the way life is in the Big City. Maybe out in the provinces life didn't change that much but if someone here wakes from a fifty year slumber he will be unpleasantly shocked at what we became of.
Why don't we have a singer like Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin? Why don't we have good comedians like Bob Hope, Alan King, Rodney Dangerfield and Richard Pryor? Why don't we have good actors anymore? What we have is fly by nights. Here today gone tomorrow.
Nostalgia is very dangerous. It brings back memories of time past and time that can not be repeated.
It is like going to a class reunion and see the former classmates and say oh my God, do I look as bad as they do?
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Saturday, December 12, 2009
December 12, 2009
I grew up in Hungary. My childhood spanned before and after World War II. I am not dating myself but let's say I was born in the previous century. That's good enough.
I saw many changes in life as well as politically as economically and also technologically. I want to say a few things about the last one. The first two are not very interesting with the Berlin Wall and other stuff.
In my early days automobiles were not very popular in Hungary. We had some trucks and some private cars but it was poor fraction of what's there today.
I remember when the garbage collector came down our street in Budapest he came with a huge steel container mounted on four wheels and drawn by two strong horses.
Both the garbage collector and the horses were City employees. The man was standing on a plank on the side of the container and the building supers were supposed to hand up their garbage containers and the man emptied them.
This process repeated at every apartment house. The horses were so well trained that at a whistle command they moved up to the the next building and stopped. This was the early form of cruise control.
Once the appointed route was finished they headed out to the garbage dump. These horses knew the way better than anybody. That was the early version of GPS.
Now I know why they had two horses. One was the cruise control, the other the GPS.
I also remember when people were trying to start trucks or cars one person went to the front of the vehicle with a long crank rod and cranked the motor until it started. It was usually the junior employee or the passenger in the vehicle.
Automatic starters were unknown back then or were a rarity.
Policemen patrolled the streets on foot. The elite ones in the cities or the ones in the countryside got bicycles. But then when a policeman said stop to someone nobody had the galls to run away. Back then they were respected.
When I was 14 years old my Father bought me a bicycle. I was elated. I thought I had the world by the b...s. The City was mine. There was no faraway corner of the City I couldn't get to. My cousin and I were discovering parts of the City we never knew existed. We were cool!
Public transportation were electric streetcars, buses and electric trolley buses. Oh, and we also had a subway that was about two miles long.
But streetcars were the most popular forms of transportation. Mainly because the buses cost more at that time. Now they all have the same fare.
Anyway, the longer streetcars had three cars. Each car had a conductor/ticket collector. He had a large leather bag on his shoulders and he walked up and down the car checking and selling the tickets and punching them with his ticket puncher.
Years later they converted to the pre-purchased tickets and now they only have inspectors checking on freeloaders.
When my Mother was born airplanes did not exist. She had never flown in her life until she came out to the US to visit me. But then, She ventured on a real long trans Atlantic flight. She came to New York twice and she loved flying. I think the first time She came it was propeller plane but later She flew on jet also.
The apartment I grew up in had no central heat and no hot water. We had a large fireplace in each of our rooms and in the bathroom we had a huge water tank were my parents heated water once a week. During the week I washed myself in cold water and that was no fun. But I got used to it.
In the rooms the fireplaces were always the social centers. In wintertime we always sat around them. It was always cosy and comfortable.
Now, if we have no hot water and central heat we scream. We are so used to our comforts that anything missing we are upset.
We get used to the good things, we take everything for granted and at the same time totally forget where we came from.
I remember years ago I was in Hungary to visit my Mother. I happened to be in a hotel's coffee shop. This older American tourist woman comes in and asks for hot chocolate. The guy behind the counter spoke fairly good English but couldn't understand what the woman wanted. He knew I spoke English so he asked me to explain the hot chocolate to him.
He told the woman they had hot cocoa but no chocolate. She became very indignant and insisted that she wanted hot chocolate and no hot cocoa.
Well, she didn't get any of it at the end but she did become the real Ugly American at that time.
This was a trip down memory lane. The older a person gets the more nostalgic he gets. It's typical of old age that people remember more of things from the past than current events.
That means I will always remember the old garbage collection Hungarian style.
I saw many changes in life as well as politically as economically and also technologically. I want to say a few things about the last one. The first two are not very interesting with the Berlin Wall and other stuff.
In my early days automobiles were not very popular in Hungary. We had some trucks and some private cars but it was poor fraction of what's there today.
I remember when the garbage collector came down our street in Budapest he came with a huge steel container mounted on four wheels and drawn by two strong horses.
Both the garbage collector and the horses were City employees. The man was standing on a plank on the side of the container and the building supers were supposed to hand up their garbage containers and the man emptied them.
This process repeated at every apartment house. The horses were so well trained that at a whistle command they moved up to the the next building and stopped. This was the early form of cruise control.
Once the appointed route was finished they headed out to the garbage dump. These horses knew the way better than anybody. That was the early version of GPS.
Now I know why they had two horses. One was the cruise control, the other the GPS.
I also remember when people were trying to start trucks or cars one person went to the front of the vehicle with a long crank rod and cranked the motor until it started. It was usually the junior employee or the passenger in the vehicle.
Automatic starters were unknown back then or were a rarity.
Policemen patrolled the streets on foot. The elite ones in the cities or the ones in the countryside got bicycles. But then when a policeman said stop to someone nobody had the galls to run away. Back then they were respected.
When I was 14 years old my Father bought me a bicycle. I was elated. I thought I had the world by the b...s. The City was mine. There was no faraway corner of the City I couldn't get to. My cousin and I were discovering parts of the City we never knew existed. We were cool!
Public transportation were electric streetcars, buses and electric trolley buses. Oh, and we also had a subway that was about two miles long.
But streetcars were the most popular forms of transportation. Mainly because the buses cost more at that time. Now they all have the same fare.
Anyway, the longer streetcars had three cars. Each car had a conductor/ticket collector. He had a large leather bag on his shoulders and he walked up and down the car checking and selling the tickets and punching them with his ticket puncher.
Years later they converted to the pre-purchased tickets and now they only have inspectors checking on freeloaders.
When my Mother was born airplanes did not exist. She had never flown in her life until she came out to the US to visit me. But then, She ventured on a real long trans Atlantic flight. She came to New York twice and she loved flying. I think the first time She came it was propeller plane but later She flew on jet also.
The apartment I grew up in had no central heat and no hot water. We had a large fireplace in each of our rooms and in the bathroom we had a huge water tank were my parents heated water once a week. During the week I washed myself in cold water and that was no fun. But I got used to it.
In the rooms the fireplaces were always the social centers. In wintertime we always sat around them. It was always cosy and comfortable.
Now, if we have no hot water and central heat we scream. We are so used to our comforts that anything missing we are upset.
We get used to the good things, we take everything for granted and at the same time totally forget where we came from.
I remember years ago I was in Hungary to visit my Mother. I happened to be in a hotel's coffee shop. This older American tourist woman comes in and asks for hot chocolate. The guy behind the counter spoke fairly good English but couldn't understand what the woman wanted. He knew I spoke English so he asked me to explain the hot chocolate to him.
He told the woman they had hot cocoa but no chocolate. She became very indignant and insisted that she wanted hot chocolate and no hot cocoa.
Well, she didn't get any of it at the end but she did become the real Ugly American at that time.
This was a trip down memory lane. The older a person gets the more nostalgic he gets. It's typical of old age that people remember more of things from the past than current events.
That means I will always remember the old garbage collection Hungarian style.
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