Things Lost But Not Forgotten or Head’ em off at the Past
~ by Mark Blackwell
It has been said that,“ Nostalgia ain’ t what it used to be.” But I think it is still in fine form and ready to be practiced at any time, especially in the dead of winter. Brown County is a wonderful place to practice nostalgia— like it was invented for that purpose.
I know that the first flatlanders to discover Brown County were delighted to find that folks were still living in log cabins at the outset of the 20 th century. Brown county folks were still practicing old skills, wearing old fashions, and talking with a distinctly southern / rural dialect. And as more people up north heard about the county it became a popular destination for Sunday drives to recapture the way things used to be.
A trip to Brown County could be downright educational in a historical sort of way. A person could travel a couple of hours out of Indianapolis and be 50 years in the past. You could see horse-powered farms, sorghum mills, and one room schools. A visit to the hills o’ Brown could be a tangible example that parents could show their offspring just how things were back in Grandpa’ s day.
But now I’ m a grandpa and my day was 50 years ago and I find myself sitting by my woodstove on a dreary winter’ s day taking inventory of the things and ways that have slipped away to the past.
Growing up back in the 1950s was not for sissies. We had to know lots of things that kids today can’ t even imagine. We had to be strong and physically fit. Today’ s kids play games like soccer and tee-ball but we had full contact Red Rover and dodge ball. We didn’ t have video war games on Play Stations; we had real war games played out on the back 40 and in the woods. What our parents and grandparents didn’ t finish in WWII, we kids of the’ 50s did.
We needed to practice for the next war. The Russkies were going to launch a sneak nuclear attack at any time. So, we had to be ready to“ duck and cover” at a moment’ s notice. Who knew that a maple school desk was effective as a nuclear radiation deterrent? We didn’ t have bicycle helmets and pads for our extremities, either. Those things would have been too dangerous. We had to be light and flexible enough to dismount our bikes on-the-fly and roll into the nearest ditch the instant that we saw the flash from“ The Big One.”
Why I doubt that a kid today even knows what an air raid siren sounds like or how to tune a radio to the“ conelrad” station for further instructions. That was pretty easy because most of the radios at the time were equipped with little Civil Defense triangles on the tuning dial. If you’ re a younger kind of person reading this,“ Civil Defense” was the 1950s version of Homeland Security— only more civil. They also had alerts on the television but we had to have more technical ability to operate one.
50 Our Brown County Jan./ Feb. 2017