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Townsman, 1992-03, Page 26Oh how we've changed I'm afraid I sounded like an old fogy the other day. Maybe that's because that's what I'm getting to be. None of us like to admit we're get- ting older and that term "middle age" certainly shouldn't be applied to the baby -boom generation but let's face it, we arc getting to that time of life. Now and then we're confronted by the cold, hard realities. The hard realities hit me in the face the other day when I was confronted by how our ideals have faded. Daugh- ter No. 2 was home from university and we were discussing the material- ism of the world. Things were bad, she said, but she hoped things would improve with her generation because so many of her classmates didn't real- ly care about money. I'm afraid my guffaw was loud enough to wake the neighbours. I shouldn't have made fun of her idealism, I know, but I couldn't help thinking, and telling her about, the extraordinary idealism and anti -mate- rialism of my generation. We were the generation, the popular culture of the '60's repeated ad nauscum, that reject- ed the materialism of our parents. Not for us the affluent society that pushed parents to bigger and bigger cars and more and more "luxuries" like televi- sion and automatic washing machines. Ha! I don't consider myself materialis- tic by today's standards but if I look around the house and compare what I've got with what my standards would have been back in the '60's I feel like I should be claiming to be a relation of Robert Campeau. There arc two vehicles sitting out in the drive- way, even if one of them seems to not be working more than it's working. I grew up lucky if we had one vehicle that worked when you needed it. While I may spend enough to let a mechanic winter in Mexico, at least I don't have to climb under the car and fix it myself as my father and uncle used to do on our farm. A trip to the garage in those days was something 24 TOWNSMAN/MARCH-APRIL 1992 serious indeed...like a trip to a lawyer. Our house would never find its way into a homes magazine, (except maybe in a "before picture" but it has enough luxuries that my grandmother would have thought she had already gone to heaven When I think back, however, what gets me is how my attitude changed. Little by little we get used to an idea we first think is outlandish. I remem- ber as a teenager how I used to think "stereo" equipment was a foolish lux- ury. I'd listen to those scratchy old records, sometimes taping a nickel to the top of the arm to keep it from jumping on the scratches but I felt I had the greatest thing in the world. It might take weeks of saving to come up with $7.95 for an album but when I got it, I felt privileged. Why couldn't people just get along with the regular record player like I did, I wondered. Now, of course, stereos are a reli- gious experience. Go to a stereo shop and talk to the salesperson and you'd better know the jargon or you'll feel like your sitting in on a NASA plan- ning conference for the next space shuttle launch. I still don't have a powerful customized sound system at home, let alone in my van, and I haven't the slightest idea how many watts of power my speakers deliver but I do love driving down the road listening to the standard equipment sound system in my van. I can't imag- ine going back to the old days of my nickel -weighted record player. I remember taking pictures with my baby Brownie and thinking I real- ly couldn't see that much difference between the snapshots I got and the pictures from professional photogra- phers I saw in magazines. So what if the faces were so fuzzy that the baby looked like she had five o'clock shad- ow, I knew what she looked like. Now I work with a good 33mm camera every day and when some- body drops off a picture taken on a cheap camera and wants it printed in the paper, I wince. I know now that people may take pictures that make people look like moldy cheese. There was a time when I thought a colour TV was a luxury I could get along quite nicely without. Now, if the set is in the shop and I pull out an old black and white set from the dos - et, I keep trying to adjust the colour. Why aren't the Maple Leafs' blue (well with their record I know they're blue but I mean their uniforms). It's almost enough to make you glad to pay the ransom to get the set back from the TV technician, just to have things in living colour again. Matter of fact, I'm even looking enviously at those big -screen TV sets these days. One luxury I always dreamed of was having a little movie theatre in the house where you could watch movies whenever you wanted. With VCR's, you can have that dream today (now who could have imagined VCR's 25 years ago) but somehow watching a movie on an ordinary tele- vision lacks some of the feeling of the wide-screen experience of a movie theatre. When you're used to seeing the steamy eyes of Michelle Pfeiffer two feet tall, your 20 -inch screen just doesn't cut it. Maybe, I find myself thinking as I watch some spectacular scene reduced to postage -stamp pro- portions, if I had one of those 40 -inch screens, the peepers would regain their magic. As the tough times seemingly go on forever, one has to wonder if North Americans can continue to live in the manner to which we've become accus- tomed. There have been many people who have predicted that we must reduce our wasteful, materialistic lifestyle but if we must, I'll bet we go kicking and screaming to the very end. It's hard to do without what you've come to take for granted. I recall being out in the yard cutting some long grass in an out-of-the-way corner one day when a neighbour came along. Sweating buckets I remarked how hard it was to imagine people once cut whole fields of hay and grain with just a scythe. "Maybe," he ventured, "it wouldn't be so bad if you didn't know there was a power tool that could do the job so easily." Now that we know about the luxuries, it would be awfully hard to give them up no matter what a fine moral stand it might be. My generation may have gone back to the land, but most quick- ly scuttled back to central heating and electricity. I suspect by the time they reach middle age, my daughter's gen- eration will also have succumbed to the comforts of materialism.