Auld Lang Syne

I spent New Years Eve with good friends this year.  We went out to dinner, played games and sang Auld Lang Syne at midnight.  It was one of those sweet nights that reminded me how much life changes.

I wonder if people know how long and in how many countries the world has been singing Auld Lang Syne at the start of a new year? Robert Burns sent a copy to the Scot's Musical Museum saying it was a song he collected from an old man.  The tune is an old folk tune and some of the words were most definitely Burn's, but however you look at it, it's been around since way back when.

I remember when we had a stack of magazines on the lower part of the end table by my father's chair.  I took those big Life, Fortune, and Saturday Evening Posts for granted.  National Geographic was under another table.  It was a great way to learn about the world with pictures and up to date articles, most of which are replaced by the Internet now.

The morning paper was the only way to start the day.  I read the "funnies" as soon as my dad was through with them and I remember ironing the pages when I worked in the library of a large business, so the newsprint wouldn't get all over everything.

When I first learned to use a phone we had party lines and had to tell an operator the number we wanted, a three digit one!  Record players played 45s, 78s, and 33s and we would go to the record store to stand in a sound proof room and play the records before buying them. Checking out books in the library meant getting a card, date stamped by hand and stuck in a pocket in the front. 

Grocery stores were found on almost every block or two.  They were small mom and pop places where he was the butcher and she was the check out.  Peanut butter came in glasses we kept to drink from.  Dishes came in the laundry detergent and popsicles were seven cents.  You could buy the brand of cigarettes your parents smoked and puff powder out the end, or buy others and chew them up like the candy they were.

My sister had a Chatty Cathy that stuttered.  My brother rode an Irish Mail you had to pump like mad, but my little brother still rode the Spirit of St. Louis, a pedal plane left over from my grandfather's childhood.  I had a wicker doll buggy with small round windows and wrought iron wheels.  I had no idea how old it was.  I simply hauled my dolls, kittens and puppies around in it, dressed up in left over baby clothes.

There was a lot of diversity back then.  Everyone's toys seemed to be different from everyone elses.  Everyone's house was different.  We went to different schools and places of worship.  The only thing that was pretty much the same was kissing our fathers good bye in the mornings as they all went off to work in white shirts, neckties and sometimes suits.  Our mothers dust mopped the floors, ironed the clothes, prepared meals from food bought every day at those little stores and made us take naps on hot summer afternoons so we wouldn't catch polio.

A lot has changed.  Life is more disposable now, and yet more concerned with fairness, being green, staying on top of things.  The scale is different.

People are still basically the same.  We fall in and out of love, wish we were rich, or famous, or well, or young, or older.  We want babies and friends and things to entertain us when we're bored.  We have more time saving devices, so our standards are higher and we still don't have enough time.

And now we watch other people drop things from high places on New Year's Eve instead of singing Auld Lang Syne.  That is something I think we should not give up.