Paradise Lost?
Or was it taken?  Did we give it away?

"A day which will live in infamy"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
His 'New Deal' (Social Security age of eligibility was set older than most people could expect to live)
My dad riding off to work on a horse
"Call for Philip Morris" (background music from 'The Grand Canyon Sweep')
Bathing in a #3 galvanized washtub
Rationing
Eating horsemeat because it wasn't rationed
Eating squirrel and rabbit for the same reason
My dad's first car...a Model "A" Ford
Burma Shave ads
Elsie, the Borden cow
"Borden's, the milk from contented cows"
Milk delivered to the door in glass bottles with paper caps and 4 inches of cream
Margarine, also known as oleo, in plastic bags with a coloring capsule inside (You squeezed the capsule, then kneaded the bag until the margarine was yellow.)
My uncle, the iceman
Harry Truman (Did you know he was a Conservative?)
Cisterns (for water storage)
Outdoor toilets
My aunt boiling the laundry water outside in a big black cauldron over a wood fire
P&G laundry soap (also was good catfish bait!)
Maytag gasoline-powered washing machines
Battery-lit houses with wind chargers
Windmills pumping wells for water
The little old Mexican guy who used to come through the neighborhood with a pushcart selling fruit and vegetables
When those fruits were fresh and RIPE
Radio batteries
Fishing with cane poles and red worms
Eating the fish without worrying about pollution
Oatmeal for breakfast
Boiled coffee
Skillet toast
Homemade cakes, cookies, pies and bread
ICEboxes instead of refrigerators
Slingshots made from strips of old inner tube rubber
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Getting stung by wasps because we shot their nests out of trees with slingshots
When it was normal (and legal) to carry a knife
When kids had their own hunting rifles and shotguns legally
Single-speed bikes with balloon tires
Church socials
Little red wagons
John F. Kennedy (He was also a Conservative)
Pickin' cotton alongside braceros
Eating beans and tortillas with them
Lyndon B. Johnson (I still think he had J.F.K. assassinated)
His 'Great Society' (America's death knell?)
Swimming in the canals
Not needing to lock the doors and put bars over the doors and windows
Richard M. Nixon (He made a couple of mistakes; but Watergate wasn't one of them.)
When the 3 R's in school were reading, writing, and 'rithmetic instead of rip-off, rape and rioting
When kids could go play in the park or around the neighborhood and not be abducted, molested, or killed.
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter (2 do-nothing Presidents)

I was born about seven miles north of the Mexican border, in a place later named Harlingen, Texas.  After a time, we moved to San Antonio, where my Dad worked for the government, examining and repairing captured enemy optical equipment.

When I was about 5, we moved back to the Rio Grande Valley; and I did most of my growing up there.

I imagine you are trying to relate the title of this piece to what is written up to now.  Much of what I remember from back then seems like it was Paradise.  Those days are gone, now.  The question is: Where did the good stuff go?  Did we just forget it?  Did someone take it from us?  Did we give it away; and, if so, to whom and what did we receive in return?

When I was a kid, from about ten on, I had access to the family lawnmower.  If I wanted something, I found someone who wanted their lawn mowed; and I earned the money for whatever it was that I had my eye on.  Sometimes, I went around the neighborhood picking up soda pop bottles which I would take to the store and cash in for candy and pop money.

There was no such thing as fishing or hunting licenses.  In the summer, we picked cotton right alongside the braceros, learning Spanish and teaching English, eating beans and tortillas and drinking canal water.

Back then, we lived pretty much in harmony with our neighbors, whether they were Baptist or Catholic, white, yellow, black, or brown.  Things like that didn't seem to matter.  Character did.  Thieves, rapists, and child molesters had a habit of disappearing.  Murderers and armed robbers went to prison, and murderers did not sit on death row, waiting on one appeal after another.  They were usually executed on time.

Paradise began disappearing before I even got to high school.  When Khrushchev pounded the podium with his shoe and screamed, "We will bury you!", it scared the Democrats  of that day so badly that they began planning to change this country over to a Communist form of government.  Soon, there were new laws, new excuses for breaking them, and a whole new attitude toward the erstwhile enemies of our country and our way of life.

Kennedy was elected; and that was not a bad thing, except for the way it was done.  Goldwater didn't say the things that were attributed to him.  That was the beginning of the 'dirty tricks' form of politics by the Democrats.  Choosing Lyndon Johnson as his Vice President proved to be a fatal mistake, in my opinion.  When J.F.K  stood up to the Communists during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was decided that he was not the man the Democrats wanted as the face of their party.  The wheels were set in motion; and Deely Plaza happened.  Johnson was sworn in immediately; and wasted no time beginning the destruction of the Paradise that was then the United States.  He designed his 'Great Society' to create a whole new class of people who would be dependent upon a Socialist/Communist form of government.  This class (voting bloc) was to be comprised first of Black Americans, with other minorities to be worked in one by one.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was attacked and censured because he was Anti-Communist and represented a serious threat to the 'Great Society'.  The fact that he was right was ignored.  Welfare was set up, based, not on the Constitution, but on the Preamble; and the Warren court was instructed to rule that way.  Blacks, which LBJ referred to as those (n-word)s  would, in his words, "vote Democratic for the next hundred years.".  The Black family structure was destroyed, as were their values.  Even their religion was subverted by the very ministers who, today urge them to keep voting Democrat to keep the freebies flowing.

More to come...