There was a time when paying meant using paper money and a little patience.
I can still picture reaching for bills, sorting coins, and feeling a small, private pride as the cashier and the line watched me count it out. It made the moment feel deliberate and, oddly, important.
It was not about showing off. It was a tiny ritual that forced everyone to pause, to take a breath, and to remember that money and time were connected in ways a tap cannot show.
Today’s speed is convenient and often necessary.
Still, I miss those little lessons about value and presence that only came with waiting and doing things by hand.
I am not asking for more hassle. I just like remembering the quiet dignity of taking the time to finish what you owe, properly and fully.
A single dollar bill held so much power. You walked into that theater feeling like a millionaire.
Popcorn, soda, and a movie for the whole afternoon.
There was even enough left for the bus ride home.
Those Saturdays felt like they lasted forever.
I can still smell the buttery popcorn now.
IN GOD WE STILL TRUST
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Unless there was a bus line somewhere else in Odessa, only the last town (Houston) that I lived in had any bus line. Since all of those five West Texas/East New Mexico towns were smaller than 5,000 residents — you could walk across town in a half hour. Furthermore, when I moved to Houston during my last two years before college, the high school was eight blocks away and my church was one block away. Additionally, I was on the long-distance running team from the end of junior high.
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I remember those days quite fondly. Funny how you block out those days that weren’t so fun! 🙂
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It was a good time to be a kid growing up in that era.
St Louis – now always on the list as one of the Top 5 Murder Capitals of the US – may have always been that, even back in the day. But we didn’t know it. Unless it was neighborhood news, information those days didn’t travel at breakneck speed. Ignorance was bliss. Mom wrote down all the bus transfer information to get from Grandma’s house in south St Louis near the Mississippi River to downtown St Louis so my sisters and I could eat at the restaurant in Famous and Barr, the closest equivalent to Neiman-Marcus that St Louis had. How grown-up we felt! Maybe it was because we travelled in a pack of 3 that nothing bad ever happened to us… or maybe it was because it never occurred to us that anything would.
I treasure those precious memories of that by-gone time of innocence.
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We did grow up in the best time ever. We were innocent and so we thought everything else around us was also innocent. I feel blessed to have those precious memories!
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Wonderful to remember those halcyon days. No helmets and body armor when we rode our bikes! Spend a whole summer day down by the creek catching crawdads or walking on the railroad tracks, then when a train is coming put a penny on the rail to get flattened. Climbing trees, eating apples right off the tree…
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Yes. There we are: that’s my brother with his tape recorder, that’s my bike in the front yard (only mine was blue) and that front yard and neighborhood look a lot like mine. Even the porch steps. I bet we can still bring some of this back. We still have water hoses. I know kids on streets like that who have bikes and tree houses. I’m glad we remember, and can still tell those kids, and show them how. Sweet article.
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