The Generation Gap
IT WAS during my school holidays from the age of nine that I began to stay with my grandparents at their house on the Hawkesbury river. My grandfather would travel to Sydney and collect me and we would spend most of our travelling time snaking northward on a sleek, silver electric train. I always enjoyed the river views and the not so successful attempts to hold my breath from beginning to end of the long and dark tunnels.
When we walked along the platform at Woy Woy station it felt unusual in the silence, a silence that was broken as the train moved away to be overtaken by two men talking on the other side of the paling fence. There were not many people seen in the street opposite the station but the ones that did pass gave a friendly nod to my Pop. Being an outsider I was not really acknowledged, probably because young boys aren’t men they are children and children must be silent unless an adult speaks to you.
There were no bus stop signs and it seemed that whenever you stuck out your hand the bus was sure to stop. They weren’t yellow and green like the buses back home and there were no double-deckers. Pop had a silver badge in his wallet and when he showed it he would be waved on by the driver. The bus would then take us up to a corner on Blackwall Mountain road.
Pop often talked about how things were in his day, when he was my age. He would say how the cave man found ways of overcoming fire water and earth by inventing hearths, floating vessels and the wheel. Pop was born after all of those events but in his youth he said there was no such thing as television, penicillin, polio injections, frozen foods, photocopies, contact lenses, Frisbees.
There were no laser beams, credit cards, radar, ball-point pens, or headlines about which retailers made a killing on pantyhose, air conditioners, dishwashers, clothes dryers. Everything would be hand washed in the laundry and hung out to dry in fresh smog free air. And apart from what was supposed to be the truth in the cartoon comics, man’s first step on the moon was nowhere near reality in Pop’s day.
When Nan and Pop married, they bought a house and then they lived together, “You didn’t see any single parents then,” he once told me. “Children always had a mother and a father, and they were always very protective.” Until Pop turned 25, he called any man older than himself, 'Sir', and to shake hands correctly for any boy who wants to become a real man, he said there must be uninterrupted eye contact during the greeting.
Sundays were days when Nan and Pop took the family to church, helped others out or visited neighbours and friends. Those days were long before gay-rights, computer-dating, dual careers, daycare centers, and group therapy. They lived their lives almost as it is written in the Ten Commandments, using good judgment and commonsense and knew the difference between right and wrong, capable of standing up and accepting responsibility for their actions.
Time-sharing meant it was when Pop spent time with the family on evenings and weekends – it was not about holidaying in a unit which you could own a small percentage of as long as you kept up the payments. He didn’t know about FM radios, tape decks, CDs, electric typewriters, yogurt, or body piercing. And buyers were skeptical of anything that was labeled: ‘MADE IN JAPAN’.
Pizza Hut, McDonald's, or anything bought in a fast food outlet. Ice cream cones, phone calls, rides on a tram, a glass of Creaming Soda cost a few pence. Cars weren’t fitted with today’s electronic wizardry, seatbelts or other safety features. In the 1920s you could buy a new Austin 7 for £195 and would get 50 miles to the gallon. Petrol was 1/9d a mile.
Grass was only mown then, or should I say mowed, pot was something mothers cooked in, and rock music was every grandmother's lullaby. Aids were helpers at school, a chip meant a piece of wood, hardware was only found in a hardware store, and software was not even known about. Pop also told me that he and Nan were the last generation to believe that a woman needed a husband to have a baby.
With so many changes that have taken place since Pop’s day it must have caused some frustrating moments– It was almost as if they had to learn again by adopting the scripts written by their children and their children’s children. Some present day youth who have not understood this re-shuffling of their grandparent’s priorities might say that grandparents are out of touch and that they are prone to losing the plot.
Following 2001, lifetime scripts will be written by a fresh generation which think that Melbourne’s Ash Wednesday in the ‘80s is as significant to them as the Great Depression. And the clichè: “you sound like a broken record” would only make sense if they knew what a record was. Their lifetime has always included AIDS and as far as they know, stamps have always cost One dollar.
With a rising population, and growing involvement with global village, friendship and closeness in the local community is becoming more obscure. Ironically, neighbourhood fences are standing where trees once took their place. Falling grains of sand in the hourglass shift and pixellated virtual computer images are constantly materialising on desktop screens across the globe.
At an unexpected moment the human subconscious might be jolted by images of the past, of the fun times and the messages which were implanted by our extended family. I am indebted to every author of my existence and now understand why lifetime scripts written by today’s youth might appear as useless and annoying information. Information which parents and grandparents don’t quite know about and would rather not know about. Everyone merely want to get on with their lives the way they have been accustomed to and follow the scripts of their own lifetime, intact and uncluttered--
JSMedia©2016
IT WAS during my school holidays from the age of nine that I began to stay with my grandparents at their house on the Hawkesbury river. My grandfather would travel to Sydney and collect me and we would spend most of our travelling time snaking northward on a sleek, silver electric train. I always enjoyed the river views and the not so successful attempts to hold my breath from beginning to end of the long and dark tunnels.
When we walked along the platform at Woy Woy station it felt unusual in the silence, a silence that was broken as the train moved away to be overtaken by two men talking on the other side of the paling fence. There were not many people seen in the street opposite the station but the ones that did pass gave a friendly nod to my Pop. Being an outsider I was not really acknowledged, probably because young boys aren’t men they are children and children must be silent unless an adult speaks to you.
There were no bus stop signs and it seemed that whenever you stuck out your hand the bus was sure to stop. They weren’t yellow and green like the buses back home and there were no double-deckers. Pop had a silver badge in his wallet and when he showed it he would be waved on by the driver. The bus would then take us up to a corner on Blackwall Mountain road.
Pop often talked about how things were in his day, when he was my age. He would say how the cave man found ways of overcoming fire water and earth by inventing hearths, floating vessels and the wheel. Pop was born after all of those events but in his youth he said there was no such thing as television, penicillin, polio injections, frozen foods, photocopies, contact lenses, Frisbees.
There were no laser beams, credit cards, radar, ball-point pens, or headlines about which retailers made a killing on pantyhose, air conditioners, dishwashers, clothes dryers. Everything would be hand washed in the laundry and hung out to dry in fresh smog free air. And apart from what was supposed to be the truth in the cartoon comics, man’s first step on the moon was nowhere near reality in Pop’s day.
When Nan and Pop married, they bought a house and then they lived together, “You didn’t see any single parents then,” he once told me. “Children always had a mother and a father, and they were always very protective.” Until Pop turned 25, he called any man older than himself, 'Sir', and to shake hands correctly for any boy who wants to become a real man, he said there must be uninterrupted eye contact during the greeting.
Sundays were days when Nan and Pop took the family to church, helped others out or visited neighbours and friends. Those days were long before gay-rights, computer-dating, dual careers, daycare centers, and group therapy. They lived their lives almost as it is written in the Ten Commandments, using good judgment and commonsense and knew the difference between right and wrong, capable of standing up and accepting responsibility for their actions.
Time-sharing meant it was when Pop spent time with the family on evenings and weekends – it was not about holidaying in a unit which you could own a small percentage of as long as you kept up the payments. He didn’t know about FM radios, tape decks, CDs, electric typewriters, yogurt, or body piercing. And buyers were skeptical of anything that was labeled: ‘MADE IN JAPAN’.
Pizza Hut, McDonald's, or anything bought in a fast food outlet. Ice cream cones, phone calls, rides on a tram, a glass of Creaming Soda cost a few pence. Cars weren’t fitted with today’s electronic wizardry, seatbelts or other safety features. In the 1920s you could buy a new Austin 7 for £195 and would get 50 miles to the gallon. Petrol was 1/9d a mile.
Grass was only mown then, or should I say mowed, pot was something mothers cooked in, and rock music was every grandmother's lullaby. Aids were helpers at school, a chip meant a piece of wood, hardware was only found in a hardware store, and software was not even known about. Pop also told me that he and Nan were the last generation to believe that a woman needed a husband to have a baby.
With so many changes that have taken place since Pop’s day it must have caused some frustrating moments– It was almost as if they had to learn again by adopting the scripts written by their children and their children’s children. Some present day youth who have not understood this re-shuffling of their grandparent’s priorities might say that grandparents are out of touch and that they are prone to losing the plot.
Following 2001, lifetime scripts will be written by a fresh generation which think that Melbourne’s Ash Wednesday in the ‘80s is as significant to them as the Great Depression. And the clichè: “you sound like a broken record” would only make sense if they knew what a record was. Their lifetime has always included AIDS and as far as they know, stamps have always cost One dollar.
With a rising population, and growing involvement with global village, friendship and closeness in the local community is becoming more obscure. Ironically, neighbourhood fences are standing where trees once took their place. Falling grains of sand in the hourglass shift and pixellated virtual computer images are constantly materialising on desktop screens across the globe.
At an unexpected moment the human subconscious might be jolted by images of the past, of the fun times and the messages which were implanted by our extended family. I am indebted to every author of my existence and now understand why lifetime scripts written by today’s youth might appear as useless and annoying information. Information which parents and grandparents don’t quite know about and would rather not know about. Everyone merely want to get on with their lives the way they have been accustomed to and follow the scripts of their own lifetime, intact and uncluttered--
JSMedia©2016
