Ecclesiastes 7:10: “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.” Maybe not, but it’s endemic in us to do so.
In reality, as I have proof aplenty in my file, the Past keeps coming back to us. It’s never so far removed that it isn’t quickly retrieved. Even if you’ve ever had a memory, that’s the past returning, however briefly. Yesterday was our past, and any multiples of it a more remote, but a still pervasive presence. A newspaper clipping of an event from yesteryear; a 90 year-old veteran of Pearl Harbor addressing school children about his experiences; Greek or Roman jewels or monies being unearthed in an English pasture: the Past returning. Nevertheless, Solomon urged us to avoid a fixation on the past. He could have profited by researching and living by his father’s faith in God had he not been so involved with wives and wealth. This writer has a volume called The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible. It’s adapted from the expansive Otto Bettman Archives. It details sober appraisals of life in an early America that inspired inventors to create better ways to live, to provide adequate medical care, to avoid sicknesses. Let one example suffice. Villages and cities dealing with manure from hundreds and thousands of horses welcomed the horseless carriage whose only waste was gas fumes. Until horses became a means of entertainment, not necessity, their waste built piles that hooves minced into fine particles. Which became dust clouds driven by winds into open windows of the communities, settling over tables, chairs and dishes. –End Part I- Check book for Virg Hurley at Amazon.com.
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