Once Upon a Time I Lived in a Place Called America

I was born in America at a time when the country was still at war with Germany and Japan and there were more patriotic people than one could imagine. I can even remember when you could still say a prayer in public, or God forbid in school. Poor fools that we were, we were still proud of our country and we believed that anyone could grow up and become President of The United States. We thought that older people should be treated with respect by the younger generation. Wasn't that a foolish thing to believe? We were even foolish enough to think we could walk down our streets without being robed or shot or just beaten up. We even thought we could leave the keys in our cars and not have them stolen. We sent our children to school expecting them to return home alive. The school was so irresponsible that they didn't even have a metal detector to keep the guns and other weapons out of the classroom. This one will really grab you, we even instructed our children in the use of firearms. Doesn't it seem odd that none of our children were shot while attending school? We were under the impression that if a person worked hard and saved their money that some day they could own a home and look forward to retirement. What a novel concept to be able to live out our last years in a peaceful environment free of random break-ins and worse. I think this was referred to as The American Dream. There were a lot of things then that we all took for granted because life was good. We lived in a time of innocence where kids were still kids and didn't know about adult things before they became adults. We had cartoons that were funny and not filled with blood and gore with evil machines killing each other or destroying cities and people. We were backward in our beliefs about what a good guy should be. We believed that the winners were the good guys that wore the white hats and stopped the robbers and other assorted thieves from committing their crimes. We believed that the sports figures should set a good example and be looked up to by the children. The sports figures in that time were just as tough and just as good as the ones of today and they thought they owed something to the public.