The 'good old days' weren't always as good as we'd like to remember

There's been a strange nostalgia hanging thick in the air these last few years. I'm not entirely surprised by it. One thing about getting older is living long enough to recognize patterns of behavior, and I've now lived enough time to see that when we dip through trying times we tend to grab onto our memories, even distorted ones, and think those times were better. How we'd do just about anything to go back to those times. The trouble with that is we're almost always looking through smudgy glass and we just never can admit it. The heart pines for the devil it knows rather than the unknown hell it's facing, doesn't it? Everybody says Facebook is the social media choice for the old, and, while I'm not going to offer up an opinion on that, I will say that I don't see people on Instagram or any other platform fighting about how they wish we could go back to "how it was in Mayberry." Look, I was enchanted by Mayberry and Aunt Bea and Sheriff Andy Taylor and Opie and the crew, too But in my daily life, people who are addicted aren't always lovable, racism is real and ugly and civil rights are still being bitterly fought for, and mental illness is still a nebulous concept, and democracy is going backwards and taking equal rights with it. You never saw any of those real-life concepts in Mayberry, although I'd love to have the security and peace and safety they felt in their small town. I'd love to think our deputy would only need to be armed with one bullet. Imagine that in today's America, which now has 393 million guns in its hands, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. About 19.8 million of those are AR-15 style rifles. Poor ole Barney wouldn't stand a chance. And these days when someone says "why can't it just go back to the way it was … before everybody was 'woke'?" I admit I lean in a bit closer to discern what the real desire might be, no matter how they're trying to hide it with a professed love for Ernest T. Bass. Oh. I see. You are speaking in code now. You want to go back to when it was all white. After all, in Andy Taylor's day, it was still illegal to marry someone of another race. In fact, today is U.S. National Loving Day, to commemorate the day U.S. Supreme Court struck down the case of Loving v. Virginia. Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple from Virginia that had been childhood friends, married in 1958. Two weeks later, cops came to arrest them in the middle of the night. They were given the choice: prison or leave the state. They fled. Moving to Washington, D.C., they wrote to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and eventually got the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union. The case went to the highest court before it was decided in their favor, finally overturning the shameful remnants of miscegenation laws remaining throughout the U.S. for good — but that wasn't until 1967. Read that part again: It wasn't until 1967 that the Blacks and whites were legally allowed to marry, everywhere, in this country. There were 16 states that still outlawed it until the bitter end. I mention this to point out the difference between that nostalgia and the nostalgia going on from people watching, say, "Stranger Things" or the new "Top Gun." There's a revival in 1980s pop culture, too, but its not nearly as misty-eyed and sentimental. Members of both generations talk a lot about missing the gas prices and the economies of those past decades. I spent $113.55 to fill up my vehicle the other day. When the pump didn't automatically shut off and a little splashed out on my shoe, it nearly brought me to tears. My husband and I used to tell our kids how dumb it was that we were taught the same protocol for tornadoes or nuclear threats: crouch under a desk. But now that nuclear threats are in vogue again, I suppose they can add that to their active shooter drills. I got a long view of all this just days ago when we visited one of our area gems, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Looking over old bones of the past, I marveled — and sometimes recoiled — at the idea of what came before. The idea of living in the time of miniature camels? OK, that sounds pretty cute and I know me, I'd want one for a pet. But a tiny gopher with bony horns? Sharks in Lake Erie? Matter of fact, my house would have been underwater, part of the lake, where massive, armored fish from my nightmares ruled. I suppose in every "good old day" there is just as much trash as there was rosy fondness, which tells me maybe we're missing the good in our present times, too. I don't know, but it's something to think about. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.