1841 : THE PAPER BOY : Part VI
• It’s not safe to be a Paper Boy anymore
Give a hoot don’t pollute was a friendly way to communicate that we should all care about the world we lived in. We didn’t need the “Sky is Falling” rhetoric that said if we pollute we might die or kill the planet.
Public service announcements were much more light hearted and encouraging. It was OK back then to shame people that littered and polluted. Now we allow vagrants to urinate and defecate on our streets.
• We cared about our forests and loved Smokey the bear. He was on TV and we saw him in the local parades hanging out with the fire department. McGruff the crime dog came later, maybe signaling that crime was getting worse in the 1980’s. We were all alerted that we needed to work together to take a bite out of crime. We never for a minute considered accepting crime as a way of life so we didn’t hurt the criminals’ feelings.
Why Did We Decriminalize Crime?
Doesn’t the whole city suffer when you don’t treat everyone equally?
Why did we decriminalize crime? Doesn’t the whole city suffer when you don’t treat everyone equally? Why do law abiding citizens who pay taxes have to endure the selective law enforcement today that just leads to more crime when it is decriminalized? This didn’t make our city safer it made it more dangerous for everyone especially or children. Few walk or ride their bikes to school anymore.
• We were raised understanding that stupidity was a luxury.
The mantra that if you played stupid games you won stupid prizes. It was a very independent culture where we lived in a no fault world. The hyper safety culture emerged with McGruff the crime dog as they proceeded making it a crime not to have car insurance and wear a seatbelt.
• Mandates grind my gears as I was raised to be responsible for myself.
When a state mandates insurance and compliance its takes away your freedom. Worse yet you had to buy something you didn’t need to protect the state from the irresponsible by punishing the responsible. Making kids buy insurance created another barrier for kids to be autonomous. The slow creep of socialism began. We still trusted the media and vaccines back then but that is nostalgic now. Everyone’s trust in Vaccines was thrown out the window in 2020 when they changed the definition. Socialists love to change definitions as they water down our freedom.
• For those of us that were responsible it was a complete drag on our income and we saw this as protecting the irresponsible not the law abiding responsible people. We saw these new safety minded mandates as an infringement on our civil liberties.
• We loved freedom in my generation. Not so much now in this generation where people think wearing useless face diapers is just the next stage in a long line of mandates for safety.
California activists were barking loudly and the music suddenly had to have warning labels. We all lamented the loss of freedom and accountability but the activists said too many had become wards of the state and so we had to sacrifice more of our freedoms for the collective. The hall monitors from Jr High were in charge all of a sudden and little did we realize at the time that these were just the beginning stages of the nanny state encroachments.
Who would have thought that it would go so far as people talking about policing language and trying to protect others feelings? It’s amazing how nobody wants to talk about the slippery slope. I can look back at the high ground of freedom from my early years and see how far we have slid down that slope towards the nanny state.
The bubble wrap generation has no idea what I’m talking about but wearing a helmet on a bicycle is the new normal and we didn’t even wear helmets on motorcycles when I was a kid.
• Mandated safety has come a long ways. Freedom and prosperity are no longer a priority. Safety and compliance are the top priority even at the expense of freedom and prosperity.
Freedom & Prosperity Are No Longer A Priority
Safety and compliance are the top priority even at the expense of freedom and prosperity
Sticks and stones will break your bones so don’t’ crash stupid, it hurts but don’t worry about insurance it’s universal and free now as long as you pay double for it. You can even get a sex change for your birthday if you like, all paid for by the collective. California is so generous it pays for medical tourism throughout our country subsidizing sex changes and abortion with your money.
• Can you say bankruptcy? We have fast become both financially and morally bankrupt.
Words were just words when I was young. When someone called you a name, if you responded seriously it was probably true, so you simply responded with a quip or a joke rather than take it serious. Now kids are taught that words hurt. What’s next thought police and word helmets? Don’t give them any ideas! You can’t even call it stupid anymore, even if it is, which undermines truth.
Helmets, seatbelts and bubble wrap who knew! Sticks and stones had to be registered and words regulated. What happened to character, patriotism, honor and beauty? We all knew that two wrongs did not make a right. We all knew that you couldn’t get the right thing from doing the wrong thing.
• Equal Justice was based on an unchanging absolute truth reflected in the good book.
Heritage was important and truth was transcendent. We did not say Native Americans because that undermined the rich and proud heritage of American Indians. The great spirit of all humanity striving for beauty and honor we all shared in common.
When I was in school we studied some of that local heritage that honored our past. There was a museum in Visalia that had tons of artifacts and images and history of the people of Tulare Lake. Elementary school field trips were awesome even without air conditioning on an old yellow bus. In fact I talked to several Indian elders over the years that still made the traditional baskets. I never met anyone that made the Tule boats we saw in the pictures but the lake has been gone for so long now that few know the rich heritage of our valley.
When the government took over the land at the bottom of the basin it worked for generations to drain the lake and all of the heritage connected to it is now mostly forgotten and no longer taught in school. That’s another story about destroying past heritage and propping up corporate farmers which the government doesn’t want to talk about openly. Those are topics for another series.
• We played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians and soldiers in war games as kids.
We learned to argue without becoming angry
We learned to argue without becoming angry. We learned the boundaries of the law through role playing. Sometimes you were the cop and sometimes you were the robber. It was always fun to play cowboys and Indians and role play the old wild west of iconic writers like Louis L’Amour.
That’s all politically incorrect nowadays and the role playing now is more about playing with dolls and trying not to hurt other people feelings rather than exploring the virtue and the vice of our past history and the boundaries of morality.
When you role play and act out these roles its helps you to understand history better and as children with a greater sense of fairness than what actually happens in history. The through line of virtue and vice is explored by role playing and acting out history as perpetrators. How many times did you act out being the robber in cops and robbers in your role playing? We now celebrate vice with vice channels and vice magazines to be inclusive. No longer role playing but embracing a vicious lifestyle.
• Lawlessness begets lawlessness and we slowly become what we focus on.
You might say that culture is manufactured but that can only happen if you remove the boundaries of virtue and vice (morality). If we stay within those boundaries of right and wrong we stay on a positive track. The opposite is true and we are living that out right now reaping the nanny state generation that focused more on feelings and fantasy than reality.
• The culture used to be downstream of the church.
This is the essence of freedom and the foundation of morality and ethics. It seems the cornerstone of western civilization has been removed and today’s culture is built on sinking sand. Lord help us as we look back at how we have destroyed ourselves when we put the culture and humanism upstream of the church. The culture changed when you demoralize it and the social contract is burned like an American Flag.
We have slid a long way down that slippery slope since removing Prayer and the Bible from School. We get farther and farther out in the ocean every year since the 1960’s when that tether was cut. Our tether to reality severed we are adrift in the ocean and many think another law will solve it. WRONG. We are getting a crash course in how legislating morality leads to pain, misery and slavery. None of us are safe from this viciousness masquerading as virtue. Laws are boundaries they can’t create only limit.
In this current delusion we may be chastised for calling a paper boy a paper boy and not a paper person. We had girl paper boy’s back in the day but the strength required to hoist a full bag of papers on your back or your handle bars prevented a lot of girls from taking on paper routes. But that didn’t mean that girls didn’t do it or help us fold it was just how it was.
Having a paper route built strength & character
You had to provide a good service and be of good character to have a paper route
Having a paper route built strength and character. Paper boys had to go door to door and collect every month. You had to provide a good service and be of good character to have a paper route. You had to be responsible and you learned customer service and accountability. Having a little spending money when you were kids helped you to buy and ice cream or a soda. Most of all, the freedom from this responsibility, was earned and cherished.
• You were not focused on safety you were focused on freedom.
You helped each other to be safe but freedom, liberty and adventure were almost always more important than safety and security. You would always mitigate the risk of injury even if it meant taping pillows to your body as you jumped your bike or engaged in wresting or other play fighting.
The creativity to make things safe was part of the adventure as you pushed the envelope.
• We lived the adventure of your childhood mostly outdoors.
• We enlisted the help of your friends and family to roll papers and get the route done after school.
• We had to be resourceful and accountable to meet the demands of what became a shared responsibility serving the community.
