Mary Belk: Remember when Ali was Cassius Clay?

So far, nobody’s sent me a birthday card saying I’m older than dirt. But I’ve been around for quite a while. Long enough to have seen lots of changes.

At times, when my mind rummages around in the old stomping grounds of my youth, I stumble over one particular memory of my high school days. My physics teacher, Mr. Guthrey, was perched on a long-legged stool telling us about centrifugal motion. He leaned the stool back casually and without warning toppled over. He lay sprawled out for a couple of seconds, then stood up and said in that soft, drawn-out Southern jargon of his, “They don’t make stools like they used to … back in the bad old days.”

Mr. Guthrey often referred to the bad old days. Other folks call them the good old days. Truth is, there was some of both. Some good, some bad. I’m old enough to remember when:

Good always triumphed over evil in movies, and the good guy always got the girl.

Muhammed Ali was Cassius Clay.

Auburn University was API.

Auburn coeds had to live in dorms and wear dresses, and fraternity row was on Gay and College Street.

Forty was really old.

People traveled cross-country by train and across the ocean by boat.

The milkman brought milk in glass bottles to your doorstep.

There were no inoculations for polio, whooping cough, measles or mumps.

The price of a movie was 10 cents and a piece of bubble gum was a penny.

The minimum wage was 60 cents.

Prather’s Lake and Chewacla were Auburn’s only swimming holes.

Children were seen and not heard.

Some families really did look like Norman Rockwell paintings.

There was no Velcro, Liquid Paper, or Post-it sticky notes.

Auburn had lots of 100-year-old houses and trees.

Fear of Communism led families to build bomb shelters.

Rosa Parks sat down in the front of a bus.

George Wallace stood in front of a schoolhouse door.

Neil Armstrong took one giant step for mankind.

The Vietnam War tore the country apart.

A child could walk safely to the park alone.

Men wore leisure suits and women had bouffant hairdos.

Charles Dickens said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

If we’re honest, that can be said about most times.

Mary Belk lives in Auburn and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.