A Senior’s Observations, Opinions and Rantings

Senior Moments

Charles P. Eberson

A Senior’s Observations, Opinions and Rantings

It’s Saturday morning and your twelve year old child says, “Mom, my friends and I are going up to Atlantic City.  Can I have some money?”  They do not have cell phones. You fork over five dollars and tell them to have fun.  As a 12 year old, this is what I did but it was 1962 and parents, good parents didn’t give it a second thought.  I took the five dollars, some extra money I made from doing lawns and our trio of friends took the bus up to Atlantic City.  Our target was the piers, Steeplechase, Million Dollar and we would finish up at the Steel Pier.  The piers had arcades and we played a mean pinball before The Who made Pinball Wizard a cultural buzzword.  The Steel Pier is where we always ended up.  Right in the front of the Steel Pier was the General Motors exhibit where aspiring drivers like us could get behind the wheel of a Cadillac, an Oldsmobile, or a Chevy among other models.  My favorite was the Pontiac GTO with a stick shift.  I stomped on the clutch and ran that poor devil through the gears so many times I have to wonder what they ever did with that vehicle.  Of course, I tried the horn and radio in every vehicle but someone had the good sense to disconnect the batteries. Another popular attraction was the diving bell.  It had small round portholes (you dare not call them windows) but the water was so murky you couldn’t see six inches in front of you.  But that was not the attraction. It was the sudden stomach churning, g-forces from the sudden ascent which was the reason for going on the bell in the first place. We watched movies on the pier. On one occasion, I brought a cousin from England on the pier and during one of the movies, I reminded her that right below her feet was the Atlantic Ocean and if the floor gave way we would plunge into the unknown depths below.   I don’t think she was paying much attention to the rest of the movie.  There was also the water show at the end of the pier.  We sat on stadium like seats seemingly quite a ways from the beach and watched a choreographed performance of clowns and high divers perform for the crowd.  The water show culminated with the world famous Diving Horse plunging into a tank of water before our very eyes.  All in all, it was a full day which usually ended with a Taylor Pork Roll sandwich, a Birch Beer and a bus ride home.  No phone calls, no texts, no Facebook posts or Tweets and no worries.

It’s 2017 and your 12 year old says “Mom, my friends and I are going up to Atlantic City.  Can I have some money?”  Five dollars is sure not going to cut it.  You are probably going to make sure they all have fully charged phones, a tracking app is operating on the phones, they check in every hour and you or another parent will drop them off and pick them up.  Now, have a relaxing day.

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