I wish I lived where I used to.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

I wish I lived where I used to.

Where children played in the street.


I wish I lived when I used to.

When we weren't at war.

When I din't see pictures
of the dead

Children.


I wish I lived where I used to.

Where one parent worked.

And The other stayed home.


I wish I lived where I used to.

I wish I lived where I used to.


Where they don't invade other countries.

Unless they were killing,
unless they were killing
the
unless they were...

attacking us.
(there was no one country,
no uniform,
no one,
that hit us that Sepember,


It was religion).


I wish I lived when I used to.

When a Government answered

to its populace.


I wish I lived where I used to.

Where the prisons are much smaller.


I wish I lived where I used to.

Where a doctor would come to your house.

Where a Hospital
would care.


I wish I lived where I used to.
I wish I lived where I used to.
I wish I lived where I used to.

When there was a President in office.








That wasn't owned
by corporations.



I wish I lived where I used to.



TYJ

[Redstone]

1. Too bad that place never existed.

I wish it had.

Redstone

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. It's where I grew up, my friend...

It did exist.

Not without problems,

but it did.

I remember Camelot, Ike and a tad of Truman.

There were better times, my friend.

[redwitch]

3. and in spite of the problems

we moved forward, baby steps maybe, but good change and progress was possible. In fact, everything seemed possible. Motto of the 64-65 NY World's Fair was "Peace through understanding". Sigh. We was robbed.

[Redstone]

5. It's where I thought I grew up, too. But, my friend, that place did not

really exist. In our eyes of children it seemed to, but we did not know.

As a child, I believed in the world you painted in your (very well-written) post. But it was a fantasy that we all had because we all had it sold to us. I wish that were not true, but it is.

The Ike and Camelot fantasy-world devolved into the night mare of Viet Nam for many of us, and as it did, the cloak of the fantasy was stripped away.

It was never that way, no matter how we may want it to have been. I'd have liked for it to have been, but it wasn't. Sorry.

It especially was not that wonderful for black people in America back then. Remember that.

Redstone

[NJCher]

6. I don't think you should deny his perception

After all, even you say it "devolved." Why would you use the verb "devolved" if you, too, didn't think there was a better time back then?

The evil we're experiencing today in no way, shape or form compares to what government was like back then.

I experienced that "time," too. I remember Ike. And wasn't I just reading on this board that taxes on the wealthy were 70% back when Ike was prez?

I had a family where the mom stayed home and the dad earned the living. My mom was a wonderful homemaker and my father was a good wage earner. I had two brothers and a dog and we lived in a single-family home. My public school education was excellent.

Later on, when we were older, my mom resumed her career.

I agree about African Americans, though.




Cher

[politicat]

8. Maybe for you, but not for most women...

My grandmother worked quite happily in the manufacturing industry during WWII. She was good at her job, and was qualified as a master electrician by the end of the war. She did this with a baby at home and a husband in the Pacific.

When the war ended, she lost her job, not quite literally to him, but effectively so. (He stayed in the Navy for a couple of years after the war, and was transferred to the European command, where he did transport for Germany and for those displaced by the war). My grandfather was also an electrician. General Motors fired all of the women working for them or demoted them to clerical positions (that paid almost nothing) and hired the men who came back.

She didn't get to work for the next fifteen years, and then only after she took a business accounting certification and went to work as a paper shover. She has never been able to use her master's certificate except when my grandparents opened their own electricians' shop... and she did the inhouse work, because no one would accept that she was actually an electrician.

She's past eighty, and still one of the sharpest women I know, but it has always rankled her that under Ike and Truman, her skills were utterly wasted.

[NanceGreggs]

4. I wish I lived where I used to, too ...

... TYJ.

In the midst of the madness that has engulfed our country and the world, poetry (like yours) flourishes like wildflowers, and reminds us that beauty of thought and ideas will grow and spread, despite the best-laid plans of those who would deny it or destroy it.

Beautifully written. Thank you.

[Hissyspit]

7. k & r