How Things Have Changed

Back in 1954, when I was a private in the United States Army, I was stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. And we had an apartment in Columbia, the adjoining town.  Being a private, I did not get many benefits, but did occasionally get a weekend pass. 

One weekend my wife and I traveled the 500 miles from Columbia to Coalfire, Alabama, our home community.  The road was a two lane winding road that went through the center of all the cities and towns along the way and usually took us about 12 hours in the 1950 Plymouth with onion skin tires on it, to make the trip.

We left Columbia about 6 p.m. on Friday afternoon, and arrived at my home about 6 a.m. Saturday morning.  After a nice home visit Saturday and Sunday, we left heading back to Columbia around 2 p.m. and arrived back in Columbia around 2 a.m.  After a couple of hours sleep I had to get up and go to the base to report for duty at 7 a.m.

During the morning hours I received a call from my Dad, telling me that my favorite Uncle had died in his sleep and he told me that he had requested an emergency pass for me to attend the funeral.  It was about 4 p.m. when I got the message that the pass had been granted, and I immediately left the base for my apartment to pick-up my wife and head back to Coalfire.  We got packed and left Columbia about 6 p.m. and knew that we both were so sleepy that it was dangerous for us to be on the road, but knew we had to go anyway.

Somewhere around 15 miles out of Columbia, we came up on a hitchhiker.  He was a white male in his mid twenties.  I pulled over and ask him where he was going, and he said he lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and was going home.  I told him if he would drive I would give him a lift to his house.  It was a good deal for us in 1954 as my wife and I immediately went to sleep with him driving, and we slept all the way to Tuscaloosa.   He woke me up in front of his house, and told me thanks for the ride. 

No way, in this day and time would I think of doing something like that.  That is how things have changed since the fifties.  I often think back of how things were back then and how people trusted people and have wondered what happened to make things get so bad.  The only thing I can think of that would bring such a drastic change in morals is the supreme courts decision “separation of church and state”.  In my mind, that sentence which is NOT in the constitution, simply meant that there would not be a state or country religion forced on the people.  That’s pretty obvious when you see that the founders had the ten commandants placed in and on many of the government building.  I think that the teachers not being able to teach any Christian values to the children these days is what brought all this on.  That is a terrible change to make, just to make a few towel heads and other atheists feel comfortable.  That is my opinion, what’s yours?