"Just a Thought" column continues in La Prensa of SA, 7-21

Just a Thought: ‘The Good Old Days!”
By Steve Walker

Many times us old folks get nostalgic and yearn for the “good old days.”  We reference those memories as the good times when life seemed easier and less complicated and much less expensive. For some of us the good old days were over 50 years ago which would seem to be for the younger generation as the distant past or ancient history. We sometimes even refer to ourselves as “Dinosaurs.”

For some of us older generation types it seems like only yesterday. Having grown up in the 50s and 60s my contemporaries have experienced a radical change in lifestyle and skyrocketing prices for the things we took for granted “back in the day.”

Let me offer two examples. Today when you go to the movies the tickets cost approximately $7.50 per ticket. If you take someone with you, you are talking 15 dollars just to get in. Popcorn is around 5 dollars a bucket; drinks could cost three dollars each which can add up to 25 or more an outing. If you are a senior citizen you might get a dollar discount with proof of age. Imagine having to prove you are old for a dollar discount. Back then you had to prove you were younger than 12 to get a discount. Needless to say, “I am a Baby Boomer!”

Second example is the current price of taking the VIA bus. A one way bus ticket downtown now is over a dollar. When I attended St. Gregory’s Catholic School in the fifties in Balcones Heights, it only cost 10 cents to take the bus downtown to go see a movie. I caught the bus four houses down from my house off Vance Jackson. It was really very convenient and cheap.

As a seventh and eighth grader my mother would give me a dollar to take the bus to go downtown on a Saturday and spend the entire day going to one of the three theatres at that time that included the Majestic, the Texas and the Empire. I could take the VIA bus for 20 cents round trip, watch a double feature for a quarter, buy popcorn for less than 15 cents, a coca cola for a nickel and come home at the end of the day, sometimes with a few cents in my pocket. Usually the double features included at least one monster movie like Dracula or Frankenstein horror flick. Those were the days!

If I chose to hang out downtown after the movie I could walk around the downtown streets with no fear of bad things happening. I was also known on occasion to walk over to Woolworth’s and sit at the fountain and order a tuna sandwich and drink with my leftover money.

S. H. Kress & Company, Neisner Brothers or even Walgreen’s Drug Store were also options.

If I was just killing time, I would wander up the street to Joske’s affectionately referred to as Saint Joske’s. We called it that due to its close proximity to Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church around the corner on E. Commerce Street.

My Saturdays were exciting as I took many a “field trip” by myself or sometimes with one of my younger brothers to the downtown area. Yep for me and many of my generation, those were the good old days. Now that I am into senior status, perhaps I should be referring to them as those “good young days!!”

Anyway, as always, what I write is “Just a Thought.”

Steve Walker is a Vietnam Veteran and former Justice of the Peace and Journalist.