Facts of life more than the birds and bees...

 Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/8-3-24

 There comes a time in every family when certain things should be discussed with children who are showing signs of leaving childhood and entering adolescence.

 

These are highly sensitive times for parents, uncomfortable times for both parents and their kids, but every responsible parent must take on the job of making sure their offspring understand some of what used to be called certain “facts of life,” some of which change through the generations.

 

I’m way beyond those years as a parent, of course, but as I move through the world, I encounter so many things that should be discussed with today’s young people that I sense are not being talked about, who knows why?

 

So let’s outline a few here, hoping that today’s parents of not-so-young kids might appreciate the insights I have to offer as a registered geezer who has seen just about everything but heard less and less, although a hearing aid helps.

 

We’ll start with luggage. Yes, luggage. Were I talking to a young person today I would come right out and tell them: “Daughter (or son) there was a time when suitcases didn’t have wheels or pull-up handles to ease one’s way through airports or other places.”

 

How did people travel? (I knew that question would come up,)

 

They CARRIED their luggage, clinging to small handles affixed to the top of suitcases. Petite women, elderly people, everyone. If they were traveling anywhere and had a suitcase, they either carried it themselves or found someone else to help them.

 

I know it’s hard to imagine that such conditions once existed, but, trust me, they did. I once carried a big suitcase through huge Kennedy Airport in New York and survived, but just barely, And I was only about 30 years old.

 

I know a couple of generations — maybe more — have journeyed through life in America (also Europe and Asia but not Antarctica) without ever being told luggage once had no wheels. Well here it is.

 

Let’s move on to another aspect of the past that today’s youth has no recollection or understanding of: The Bell telephone and telephoning.

 

Brace yourself, kids. All telephones had wires sticking out of them connected to whatever building the user was in, most commonly the home. Most telephones consisted of two parts, the “receiver” and the part you held to your ear. A wire connected them, too. (All outdoor utility poles were once called “telephone poles” inspiring the accusation, “Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a telephone wire,” a reference to Pinocchio, until recently considered the greatest liar in history.) 

 

All you could do was talk on phones in those days. To call out of town, you had to connect with a long-distance operator and ask for help. Phones

couldn’t take and store snapshots or movies or show the faces of the person on the other end. Which brings us to cameras.

 

Incredibly, at one time in history, to take photographs you had to have a separate (from the telephone) instrument, a small portable device with a lens and viewfinder called a camera. Inside the camera you had to insert something called “film” which recorded the images you photographed. When the film ran out, it had to be taken to a processor to be what they called “developed” and printed on special paper. This cost money too.

 

I know this information is old hat to many readers who have been around awhile, but there are millions of younger Americans who are not aware of this history, or, if they are, never experienced it. Like when all nurses were women and they all wore white uniforms consisting of a starched dress and small white cap. Many wore a blue cape over their nursing uniform when outside the medical facility — capes of good hope.

 

Finally, of course, when enlightening young people, there’s the matter of what used to be known as the birds and the bees. That’s simple. Just tell them: “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.” 

 

Nature will take over from there. But be careful: Birds can leave a mess and bees sting.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

How age spared me from going to pot...

Written by Jim Heffernan/DuluthNewsTribune/7-6-24

I have confession to make: I have never smoked marijuana. Never. Why? Was I too pure…goodie two-shoes? Nah, too old.

 

Oh, I know a lot of people my age have tried it in spite of the dire warnings we received as teenagers. But not me.

 

My generation was influenced by what was called “Reefer Madness.” It’s actually the title of a movie made in the mid-1930s (even before I was born) sounding the warnings of marijuana use. “Reefer” was among the many euphemisms for marijuana cigarettes.

 

I never saw the movie but when I was in junior high school in the early 1950s (yup, I’m that old) the words in the title were a springboard for some all-knowing adults to preach about the dangers of smoking marijuana, scaring the bejesus out of us.

 

All this has come to mind with the widespread loosening of restrictions on marijuana just about everywhere in the country, with many states, including Minnesota, opening the door to broader marijuana growing, distribution and use. Police records of past marijuana offenders are being expunged in some places.

 

Well, how about that!

 

I’m not inveighing against these moves. I suppose people who know a lot more about such things than I are confident these changes are good for America. But it brings me back to junior high when we were given a different message about marijuana, or, I should say, the evils of marijuana.

 

Here’s what I took away from those messages:

 

If somehow I tried it, after taking one drag of a marijuana cigarette I would be irrevocably drawn into a life of hopeless drug addiction. In short order I would desperately need to move on, craving stronger drugs, especially heroin, poking needles into my arm while sprawled on a curb in the downtown bowery in rags and in need of a bath and a haircut, a boy with a golden arm. Reefer madness! EEK!

 

Whew, I was supposed to be a good Lutheran boy and those prospects were not attractive to me at all, not that I was a saint. I did take up smoking cigarettes in my teens. They only made you dizzy at first, but boy, did they ever make you cool, as in cool cat. And tough (in your own mind). I quit more than 50 years ago, and still miss it.

 

Practically everybody and her sister smoked cigarettes in those days — days that took me through high school and into college.

 

The only time I heard the word marijuana used in college (it was at UMD in the early ‘60s) was in a class called Psychology I. The professor talked about the effects of drugs on the human psyche and stated that marijuana could be found growing along the highway in South Superior.

 

What? South Superior? Cripes, I thought you had to go to Mexico to find it in the dusty provinces supplied by shady guys wearing sombreros and flared pants with shiny buttons up the sides. Then you would have to smuggle it across the border into the United States by hiding it behind the door panels on the inside of your car. If you got caught, you would be sentenced to up to10 years in prison doing hard labor wearing shapeless striped garments.

 

I never heard of any of my peers going to South Superior to find and pick marijuana. College students at the time were not into it at all. It sort of explains why I never tried it, I suppose.

 

Of course illegal marijuana use became pervasive in our society just a few years later, but by then I was too old to join in. I recall being at a large party one time when I was older and seeing a circle of younger guests seated cross-legged on the living room floor passing a joint among them. So, did I call the cops and did they all do five to 10 in the pen wearing those shapeless striped garments? No-no-no-no-no…I’m no party pooper.

 

Segue now to more recent times when I was working as a journalist at this newspaper. For one period of my career, I handled the letters to the editor mailed to the paper. By then there were many strong advocates for legalizing marijuana, seeming to believe that if restrictions were lifted life would be worthwhile, or at least better. They often wrote letters to the editor.

 

Suddenly, many of those letter writers stopped using the word marijuana, instead calling it cannabis. Cannabis? "What the heck’s that?" I recall thinking (this was more than 25 years ago). I guess the thinking among the advocates was that if you called marijuana something else, maybe they’d make it legal. It seems to have worked.

 

But why call it cannabis when the more recognizable pot, weed, grass and Mary Jane were already available? Reefer madness.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.