What Went Wrong?

One man's notion, from a favorite book:

"Things won't ever be like they used to be."

"What went wrong with it all?" I asked.

"They shot off the buffalo, and they meat-hunted the game. They slaughtered the wildfowl, and they give the vote to the women. The women stirred up a ruckus about their menfolks spending too much time in the saloons, and so they got Prohibition and handmade corn whisky and what they call 'speakeasies' in the cities, where you can drink gin that was made out of embalming fluid and go blind for twice the price. They invented the automobile and the airy-o-plane and speeded everything up. They got mixed up in other people's wars and got to betting on the stock market and altogether they're in a hell of a mess. And no free lunch."

"Any cure for it?"

"Not much," the Old Man said. "People ain't like they used to be, either. A bunch of smart alecks, running around in circles like beheaded chickens, dancing the Charleston, and raising Hell in general. They tell me some fellows won't dance with a girl without she takes her corsets off."

"I wouldn't know about that," I said. "But I do know I'm hungry, and that moon tells me tomorrow's high tide, and we'll be up early. Let's go down to Pete's and get a hamburger or something."

The Old Man spat.

"A hamburger," he said, as if it was a cuss word. "A hamburger, at my age. Like I said, things ain't like they used to be. But I suppose from some standpoints, they never were."


From Chapter 27 of Robert Ruark's The Old Man and the Boy, "Terrapin Stew Costs Ten Bucks a Quart."