Here we are, five days into the year in which I hope to reach the venerable age of 88. I shall have to hurry if I am to make anything of myself. What I am now is a complainer. I call myself The Cranky Columnist. The well-deserved title has been earned during years of railing against absurd authorities, bumptious bureaucrats, legalized thievery and numbskulls of every description. In sorting through my memories, I have become cranky again.
I was born in a frontier village on a treeless plain only eight years after the first huddle of buildings sprouted beside a Canadian Northern branch line. In those early years, as winter closed in, the railway was the lifeline that sustained the small settlement. The inhabitants were isolated. They made their own entertainments. They played cards; they formed literary societies and drama clubs and they gathered around the parlor piano. Some of them who were less hidebound found opportunities to dance. (I remember one righteous old homesteader who opined that dancing was just lust set to music.)
We were well into the age of “canned ” music then. When father bought a second-hand gramophone, I was amazed at the quality of the vocalists and musicians who had left their imprints on the lacquer disks. When he bought a second-hand, battery-operated radio, I was even more amazed. Batteries were expensive. The radio was used sparingly, but often enough for me to marvel at performers who could present their art forms in sound only.
Then came black and white television sets. I was old enough then to buy one; it was second hand. The first program I saw was the story of the writing of the hymn Silent Night. I was deeply moved. From that night on and into the age of the coloured television set, I learned to winnow out the trash. I found superb variety shows, dramas, documentaries and singers.
I am cranky because the same menu is not available now. Most sitcoms appear to be written by idiots and most musicians and vocalists sound like constipated cats with St. Vitus dance howling on the back fence. Most people in the current crop of stand-up comedians seem able to move their listeners to gales of laughter. I don’t know why. If there is anything humorous in what they are saying, I don’t understand it. Having been brought up on the gentle humour of Stephen Leacock, I have no appreciation for lewd and rude.
I am cranky about over-organized children. When they rebel against the regimes that their elders deem to be good for them, the cure is always to organize them some more. It was different when I was a boy. We had chores at home and recognized obligations to school and church, but in our free time, we played what we wanted for as long as we wanted without any adult supervision. We weren’t in a desperate competition with anybody.
I am also cranky about the cyber world and the way it destroys privacy and threatens financial security.
I guess my real complaint is that I don’t understand society anymore.
