Swell times in Willoughby (when earnest men wearing thin ties smoked cigarettes on the air)

We often see vignettes in dramas and dramedies in which a harried advertising exec (or politician or some such) realizes life is too complicated, and he longs for simpler times. Even in the early 60's the original Twilight Zone with Rod Serling did this concept a couple different ways (eg, “A Stop at Willoughby”), harking back to what would have been simpler times to that generation.

My simpler times were Serling’s own times, when earnest men wearing thin ties smoked cigarettes on the air and thoughtful words invited considered responses.[1]

Invariably this plotline portrays the central frazzled character as a power broker, wealthy, with lots to lose, and then abandoning it for the simple life, or a memory, or even a wishful invention.

But we are all playing out this plot, from garbage men to fitness instructors to corporate cubicle denizens like myself. We all reach a state where the return on the sweat we invest only pushes us further away from the simpler times we try to recapture.

[2013-01-03 - wow, nearly a year ago]

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[1]

Serling’s Willoughby is about 70 years older than the date that episode aired. That show aired about 54 years before I wrote this blog post.

Perhaps those numbers have some interesting qualities. Most of us didn’t really live that far back and have no first hand knowledge of what it was like. The era holds a nostalgia that’s been related to us by our parents and grandparents.

I remember many times my mom would see a canister or jar in a museum that she remembered from her grandma’s kitchen. I now am beginning to do the same thing, but it’s usually old TV commercials on Youtube, or vintage kitsch on eBay, or retro stores like Swell Times in Saugatuck > (a really swell store).

[2013-12-27]

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