Looks like fun doesn't it? A woman in uniform inspecting a restroom.  Oh, the good old days, the days of simpler times, decisions, and situations.  The days when there were no shades of gray, when white was white and black was black.  They days our friends over at the Tea Party reminice on. The post World War II days...up until it all went to hell in a handbasket...about 1963 or so.

 I would have to say my life was simpler then.  Without a doubt.  Of course I was a kid at the time.  Growing up in the segregated south.  A time we could walk home from the pool or the movies without worry of being snatched off the street to who knows what horrible fate. 

 A time we could play sunscreenless in the Texas heat, the blacktop melting as we crossed the street barefoot, hotfooting it to the closest patch of carpet grass. (Prefering chiggers to melting tar.)  Picking pecans up from the sidewalk, the perfect afternoon treat

 Long summer days spent at the pool or river.  We had no worries of "others", folks not like us, turning up to cool off on a blistering summer day. And if those "others" were sweltering in shacks on the other side of town, so what, we didn't have to see it.

 We did see the "others" with scheduled regularity.  We saw them when they cleaned our houses in starched crisp uniforms.  They picked up the trash a couple of times a week, anything that required long exposure to the baking sun, the "others" did. Great days those, the Tea Party folks will tell us, great days because everyone knew their place.

 Women knew their place too.  All the moms stayed at home then, sending their kids to play without supervision. They visited with other neighborhood moms, sweating pitchers of cold drinks, the condensation pooling underneath, resting on formica kitchen tables. I always wondered why there were olives in those pitchers-not being a fan of the humble olive when I was eight or ten.

 Sometimes women worked, but never when they had kids.  The ones without kids were teachers, nurses, and secretaries.  I had a teacher who became pregnant and had to quit.  That kept things simple.  You have children? You don't work.

McDonalds and Holiday Inn were new and exciting.  Holiday Inn always had air conditioning and a pool-two requirements when we traveled.  You could count on those two companies- no surprises. Nothing to differentiate one in the chain from the other, comforting in their sameness.

 We "Yes Sirred and No Ma'amed" never questioning the wisdom of our parents.  This was a time when the world was safe. (Well, there was that little thermo nuclear thing, but we had duck and cover to save us.) The lid was securely on the box.

 Summer nights the DDT truck would drive down the street spraying for mosquitos.  We kids knew the secret, we could run behing the truck, soak up the spray and repel mosquitos for days. No EPA to spoil that fun. Keep it easy.  The good old days when you could radiate your own mosquito repellent.

 But what about the Boo  Radleys, the sexually abused kids, the battered wives?  Did they exist in this simpler time? Of course they did, we just didn't see them.  The lid was on the box, remember? No one aired their dirty linen. It just wasn't done, totally unacceptable. I had a friend once. It was rumored that her mother killed herself.  Her family moved away. Dealing with disfunction is messy and time consuming.

 Politically things were easy too.  The others were kept out of the voting booth by means of poll taxes, intimidation or having to take a "democracy test".  White people because they were white, it was assumed, knew the constitution, but the "others"? They had to prove they knew what democracy was about, right down to being able to list the names of the presidents in order.

 The woman inspecting the restroom, poll taxes, "others" keeping to themselves, that is what the Tea Party and the Party of No wants for us. To go back to that time. It would be so much easier. We wouldn't have to think.  There would be no conflict, we could all agree. White men kn0w what is best. But in 1963, it all began going down the toilet.