An advertisement from the gallant Prebenzodiazepinian Era, when men were men who popped pills to do What Needed To Be Done (none of this sissy "bad nerves" business, you watched the guy in the foxhole next to you puff into a pink mist that coated you with a thin layer of Buddy as you raised the trembling Zippo to light a crumpled cigarette that tasted of blood, so you can certainly handle the Fitch account, have a martini), and women were women who popped pills to do What Needed To Be Done (vacuuming cooking laundry taking the edge off with the afternoon glass or three of wine to prepare yourself for the arrival of a husband who's spent all day at the office suppressing his existential terror and quaking rage). What no one mentioned was that Father got a jolt of estrogen in his daily pill, and that Mother's amphetamine habit was going to fade her away in her late fifties as her brittle neuronal highways and byways started to lose chunks of pavement.
Back then, a Swanson TV Dinner cost 75 cents and you could put a two-tone Chevy Nomad station wagon with full coil suspension ride, safety plate glass, and Turbo-Fire V8 power in your driveway for around $2500. The driveway, not the garage, because if it was hidden away in the garage then your neighbors couldn't appreciate just how thoroughly we'd thumped the Nazis and irradiated the Japanese, could they? And if they couldn't appreciate that then they'd lose the heart required to wage the long, cold, and nebulous war against the godless Bolsheviks who were breeding in washrooms at the office and planning to encourage American children to listen to jazz with Negroes and write poetry with homosexuals and smoke the marijuana with Mexicans.
These days you can't buy a proper station wagon, but you can buy a year's supply of dehydrated and freeze-dried food at Costco for $799.99 and haul it all off in the civilian version of the High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle. We've got more poppable pills that do more things to our brains and bodies than the Greatest Generation could've imagined in its wildest highball-fueled fantasies. We've got an African-American President in the White House and Undocumented Immigrants in our restaurant kitchens and although we can't buy cold medicine that works worth a damn without presenting a photo ID, we can buy Scotch tape in convenient, pre-cut strips.
And that, of course, means that we've won.
Back then, a Swanson TV Dinner cost 75 cents and you could put a two-tone Chevy Nomad station wagon with full coil suspension ride, safety plate glass, and Turbo-Fire V8 power in your driveway for around $2500. The driveway, not the garage, because if it was hidden away in the garage then your neighbors couldn't appreciate just how thoroughly we'd thumped the Nazis and irradiated the Japanese, could they? And if they couldn't appreciate that then they'd lose the heart required to wage the long, cold, and nebulous war against the godless Bolsheviks who were breeding in washrooms at the office and planning to encourage American children to listen to jazz with Negroes and write poetry with homosexuals and smoke the marijuana with Mexicans.
These days you can't buy a proper station wagon, but you can buy a year's supply of dehydrated and freeze-dried food at Costco for $799.99 and haul it all off in the civilian version of the High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle. We've got more poppable pills that do more things to our brains and bodies than the Greatest Generation could've imagined in its wildest highball-fueled fantasies. We've got an African-American President in the White House and Undocumented Immigrants in our restaurant kitchens and although we can't buy cold medicine that works worth a damn without presenting a photo ID, we can buy Scotch tape in convenient, pre-cut strips.
And that, of course, means that we've won.
Leave a comment