It was the best of times, it was the wurst of times -- kielbasa, breakfast links, abbruzesse, knockwurst, Genoa salami, corned beef mush, bockwurst, blood sausage, braunschweiger, minced meat, chirizo, chicken loaf, bratwurst, cocktail franks, Lebanon bologna, hot dogs, metwurst, andouille, bologna, weisswurst, summer sausage, linguizi, liverwurst, sweet Italian sausage, head cheese, smoked beef stick, saucisson, Slim Jims, mortidella, hard salami, olive loaf, braunschweiger, cotti salami, bangers, liver sausage, soprosate, bauenwurst, hot Italian sausage, kiczka, cervelat, pimento loaf, capicola, teawurst, red hots, Vienna sausage, scrapple, pepperoni, and Oscar Meyer wieners. All these delicious foodstuffs stuffed our Kelvinator when we were young. Now, its generally turkey loaf and low-fat mayonnaise.
Where did the good times go? Back then we could drink till dawn, shower, and then put in a full, productive day. Now we yawn if we have one drink, and feel productive if we get to work when it showers. In days of yore, we could spew our dew ten times a week; now you’re dazed and weak if you do it at all. Back then we could do fifty push-ups and five hundred sit-ups. Now we’re pushed to up and take a Sitz bath after five. In our salad days we were gassed to conquer the world. Now, we are happy to conquer our gastritis after a salad. As callowed youths we drove ourselves, smoked varied cigarettes, and even inhaled our pot. Now, we allow ourselves to go to pot and hale a cab whose driver invariably smokes. Where did those good times go, pray thee tell?
Marv Levy, the former coach of the Buffalo Bills, once said that when we become cynical, we lose our youth. What I ponder is: when we sense we are losing our youth, do we not then have the right to become cynical? And if the unidirectional nature of time fills us with bile, why then are we so constipated? But what is most depressing is that, in the course of one insomniacal television session, one can channel-surf past Bette Davis as a young, buxom and alluring Jezebel, to her as a middle-aged maniacal matron in “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” and finally as a screw-faced crone being interviewed by Dick Cavette ... months before her demise. This electronic foreshortening of time jerks us into the reality of our own fleeting existence on this firmament, clears away the cobwebs of our own hubris ... and, for one, generally makes me extremely hungry for sausages.
© Copyright, George W. Potts
