'Good old days' can come when you need them most -- and stay around

"And stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days ..."
-- CARLY SIMON, 1971

Were there ever good old days, at least within our lifetime?

Good old days?

Were there times when working hard and being diligent meant you would have a good job and be able to support your family in a middle-class lifestyle?

Were there times when being frugal, saving money and living within your means gave you the opportunity to be happy?

Were there times when life was fair, when the people who did the right things succeeded and the ones who didn't failed?

Things certainly have changed. For most people in the work world now, the idea of having a career doing work you enjoy for one employer has become less and less possible all the time.


I was discussing it with my son, who has had one employer for nearly the whole nine-plus years since he graduated from college. My first six jobs in my career as a journalist barely topped his nine and I lived in six different states.

My son's grandfather -- my dad -- worked for one employer in various jobs for nearly his entire adult life up to retirement. His "good old days" came while raising his five children to adulthood and meeting his grandchildren in his 60s. They may not all have been "good old days," but I doubt there were periods in the past that were better. My dad was a man who lived his life present tense.

August 2006

It made me very happy that he lived long enough to see both of my children finish college, and although it was very difficult for him in failing health, he came to California in August 2006 for my daughter's wedding.

In his post-retirement life, he used to talk to my sister Hilary about how much more difficult things were for our generation than they had been for his.

All through his career, he had employer-provided health insurance, an employer-provided pension and employer-provided vacation time and sick leave.

He never had to make decisions about health care or retirement.

His children did.

"Good old days"

Good old days? I certainly have to figure these are the good old days for my daughter Pauline. She has worked for one employer at a very good, very secure job since 2004. She has three wonderful children, who are 8, 5 and 2. She has had the speed bump of a failed marriage and a divorce, and while things aren't the way they were in the early '70s when Jerry Reed sang of his divorce ("She got the gold mine, I got the shaft"), she came out of it OK.

She's in Guatemala for three years and rebuilding her family, with a potential second husband and three more children definitely in the picture.

Nobody gave her anything. She is brilliant, talented and committed to both her career and her family. And maybe even more important, she works damn hard and rarely if ever puts herself first.

If these are her good old days, she earned them.

1994, Paris with Nicole

As for me, it's difficult to imagine me considering any days that don't include my wife, my children and my grandchildren as my personal good old days.

My body appears to be deteriorating rapidly, my memory is slipping more and more often and I wonder if I have much left to achieve.

But with a truly wonderful wife, the two best kids in the world and between three and six terrific grandchildren, pretty sure I'm doing OK.