Eventually All Long Islanders Are Time Travelers

The world we were born into has changed. It changes every day in so many ways. This offers opportunities and also throws up roadblocks. Old time Long Islanders can tick off major changes easily. The one they usually leave out is how they themselves have changed.

The question is was life simpler or were we simpler in approaching life. It’s as if the older we get the more we realize there is so much more we will never know.

The first thing that comes to mind these days is the constant growing cost of everything on Long Island. It’s almost like five dollars cost twenty dollars these days! The memory of $.33 a gallon gasoline and seven miles per gallon cars are dying daily. What never changes is the feeling of standing on the shore line of a Long Island beach in the summer. The mighty ocean itself has been a constant, perhaps for thousands of years.

Going to the supermarkets has truly changed. Remember once there were 10 brands of things like ketchup in various sizes, now we get to choose from maybe two. Yet, in the supermarket are literally thousands of items not available when were young stuffing the groceries in brown bags, that would sometimes rip and have the items burst out all over the place before we arrived back home to our kitchens.

Of course for old folks on fixed incomes or locked into 1970’s pay salaries the new economy is slowly burying us like a living graveyard. But, we now have News 12 and google, and ability to photograph anything at anytime! For us old folks no selfies of our youth, in fact almost no “candid” photos at all of that time.

The great outdoors was our apps, games, internet, and Amazon Prime. $5 large Pizza’s instead of $5 slices and $3.50 pitchers of draft beer were the fuels of our Saturday nights. All night diner meals of things from burgers to pancakes or eggs and muffins were always an option on weekend nights that went sideways. Now the world closes down by 11 PM! On weekends!

In my lifetime there were $15,000 and $20,000 homes that now sell for over a million dollars. Reports claim there are no homes under $1M east of the Shinnecock canal on the east end. Yes in real estate things are massively changing upward. Now car insurance payments over five years are more than the cars is worth in five years.

However, the medical situation changed for the better as some old folks are practically living forever on Long Island. Do you remember your folks ever talking about the “blood work?” But those old school $100 or less doctor visits to the home were gold!

Long Island roads were never paved with gold but what we dreamed on those restless drives were golden. Potential love, jobs, problems and joyous hopeful outcomes made up so much of our times. To many, long gas lines have never been experienced, waiting an hour or more on an odd or even day to buy 10 gallons never happened. To some of us they did all over Long Island and the U.S.A.

Yes now things change from day to night but we role with it. The one thing that has not changed is that if you are living on island, you feel it, you like it and you rather be successful here than anywhere else, but the daily increases of the cost is driving us crazier than we already are!