I was fortunate enough to grow up in the tail end of an era not unlike that portrayed on The Waltons. Sadly, those times will never occur again.
The late sixties and early seventies in rural Canada were very much like that. Kinder, gentler, more innocent times. Then around the mid seventies it became very much like That Seventies Show. Still kinder and gentler, but we were aware even then that times were changing. Now thanks to meth and crack it is like Breaking Bad and I feel saddened that future generations have to hit the ground running, pretty much from birth.
The town I grew up in just north of here had zero murders, ever. Zero.
Now, just in my prosperous middle class neighborhood a teenager was beaten and left to freeze to death in a botched cocaine robbery. The teen girl a few doors down was raped and stabbed over sixty times by her jealous ex. My backyard neighbour was stabbed last year, not fatally. Then he got shot a few months ago, fifty feet from my house. He survived. Now he has vanished, for just over a month now. We expect to find what’s left of him any time, but the north is a huge place with millions of places to hide a body.
I realize that change is inevitable, but damn it sure changed fast.