Sept. 3, 2026
Remember When
Remember when? I do. This episode walks through my own life — how I grew up, what changed, and where we are now. Family, community, trust, and the phone that never turns off. It's not a comfortable listen. It's not supposed to be.
Elders Uniting the World — Episode 2: Remember When Generations Lived Together
(Cleaned transcript, based on YouTube auto-captions)
I'm currently 69, pushing on 70. For the last few years I've been looking around and paying closer attention to things around me — especially the news feeds I end up getting, not by my choice, but because some algorithm decided "you need to look at this." It looks like the world is just falling apart. People screaming, attacking each other.
So I decided to take a little trip. I'm currently in Nebraska, and I went through Indiana and Iowa, down through Georgia and Florida, then back around through Missouri and back up again. I don't know where all those news feeds were filming all that violence and crime and hatred and anger for each other, because I sure didn't see it. But it did make me start to remember — remember when I was a kid, back in my youth.
Those are some of the fond memories I have. Both my parents were teachers — my dad taught high school math, my mom taught grade one. So we had a good, well-rounded education. We saw a lot of things, but I know my parents kept us sheltered in some ways. We were raised in a fairly small town, but I still remember back to our youth, and that's where I want to start.
The more I look around me, the more I start remembering — when did all this change? I remember, back in my youth, I was raised by a community. My brothers and sister and I — it wasn't just our parents. It was the neighbors' parents, the teachers, other people around town. If we screwed up, they had full reign to chew our butts out — and they did. For which I'm glad, because there's a good chance things wouldn't have turned out the way they did otherwise.
Our community was safe. We could walk anywhere. Our definition of freedom was — we had our first bike, we could ride anywhere. Our parents would kick us out as soon as the sun came up — "get out, don't come back until dark, that's when we'd have dinner." We'd be all over town. Everybody knew us, we knew everybody, and it was safe. It was protected. There was always somebody looking out after us. A lot of the neighbors' houses kind of served as mini first-aid stations. We didn't wear helmets. We got hurt, we got scratched, we were bleeding all over the place — that's life.
Even into our teens, we'd go out to a park, lie down, stare at the clouds, and just relax with our friends — "I see an elephant, I see a bunny." Just innocent stuff. That innocence is long gone as far as I can tell.
I remember families had jobs in the local town — in the plant, or working for a utility company. It was always the dad would work, the mom would be home, responsible for the kids and the household, making sure everything was nice and tidy. It was a one-income family, and that worked really, really well. And then I kind of wonder — when did that end? Why did that end?
When things like that occur, I like to look back and ask: who benefited? Who really needed that to happen? And surprisingly enough, the government gained a lot when both parents had to work — that extra income tax and tax revenue. As if they were responsible enough for deciding where it should be spent — I know what it was spent on, I didn't approve it, and they never asked me. It also seemed like that's the same time house prices started rising. "Oh, they've got two incomes, they can afford more — let's charge them more." That was the beginning of the end for the family unit, where you could no longer survive off one income.
And then, again, who got hurt the most? The youth. They never had as much attention to what they were doing, what they were thinking. They could actually talk — no, now it's "we're too busy" or "we're too tired when we get home." A lot of the families I knew ended up having to move, or their kids left and never came back — had to move to the big city because that's where the money was. Yeah, that's also where the expenses were. That's where the stress started, and the nerves, and the frustration. Seems like a lot of the anger started out of the big cities and worked its way in.
A lot of parents I knew — their whole careers, they'd work for the same company, 30, 40 years. They'd get a pension, then they'd get to relax. And their dream was their kids would take their place at the company. It was not surprising to see two, three generations of the same family working at the same plant — that was just what was expected. But I saw that end fairly quickly. A lot of companies now — it's bottom line, bottom line. "We don't care about the workers, we don't care about the families anymore." There are still a few companies that do care deeply about their families, but they're few and far between. A lot of jobs are being shipped overseas, and they try to spin it as "best for the company," even though it's terrible for the worker, terrible for the smaller towns.
I see it with Tyson — shutting down these big meat-processing plants, closing down, and these small towns just get massive hits. That's not for the best of the people or the families. I won't buy anything from Tyson when I go to the store. I have absolutely zero respect for that company or the people running it.
What I've been thinking is — let's compare when I was a kid to what the world is going through now. I'm sure a few of you have the exact same ideas. So let's talk about some of these before-and-after, then-and-now scenarios.
When I was being raised, the whole community was taking care of the kids. If anybody got hurt, they could go to the neighbors, go to anybody's house — everybody had Band-Aids and would take care of you, call your parents if they had to. That's the way it was. Nowadays, you have kids raising kids, left to figure it out on their own. They don't have time with their parents — usually it's a single-parent family working two or three jobs just to keep the lights on and the heat going, and some cheap, unhealthy food — which is a whole different category when we start getting into the food supply. Whatever happened to making dinners at home? "That's right, people have to work, they don't have the time." So here's a frozen TV dinner, or something where you look at the ingredient list and can't pronounce anything on it. There's a reason it's cheap, and it's definitely not good for anybody. You sure won't see the CEOs of those companies eating that garbage. So why should we?
We already talked about the two-parent household where one stayed home, and that got destroyed. Now parents have to work two, three jobs. Working for the same company for a career — that's gone too. When I left home and started traveling on my own, I was told, "you should stay, you should work in one of the factories or refineries, they'll take care of you and your family, you can stay in your hometown." Today, that town's destroyed. Government at its best — "let's regulate the crap out of things." Well, we've all seen that happen.
What always got me — when I was younger, I loved talking to elders. They were wisdom beyond just book-read, even though they were all very well read. It's life experience, lessons learned. So what happened to the elders? That's right — the governments and big business shoved the elders away. They separated everybody from each other. Now grandparents might get to see their grandkids at Christmas every second year, because with two families, "we have to spend it with the husband's family this year, yours next year." A lot of elders now get put into homes, retirement areas, or just shipped away somewhere — "just tell me where to write the check, we'll call once a month to make sure they're still alive, or we'll plan the funeral." That's not the way it was meant to be. And we're going to have to change that.
Do you know what really scares people in power about the elders? It absolutely terrifies them. We have great memories. We remember when they were kids. We know exactly what they're like, even if the words coming out of their mouth are like a snake-oil salesman. Elders have a built-in lie detector. We can see somebody's eyes, see their lips moving — a lot of these people that talk, don't take them by their words, look at their body language. And even then, you can go back as far as you want and check up on what they've really done. Do your own research, because the elders already have. That scares a lot of them, because when we die, the truth dies with us — that's what they want gone. They can change all the records they want, all the documentation they want, but they can't change the truth.
Back in the day, when we screwed up — and Lord knows everybody screwed up — we were forgiven. We made amends, regardless of what it was. Sometimes it took a little longer than others, but we were eventually forgiven, and that was it. Nowadays, you screw up, they go back years, they've got your whole history, and you're never, ever forgiven. Somebody will always bring it up — "what did you say here 30 years ago?" — you're out at a party 20 years ago. When is enough, enough? It never ends, and it hurts a lot of people. They can never get away from it, or they have to move and start over — found guilty by public opinion. No trial, no appeal, no path back, no redo. You shall be condemned for the rest of your existence. Welcome to the police state.
One of the books I had to read back in English class, way back, was 1984 — Big Brother is watching you. They're watching through the cell phones, through all the cameras hidden everywhere. We're not safe anywhere. Everybody's got a cell phone — do they know they're helping the police state? Those Ring cameras everybody's getting, recording everything — and when something goes wrong, they always seem to show edited versions to make the person look the worst possible way. Then they have to prove they're innocent. Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? That's been gone for years.
A few more things before I let you go. Everybody's got a camera now, everybody's recording. But watch what gets recorded and shared — it's almost always the worst moment. Somebody's worst day, somebody's worst mistake. It gets posted, it gets shared, it goes everywhere. Where's the best moments? Where's the neighbor helping somebody move? Where's the stranger paying for somebody's groceries? Those things still happen every day — nobody's got a camera out for that. We didn't just lose community — we started pointing the camera at the worst of each other and looking away from the best.
So what do we do? What's the solution to where we've got ourselves? The solution is the elders. We can't stay neutral anymore. We can't stay hidden anymore. Society has shoved us away so much that all we've shown them is our backs. Well, it's time to turn around and show them our fronts. We're not going to tolerate it anymore — you're affecting our grandkids, our grandkids' kids who aren't even born yet. Their only chance is for the elders to unite and take our country back — take our lives back for the future. We can do it, because we're a lot more powerful and stronger than we believe we are. Together we can make a hell of a difference.
We're at the age where — what do we have to lose? We've got more years behind us than ahead of us. So let's make the years ahead of us count, every single day we can. It's not for us — it's for those in the future who aren't even here yet.
I know that's a lot, and it's easy to hear all that and think it's too late, the damage is done. It's not.
Next time, I want to talk about the difference between an elder and an older. Here's the thing — most people don't even know which one they are. That's next time.
Thank you for listening to my podcast. If you'd like to contact me, go over to eldersunited.org — there's a contact button you can use to send an email, and I'll try to reply to every single one I get. Thank you again for listening, and I look forward to publishing my next episode for you to follow.
(Cleaned transcript, based on YouTube auto-captions)
I'm currently 69, pushing on 70. For the last few years I've been looking around and paying closer attention to things around me — especially the news feeds I end up getting, not by my choice, but because some algorithm decided "you need to look at this." It looks like the world is just falling apart. People screaming, attacking each other.
So I decided to take a little trip. I'm currently in Nebraska, and I went through Indiana and Iowa, down through Georgia and Florida, then back around through Missouri and back up again. I don't know where all those news feeds were filming all that violence and crime and hatred and anger for each other, because I sure didn't see it. But it did make me start to remember — remember when I was a kid, back in my youth.
Those are some of the fond memories I have. Both my parents were teachers — my dad taught high school math, my mom taught grade one. So we had a good, well-rounded education. We saw a lot of things, but I know my parents kept us sheltered in some ways. We were raised in a fairly small town, but I still remember back to our youth, and that's where I want to start.
The more I look around me, the more I start remembering — when did all this change? I remember, back in my youth, I was raised by a community. My brothers and sister and I — it wasn't just our parents. It was the neighbors' parents, the teachers, other people around town. If we screwed up, they had full reign to chew our butts out — and they did. For which I'm glad, because there's a good chance things wouldn't have turned out the way they did otherwise.
Our community was safe. We could walk anywhere. Our definition of freedom was — we had our first bike, we could ride anywhere. Our parents would kick us out as soon as the sun came up — "get out, don't come back until dark, that's when we'd have dinner." We'd be all over town. Everybody knew us, we knew everybody, and it was safe. It was protected. There was always somebody looking out after us. A lot of the neighbors' houses kind of served as mini first-aid stations. We didn't wear helmets. We got hurt, we got scratched, we were bleeding all over the place — that's life.
Even into our teens, we'd go out to a park, lie down, stare at the clouds, and just relax with our friends — "I see an elephant, I see a bunny." Just innocent stuff. That innocence is long gone as far as I can tell.
I remember families had jobs in the local town — in the plant, or working for a utility company. It was always the dad would work, the mom would be home, responsible for the kids and the household, making sure everything was nice and tidy. It was a one-income family, and that worked really, really well. And then I kind of wonder — when did that end? Why did that end?
When things like that occur, I like to look back and ask: who benefited? Who really needed that to happen? And surprisingly enough, the government gained a lot when both parents had to work — that extra income tax and tax revenue. As if they were responsible enough for deciding where it should be spent — I know what it was spent on, I didn't approve it, and they never asked me. It also seemed like that's the same time house prices started rising. "Oh, they've got two incomes, they can afford more — let's charge them more." That was the beginning of the end for the family unit, where you could no longer survive off one income.
And then, again, who got hurt the most? The youth. They never had as much attention to what they were doing, what they were thinking. They could actually talk — no, now it's "we're too busy" or "we're too tired when we get home." A lot of the families I knew ended up having to move, or their kids left and never came back — had to move to the big city because that's where the money was. Yeah, that's also where the expenses were. That's where the stress started, and the nerves, and the frustration. Seems like a lot of the anger started out of the big cities and worked its way in.
A lot of parents I knew — their whole careers, they'd work for the same company, 30, 40 years. They'd get a pension, then they'd get to relax. And their dream was their kids would take their place at the company. It was not surprising to see two, three generations of the same family working at the same plant — that was just what was expected. But I saw that end fairly quickly. A lot of companies now — it's bottom line, bottom line. "We don't care about the workers, we don't care about the families anymore." There are still a few companies that do care deeply about their families, but they're few and far between. A lot of jobs are being shipped overseas, and they try to spin it as "best for the company," even though it's terrible for the worker, terrible for the smaller towns.
I see it with Tyson — shutting down these big meat-processing plants, closing down, and these small towns just get massive hits. That's not for the best of the people or the families. I won't buy anything from Tyson when I go to the store. I have absolutely zero respect for that company or the people running it.
What I've been thinking is — let's compare when I was a kid to what the world is going through now. I'm sure a few of you have the exact same ideas. So let's talk about some of these before-and-after, then-and-now scenarios.
When I was being raised, the whole community was taking care of the kids. If anybody got hurt, they could go to the neighbors, go to anybody's house — everybody had Band-Aids and would take care of you, call your parents if they had to. That's the way it was. Nowadays, you have kids raising kids, left to figure it out on their own. They don't have time with their parents — usually it's a single-parent family working two or three jobs just to keep the lights on and the heat going, and some cheap, unhealthy food — which is a whole different category when we start getting into the food supply. Whatever happened to making dinners at home? "That's right, people have to work, they don't have the time." So here's a frozen TV dinner, or something where you look at the ingredient list and can't pronounce anything on it. There's a reason it's cheap, and it's definitely not good for anybody. You sure won't see the CEOs of those companies eating that garbage. So why should we?
We already talked about the two-parent household where one stayed home, and that got destroyed. Now parents have to work two, three jobs. Working for the same company for a career — that's gone too. When I left home and started traveling on my own, I was told, "you should stay, you should work in one of the factories or refineries, they'll take care of you and your family, you can stay in your hometown." Today, that town's destroyed. Government at its best — "let's regulate the crap out of things." Well, we've all seen that happen.
What always got me — when I was younger, I loved talking to elders. They were wisdom beyond just book-read, even though they were all very well read. It's life experience, lessons learned. So what happened to the elders? That's right — the governments and big business shoved the elders away. They separated everybody from each other. Now grandparents might get to see their grandkids at Christmas every second year, because with two families, "we have to spend it with the husband's family this year, yours next year." A lot of elders now get put into homes, retirement areas, or just shipped away somewhere — "just tell me where to write the check, we'll call once a month to make sure they're still alive, or we'll plan the funeral." That's not the way it was meant to be. And we're going to have to change that.
Do you know what really scares people in power about the elders? It absolutely terrifies them. We have great memories. We remember when they were kids. We know exactly what they're like, even if the words coming out of their mouth are like a snake-oil salesman. Elders have a built-in lie detector. We can see somebody's eyes, see their lips moving — a lot of these people that talk, don't take them by their words, look at their body language. And even then, you can go back as far as you want and check up on what they've really done. Do your own research, because the elders already have. That scares a lot of them, because when we die, the truth dies with us — that's what they want gone. They can change all the records they want, all the documentation they want, but they can't change the truth.
Back in the day, when we screwed up — and Lord knows everybody screwed up — we were forgiven. We made amends, regardless of what it was. Sometimes it took a little longer than others, but we were eventually forgiven, and that was it. Nowadays, you screw up, they go back years, they've got your whole history, and you're never, ever forgiven. Somebody will always bring it up — "what did you say here 30 years ago?" — you're out at a party 20 years ago. When is enough, enough? It never ends, and it hurts a lot of people. They can never get away from it, or they have to move and start over — found guilty by public opinion. No trial, no appeal, no path back, no redo. You shall be condemned for the rest of your existence. Welcome to the police state.
One of the books I had to read back in English class, way back, was 1984 — Big Brother is watching you. They're watching through the cell phones, through all the cameras hidden everywhere. We're not safe anywhere. Everybody's got a cell phone — do they know they're helping the police state? Those Ring cameras everybody's getting, recording everything — and when something goes wrong, they always seem to show edited versions to make the person look the worst possible way. Then they have to prove they're innocent. Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? That's been gone for years.
A few more things before I let you go. Everybody's got a camera now, everybody's recording. But watch what gets recorded and shared — it's almost always the worst moment. Somebody's worst day, somebody's worst mistake. It gets posted, it gets shared, it goes everywhere. Where's the best moments? Where's the neighbor helping somebody move? Where's the stranger paying for somebody's groceries? Those things still happen every day — nobody's got a camera out for that. We didn't just lose community — we started pointing the camera at the worst of each other and looking away from the best.
So what do we do? What's the solution to where we've got ourselves? The solution is the elders. We can't stay neutral anymore. We can't stay hidden anymore. Society has shoved us away so much that all we've shown them is our backs. Well, it's time to turn around and show them our fronts. We're not going to tolerate it anymore — you're affecting our grandkids, our grandkids' kids who aren't even born yet. Their only chance is for the elders to unite and take our country back — take our lives back for the future. We can do it, because we're a lot more powerful and stronger than we believe we are. Together we can make a hell of a difference.
We're at the age where — what do we have to lose? We've got more years behind us than ahead of us. So let's make the years ahead of us count, every single day we can. It's not for us — it's for those in the future who aren't even here yet.
I know that's a lot, and it's easy to hear all that and think it's too late, the damage is done. It's not.
Next time, I want to talk about the difference between an elder and an older. Here's the thing — most people don't even know which one they are. That's next time.
Thank you for listening to my podcast. If you'd like to contact me, go over to eldersunited.org — there's a contact button you can use to send an email, and I'll try to reply to every single one I get. Thank you again for listening, and I look forward to publishing my next episode for you to follow.