Pining for the Fleshpots of Egypt

Lorna and I took a short trip away from the cottage this past week end.  The purpose of the trip was to visit St Mary’s Anglican Church in Summerside PEI.  The Rector/priest-in-charge was a student in our Parish here a few years ago. 

We had a positive experience worshipping there on Sunday which offered us a choice of using the more modern way of following the service on the screen at the front of the church or using the traditional way of having prayer and hymn books.  I chose the screen and Lorna chose the books.  That is something I may explore at another time.  However, I want to talk about our experience having breakfast before the service.

We had breakfast at the Starlite Café and Dairy Bar in Summerside near our motel.  I was a trip down memory lane with the café being a blast from the past, specifically the nineteen fifties.  The décor which except for its pristine state could have been original.  There was a juke box consul at every table with appropriate song selections for 25 cents (on reflection I don’t think a juke boxes would have cost that much in 1950’s but that’s a quibble). There were adds for Fanta Orange and Grape sodas (we both had forgotten about Fanta Grape).  There was the mandatory poster of Elvis in the army and much more.  There was also two 1950’s gas pumps which neither of us were old enough to have operated back when they were new.  I believe the price for the gas was 67 cents a gallon which was too high but still ridiculously low by today’s standards.  One source I checked on-line (certainly not available in the 1950’s) quoted the price at 18 cents a gallon which sounds more like it.  I would not have been surprized to see the Fonz from Happy Days in the next booth. 

In any case it was a trip down memory lane for both of us (there wasn’t the other infamous kind of a trip generally available until a decade later).  Memory lane was well travelled by almost all of the customers being of an age that would have grown up in the 1950’s and Lorna and I certainly enjoyed reminiscences of the past.  I think we were both a bit nostalgic about those times.  They were idyllic in many ways when fathers worked in jobs that supported the family and enabled us to live a comfortable lifestyle and mothers stayed at home raising the children and you could go out and play in the neighbourhood with friends and not come home until it was time for lunch or dinner.  Who would not want to go back to those times when everything was great or at least seemed that way to those of us lucky to be in the right circumstances.

However, we are also having a viewing experience which gives us another perspective on those times.  We are currently watching the first season on Mad Men on DVD.  Neither of us have seen the series and we purchased the DVD’s of the first season for our cottage viewing, now that we have updated from VHS and have a DVD player which was purchased last year. 

This presents a very different view of these times.  It is actually set in the early 1960’s.  However, most of the cultural values were what can be classed as the 1950s.  The only people of colour are elevator operators or cleaners or serving in similar jobs.  The series is about advertising men (mad men as they called themselves) and it was truly all men.  They women were secretaries, telephone operators and women did stay home and raised the children in suburbia and gave up any thoughts of careers when they got married.  The Mad Men are portrayed with all the worst characteristics of the male; they drink excessively and drive after drinking, they viewed woman as potential sex partners and tried to ensure that the potential did not go unfulfilled.  Gay men were definitely in the closet and lesbian women were also deep undercover.  And everyone seemed to smoke all the time.  It was not something that encouraged nostalgia in either of us.

Both views are, of course, not true reflections of reality.  They are viewed through the distorting lenses of time and selected memories.  However, both perspectives could be something that does make some people hanker for the good old days.  Why can’t we have a time when men were men and women were women and everyone knew their place and accepted it without question.  Why can’t America and even Canada be great again? 

There is a great danger is longing for our fantasies of what life was like and wishing we could remake the world in the image of our selective and distorted memories.  That was what the Israelites experienced on their journey to the Promised Land.  They murmured against the hardships of their journey with the monotony of manna from heaven and the pined for the fleshpots of their former lives in Egypt with its security and familiarity.  They conveniently forgot about the hardship and cruelty they had experienced under the slave masters.  Yes, the grass did look greener back along the banks of the Nile. 

Of course, they blamed Moses who had (mis)led them out of Egypt.  The hero had become the villain.  It seems to be our nature to look for someone who will save us and has the answers to all our problems.  Someone who will point the finger away from us and at the Other who is the source of our problems.  That was what many followers of Jesus was looking for; someone who would feed their bodies if not their souls, someone who would defeat the Romans; someone who would cast out their demons and cure their leprosy. However, his early promise seemed to be a bust.  The triumph of Palm Sunday turned into the despair of Good Friday.  We are still hoping for someone who will take us directly to that triumph. 

The nineteen fifties of our imagination never were but we are still looking for someone to lead us back to the fleshpots of Egypt.  The journey to the Promised Land is long and there are no short cuts but the journey is worth it. 

Those fleshpots never were that good, were they? 

Blessings on your journey