Juke joint jumping
jive time age of innocence
(precludes dry-humping)
pony tails and bobby socks
baby boomers rolling on the rocks
apple pie à-la-mode
and I believe
life tasted good
back then.
Now the apple’s fallen
today
blossoming babies pay
too high a price.
© Experimentsinfiction 2021, All Rights Reserved
dVerse is back!
From summer break, and it’s quadrille time again. This time, we have a special guest host to celebrate 10 years of dVerse! It is an honour to be a new member of the team at this exciting time.
For this quadrille, we are asked to include the word ‘juke,’ which takes me back to the baby boom days of the 1950s, which I’ve only ever seen in the movies. An age of affluence in which cars became affordable, and consumer culture was born. I don’t think anyone could envisage back then what the fallout would be, from this and other carbon-hungry activities, only 70 years down the line. Certainly the big oil companies knew about it by the 1980s (when I was growing up) and did a devastatingly good job of covering it up. Now we watch while the world burns.
This is not a criticism of a more innocent age: I’m just wondering how much control any of us had over this thing, or if we’ve been controlled by corporate interests all along.
In keeping with the theme of this poem, a reminder that The Anthropocene Hymnal is now available for pre-order from Amazon. I will be donating all of my sales royalties to WWF.
Your parenthesis made me chuckle.
The repetition of the j sound gets this moving right off.
I like that you have a message, a point to your verse. I dont know that we could ever imagine what would come of our world. Definitely the birth of consumer-mentality. One day perhaps we will revisit a simpler age. I have an off the grid dream for life after retirement, if I ever really get there.
I tried to squeeze a laugh in amongst the seriousness. I’d love to live off grid, if the weather was always perfect and there were hot springs nearby!
Indeed… so much easier back then… now the grand-kids will have to pay. I remember how we read those early warnings from people like Rachel Carson, and how my father talked about the first theories of green-house effects. But we dealt with so much, only to leave the hardest ones for last.
I remember it being on the news when I was a kid but it was always kind of a fringe issue. Now it’s a real problem.
So well done Ingrid.
Thanks Linda!
A chuckled gently, but I appreciate the amusing poetics you’ve put to work here. All the same, for comedy or not, you’ve got quite a fun rhythm happening here in the background.
I always try to find a way to keep on smiling!
A sobering write, captures much in 44 words!
Thank you Beverly!
There’s a lot to think about here, Ingrid–amusing and pointed. Although I think it only appears a more innocent age in TV and movies–here in the US, there was also McCarthyism, Jim Crow laws, etc, along with the affluence.
And the second world war was only just over of course! And of course the movies portray the era through rose-tinted glasses. I was thinking specifically about climate innocence: I don’t think many people knew where we were headed at this point in time.
No, I don’t ever remember people talking about climate then–and I don’t think people even started talking about stuff like DDT until the 1960s.
Fabulous use of alliteration in this, Ingrid! ❤️ The quadrille in its entirety offers so much to contemplate about. Yes, the current and future generations have their hands full.
Indeed we do! Thank you Sanaa 🙏
No dry-humping indeed! You’ve taken me back to my teenage years here….remember sock hops? That’s when the bobby socks had to come home and be bleached with my dad’s white tee shirts and boxer shorts! 🙂 When I think how upset my parents were to see Elvis’ hips gyrate on the Ed Sullivan show…..oh my….what would they think to see twerking?? The innocence of youth is lost much earlier these days, it seems.
I would love to have seen Elvis’ hips gyrate on the Ed Sullivan show in real time 😅
Nice job on capturing the atmosphere and definitely food for thought. I wonder if there was ever such a thing as an age of innocence. But def. things seem to get more and more difficult and the young generation will have to pay for all the damage we are doing now
I don’t think there was in terms of human nature, but in terms of the climate impact of our lifestyles I think there was. Followed by an age of ignorance which some people unfortunately still live in. Even more unfortunately, I think we’re coming to the point where the impact can no longer be denied!
not sure if the lose of innocense in the young is a good thing or a bad thing. these days a still get told to turn that noise down ( i am a rock music fan) but now it is by my daughter rather than my dad. mmy kids have matured quicker than me and my siblings.
This comment made my smile 😊
Wonderful poem and afterword. Things sure seem to have run amok from those days. Congratulations again on the release of the book!
Thank you Lisa 🙏 we do what we can!
You’re welcome.
Luv the taste of nostalgia in your apple pie tale
Happy Monday
Much💜love
Thank you Gillena ❤️
Life did taste good back then. I did have some idea by 1980 we were heading for hard times. Many inventions back then to address climate change were suppressed and kept off the market, and some inventors actually lost their life. Yes, corporate interests were already at work. The young will pay a terrible price for this. Congratulations on your Anthropocene Hymnal. I am so thrilled about it.
Thank you Sherry. I even look back with nostalgia to when I was growing up and I keep thinking ‘we still had time then!’ I’m not sure we do now. And the powers that be have made absolutely no meaningful changes.
Love your quadrille and write up Ingrid. Congratulations on the book! I love what you did with the cover and can’t wait to read it. Well done! ☺️
Thank you Christine. Kerfe’s artwork really brought the cover to life 😊
Oh wow…
Poetry between the eyes.
Thanks Andrew!
Very well written and I too enjoyed the dry-humping line lol.
I feel like this describes a more simplistic life, a different generation from one today and how the times have changed. Things have gotten harder, especially with living in the moment and expectations among much more issues. Beautifully described. <3
I mean, this generation was coming out of a hard time after the war and I don’t blame them for partying! But I don’t think anyone knew back then the damage we were starting to do to the planet at an exponential rate!
Ah yes, OZZIE & HARRIET & THE DONNA REED SHOW. The memories are fond, but the mind sets had to progress and mature in the 60’s. Mine certainly did. I look at my 9 grandchildren (1-14 years old),and I am sad to consider what a world we are leaving them.
I am getting kind of desperate now! Things seem to be getting out of control pretty fast. But I won’t go down without a fight, or without calling out the ones who put us in this mess.
Nicely done Ingrid! Those were the days … and you are right, no one knew how the industrial revolution would affect future generations. Pie à-la-mode is always good!! :>)
Thank you Dwight! I would like a slice of positivity right now 😊
And a song to go with it! Thanks Ingrid!
Those were the good old innocent days Ingrid. Now, I feel for the new generation of babies and youngsters. I particularly love the jiving of words in the first line, smiles.
Thank you Grace 😊
Great take on the prompt Ingrid and laughing at some of your lines and shining my saddle shoes for my bobby socks now. 👏👏👏👏👏
I hope you had a fun time jiving! 😊❤️❤️
for sure I did❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️👏
Love this Ingrid! For me it was a time of complete innocence, dry humping came a bit later! LOL
🤣 there’s always time for that 🤣
Generation to generation… how many apples left? ;-(
I fear to think about it too hard. Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have girls because I tell myself the boys will be less bothered if they can’t have kids.
😢
The blossoming babies are brilliant, Ingrid. Love the apple metaphors throughout. Delicious bite of nostalgia.
Thank you K.
Great. From the time when “boomer” was young, not a synonym for old.
You skillfully managed a thought-provoking topic between the lines of this lighthearted quadrille. Love that.
I think people in general were different beasts in those days, overcome by everything newly invented, what they could accumulate, what was the next step for more, more, more. Here we are wondering how we got in this mess now. Our babies will pay and it is so very sad.
Excellent piece, Ingrid.
“Now the apple’s fallen
today
blossoming babies pay
too high a price.”
xoxo
Thank you Gabriela I am pleased this spoke to you! ❤️
My pleasure. Very much so 🥰🌹
Great piece Ingrid, ripe with truth, lightly seasoned with just a bit of regret. My spirit still jukes and jives all the time. I give my youthful sense of wonder and joy free reign, whenever it requests I do. 😉 And whenever I am not pissed off by the current state of the world.
How wonderful! And so you should 😊
Love the repetition of the Js, like shoes sliding across the floor.
Thank you, I’m pleased you liked it!
Now the apple’s fallen today
blossoming babies pay
too high a price.
Things change nowadays. High price and restrictions of the new normal put a damper on teenage happenings. Very true Ingrid!
Hank
I think consumer culture was born before the 50s but the postwar changes–on one hand relief, and on the other the beginnings of the cold war–just accelerated it. Products became the way to prove superiority.
In any case, I like the way you evoke the carefree atmosphere, even if it covered up a dark underside. (K)
I saw a documentary about it a while back: wasn’t a relative of Freud’s involved in it’s inception? You’re right, the idea was born earlier but it really started to take off in the postwar years.
A false optimism.
opened in a bubbly bob and then ended with an apple falling that makes us think. profound, Ingrid.
Thank you!