Back in the Day

 If you have an opportunity to live as long as I have lived, you will have an opportunity to say:  BACK IN THE DAY...

This phrase, automatically implies that the past was better somehow than the present, although the present does not last very long at all...  because in a moment or two, the present always moves into the past, as we and time move forward.

Back in the Day, for me, is the 1960s...

Unfortunately, it is not the 1960s in the USA but the 1960s in Cairo, Egypt.

My family and I lived in Cairo, Egypt for four years, 1962-1966...  I left to go to college and they remained.

Cairo, Egypt in the 1960s was nothing like the USA.

• We did not have cars to drive
• We did not have drive-ins to drive the cars too
• We did not have drive-in theaters
• We did not have College or Pro athletics
• We did not have McDonalds hamburgers and French fries or milkshakes

But what we did have was much better and much different.

• We had no curfews
• We went to nightclubs in Cairo
• We rode camels and Arabian horses into the desert
• We climbed up pyramids
• We had 28 students in our senior class, representing 18 different nationalities
• We played squash at the country club along with pool and snookers
• We rode in taxis everywhere
• We could buy a hashish cigarette for five cents
• We had no age limits on drinking alcohol

In the summer months, we were not allowed to work, so a group of us would always spend our three summer months traveling around Europe.

We could catch a train from Cairo to the port of Alexandria for $2, and for $10 buy a deck chair where the next morning the boat, crossing the Mediterranean Sea, would arrive in Greece.

For about $30, you could buy a Eurail Pass with unlimited mileage for a month.  We would stay in Youth Hostels that cost from fifty cents/night to $1.25/night.

We visited Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and Austria.  We would spend a day or two in each city.

SAS Airlines published a book, EUROPE ON $3/day...  before I graduated, it was EUROPE ON $5/day.

What is amazing is that in Rome, we could walk up to The Piata and touch it if we wanted.  Years later, when I went there with my wife, it was behind a glass shield and the closest you could get was about 10-15 feet away.

For me anyway, that is BACK IN THE DAY...