"Upstairs, Downstairs" Reveals Television's Decline

The servants and aristocrats are back on the Public Television System. This time Jean Marsh is the head of an agency providing servants to the rich nobility. Also this time the series is only three hours long as opposed to over twenty episodes when the series "Upstairs, Downstairs" was watched by millions of people in the 1970s. Back in the late sixties and through the seventies I often organized my Sundays to be certain that I could sit in front of my new color television to watch the PBS's Masterpiece Theater and I still do. But something has changed. The acting is good, the scenery is beautiful, the story line remains interesting, but Masterpiece Theater is not the same as it was thirty years ago. That is probably true of many things, and television entertainment should not be an exception. Nevertheless, Sunday nights sparkled when the highly skilled British actors filled the television screen with sometimes deeply profound stories of the nineteenth century, the world wars, and the culture of empire.

Since there has been only one episode of the new "Upstairs, Downstairs," I am reserving judgment on it. I will say that Jean Marsh reminds me how old I have gotten. Probably if I ran into high school classmates they too would remind me of my age. Thirty years ago many things were better, including me. But the new series of servants and aristocrats reflect change that had taken place in England after World War I; change I largely regret. So, change regardless of culture, seems inevitable. Change is especially inevitable after cataclysmic events such as the Great War.

Not only had the Great War (WWI) changed British society the social structure further declined as a result of the Great Depression. Working class people lived desperate lives and did not hold the aristocracy in as much awe as they had in previous times. I think we have seen similar changes in our own social structure. The changes in Western Culture have come as the result of not only the Great War, and the Great Depression, but also from World War II and the euphoric decade that followed, the cultural disillusionment of the 1960s, and finally from the breakdown in social mores that has followed. Television reflects those changes and breakdowns and PBS is not immune.

I have just about given up on television as a source of information and entertainment. I still have a television set but use it mainly to watch movies and the old Masterpiece Theater series I loved so much. Today we see burly men shouting at one another over disputes with logs, motorcycles, and fishing trawlers. Then there is the unscripted (I use that word advisedly) reality (I use that word advisedly also) shows. The worst of these is Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice." This is likely the most scripted of the unscripted reality shows. Further, the people vieing for Trump's favor are near celebrities. I have to be reminded who some of them are and what they do. A few are interesting , but they are easy targets of the loud and crude who dominate the show.

The mostly junk passing as news is depressing. I do not care much about a starlet caught stealing and has a drug problem or the actor who tears up New York City hotel rooms but I cannot escape them. Most
that sort of news used to be confined to magazines that had titles like
"Hollywood Confidential." Sometimes I turn to the British
Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) news program that shows up on PBS, but it comes on too early in the afternoon where I am. The PBS News Hour is dull and lingers too long on Washington. We need to know what is going on in the world, but our provincial attitudes keep us too close to home. The majority of senators and representatives in Washington have so little to contribute at an intelligent level it is difficult to listen to them talk about anything.

Local news on television is even worse. Murder and mayhem are the headlines. Out of the million or more people who live in the area served by the local television stations there have been twenty or more homicides but to listen to the breathless news reporters every night I could be led to believe that hundreds, if not thousands, are being killed daily. The way the local news is presented makes it scarier than rebellion in the Middle East, but unlike rebellion in the Middle East that news has less impact on me. I feel sorry for the victims of murder and mayhem and I worry about the quality of life in the big city, but those events do not affect my life like the rise in gasoline prices.

Television stinks! That is my unequivocal evaluation. I wish television people exerted more energy to produce meaningful drama and good comedy. However, I know that is not going to happen. Their bottom line (to use a cliché) means doing things cheaply and that every eight minutes five or more commercials interrupt the stinky programming. So, it is back to movies on DVDs.

Still, "Upstairs, Downstairs" does hold my interest and "Mystery" still calls me back to PBS, and occasionally something on the History Channel or Discovery makes me sit and watch, but by and large a good book is better.

The Practical Learning of Early Childhood Development

A 2 year old is not a "terrorist," only a challenge...

The cat that lives in our house and who does not likeme very much is finding that I am a good member of the household after all. She, the cat, has been hiding in crannies and less often used spaces to avoid a two-year old boy who has come to live with us for a couple of weeks. The two year old is our grandson whose parents have to be away from home for awhile. Up until now we have not been able to be with him, except when we made trips to be with him at his birth, first birthday, first Christmas, second Christmas, and second birthday; now that may seem like a lot of time, but it in all probably makes up less than a month in days.

Anyway, here we are, two septuagenarians rearranging the house for an active two- year old boy. We raised two children and lived through the two-year old adventure. Notice I call it the "two-year old adventure" and not the "terrible-twos." The reason I have chosen not to use that term is there is nothing "terrible" about our grandson. We simply need to remember the developmental process of the human being and the two year-olds development creates its own challenges.

When our cat was at the equivalent of that age, no doubt she went through the same challenging behavior. But a cat's behavior at that equivalent age is classified as "cute," but for a child it is "terrible." The difference, I suppose, is that cats finally do mature and become stuffy and aloof creatures (like ours) and little boys just grow up.

Our two-year old grandson is using useful words like help and please. He says, "More." When he wants more juice, more macaroni, you know more food. The plea for "more" is so pleading it reminds me of Oliver Twist in the children's home. Be assured, however, our two-year old gets all the "more" he wants. Also, I very proud of him; he seems to be bilingual at an early age. When he has a messy diaper, he says, "Caca." Now that is, I believe, a Spanish word. Isn't that great! Next thing you know he may be speaking whole sentences in a foreign language.

Two year old behavior is based on learning about self and developing a sense of independence. From the moment of conception until about 18 months old a child is cocooned in dependence and a response to
dependence. It can do very little on its own; it has no language other than making signs and noises that need interpretation. But as a child begins towalk, form understandable words, and learns about itself as a human being it seeks independence. The child wants to make its own decisions and be its own person. Fortunately, all that will be driven out of the child by the time it reaches four. How can we have a society of independence seeking, self identifying two year olds?

I cannot adequately express what a joy it is to be a septuagenarian grandparent. Grand parenting is not a new experience. We have a grandchild who is thirty years older than her cousin and she is the mother of three children; therefore, we are also septuagenarian great grandparents. They also bring joy to our lives and we are forever grateful for the gift of family.

Stuck with Our Cars: The Automobile Dilemma

Gradually life changed for me. I do not remember any dramatic events, other than marriage, finishing college, and ending a few careers. Nevertheless, without me noticing anything change occurred. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

In my twenties my life was simple. First, the Marine Corps made most of the decisions for me until I was able to complete my enlistment. In those days when I wanted or could go on liberty I caught a bus to Oceanside or a cab to San Clemente where I either took the Santa Fe to Los Angeles or San Diego or in San Clemente caught the Grey-hound to Los Angeles. The effort to travel had little pain in it for me, other than the cost. When your monthly pay is about $140.00 every-thing is costly.

One weekend liberty I decided to take the Santa Fe commuter to Los Angeles, from there to travel to Hunington Park, one of LA's many outlying communities. The Santa Fe commuter kept a good schedule. I arrived at Union Station, took a trolley to Hunnington Park and walked to my friend's house; simple living.

Look on the map of the LA metropolitan area. It is crowded with inter-state and other so-called freeways. You cannot get from there to here and vice versa anymore without a car.

Years ago, in the town in which I live now, nine passenger trains came to town every day.  If you wanted to go to the big city, you could
catch a morning train, get off at the main station, catch a trolley to any part of town, shop, go to a show, have a meal in a nice restaurant, and catch the late train back to my little town all in one day. No hassle, no problem. Cannot do that today; it's by car or you do not go.

What happened? I really did not notice the change at first. Being young and wanting a car, it never crossed my mind that eventually I would be a prisoner of my automobile, or without a car, I would be stuck.

Now we are all stuck with our cars. They are expensive to maintain, the fuel we need to run them is costly and is probably running out. There is no comfortable transportation not even a bus coming to town anymore.

We can blame ourselves for this dilemma, we all wanted nice big cars with chrome trimming and a stereo radio. We got them and for awhile they were fun to drive. But now we have to struggle with "rush hour" traffic, pay to park, and worry about the demented driver high on something crossing the middle line or the median.

I would like just to go to the train station, get on a comfortable pass-enger car, sit and read a good book, as I travel to the city for a day's outing. Wouldn’t you?

Hotel and Motels, Chapter 4

The first Missouri B&B had once been a school house. Not a one-room country school but a two storied multi-room building. I had decided it would be romantic to take my wife to this quaint B&B for her birthday. You know, get her out of the house, do something different, and have a romantic evening. 

Immediately after checking in I noticed that the room had once been a class room with high ceilings and extremely tall windows. The windows were uncovered; that is, they had neither blinds nor curtains. There we looked at the bare naked windows and decided we would have to get undressed for bed in the dark, which we did.

Since there was so little privacy, romance was out of the question, along with getting up in the morning to get to the bathroom without finding a robe or something, which we had not brought along. Once again we slept on a bed of nails, or concrete. Once again we tossed all night pulling the covers off of each other.

Once again we went to breakfast and had the same experience we had in New Mexico. And, once again, the cost of this night of torture hit hard in the wallet or credit card (I cannot remember which).

You would have thought that I had learned my lesson.

While B&Bs are charming little places, they are generally too quaint and very uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I engaged a third one of these places and took my wife there for another romantic weekend.

This one was a Queen Ann Mansion. Missouri has many of these structures. Some are antebellum, but most have been constructed in the post-bellum period (I have made that word up, I think). From the outside the place an exterior inviting charm and it had a wonderful quaint name; for the life of me I cannot remember it. We had no idea of the nightmare that awaited us inside.

We found the interior still being remodeled. To get to the bathroom across the hall from our room we had to traipse through unfinished flooring and work tools. As I recall, the bathroom also remained unfinished and needed more remodeling. The room we had (it was the only room available) did have a charm and comfort to it that reflected Victorian charm. Now to me anything Victorian is not charming but I will grant it is interesting.

In this B&B, fortunately, the spacious bed had a modern and comfortable mattress.

Again, Breakfast (recall that is the second B) left me gagging. There is no need to go into the menu being offered but only to report the cook needed more training. And, again the mother of the house cooked as she rushed children off to school.

The moral of this story is, stay away from bed and breakfast places. They look nice, and lure you in with an old fashioned ambience, but remember if that old fashioned stuff had been any good we would still be living in it.

Hotels and Motels, Chapter 3

This chapter is about bed and breakfast inns, you know, B&Bs. My wife and I have stayed only in three of these hostelries; two in Missouri and one in New Mexico.

From outward appearances the B&B in New Mexico seemed appealing and interesting. First, the establishment carried a name that integrated two languages—French and Spanish. And then the look and feel of a Mexican hacienda made the outside of the building fit in its environment. This restored building has a long history going back to the early days of New Mexico and if you stayed there you could capture that period and live in it.

Inside tile floors, stuccoed walls, and vigas and latillas in the ceiling clinched it for the prospective guest. Vigas are large beams usually made of tree logs and latillas are saplings placed over the logs to form the ceiling. Over the latillas mud is caked into the open spaces and then earth is placed over the mud and foliage usually grows on the roof. In today's New Mexico and southwest style vigas are still made from tree logs but latillas are usually slats of a fine wood and they can be used on multistory homes or buildings. Most early New Mexico homes were made of adobe or, where available, stone and ordinarily kept to a single story.


 The atmosphere, certainly better than a motel on old U.S. 80, helped the guest be in the spirit of the southwest. However, the dear cost of a night's stay dampened the desire to experience old-time New Mexico. I do not remember the nightly tariff but I do remember paying over $100 when we could have stayed at the Mission Motel on old U.S. 80 for about $50.

Well here we were soaking in the costly ambience of New Mexico. We planned to enjoy being there, regardless of cost; however, sleeping on beds as hard as concrete took away any atmospheric benefit. We tossed and turned, pulled the covers off of each other all night. When morning came we arose from the penitential bed exhausted.

The second B in B&B is breakfast. In the three such places where we have stayed it would have been better for us to have gone to a McDonalds for a McBiscuit, or whatever they sell for breakfast. Usually the lady of the house fixes breakfast as she would for her children rushing them out of the house for school. This makes everything "homey." Describing the breakfast is difficult. Yes, yes, there were eggs and bacon—cold and greasy. Coffee tasted as if it had been brewed in the stone age; in fact, if it had and we had been there, the coffee might have tasted half way reasonable.

As our stay came to an end I longed for the Dublin Motel. But, the New Mexico B&B with the combined French and Spanish name could be rated superior to excellent, or vice versa, compared to the two in Missouri.

Hotels and Motels Chapter 2

Continuing with recalling hotels and motels there are a few more that still cause me to wonder what it takes to be an hotelier. I do not suspect I am the only one to have hotel or motel experiences worthy of remembering. Nevertheless, there are a few that are memorable to me.

A few weeks after my wife and I married we traveled to Columbus, Georgia, where I began my Army career. This adventure of beginning a new life experience simultaneously thrilled and frightened us. Virtually penniless, we depended on something new, plastic cards we could use to purchase gasoline and pay for a night's lodging. We had used metallic charge plates in department stores; but now something totally different. Plastic cards were like money.

En route we stopped in Monroe, Louisiana. Several hours earlier we had crossed the Texas-Louisiana state line. The highway narrowed and for all we knew we had crossed over into a foreign country. At our Monroe motel the feeling of alienation (I think that is the appropriate word) led us to ask each other if somehow we got through without a passport.

At the motel registration desk I kept asking, "What? What did you say?" The desk clerk seemed to be speaking English, but I needed an interpreter. This motel did not strike us as being fancy or eloquent, only a roadside stop that looked clean and accessible. Nevertheless, the motel had a porter who greeted us at the doorway to our room.

The room, like most motels of the 1960s, opened directly to the parking area. We simply could take our overnight bags to the room and plop down on the bed that for a nickel you could get it to vibrate. But, there was the porter. He took our bags and carried them into the room then stood waiting for his tip.

As I reached into my pocket for a coin; a quarter seemed enough. I noticed there were two television sets. I asked the porter, "Why are two televisions sets in this room?"

Puzzled by the question or why I asked the question he looked at me and then back to the two television sets and then back to me and shrugged his shoulders. Then he said, "One of 'em is unfixed, suh."

"Unfixed?"

"Yes suh, unfixed."

After completing basic officer training at Fort Benning we left for our first permanent duty assignment in the Washington, D.C. area. Since we had so few household belongings, we decided to pack everything in our Studebaker Lark VI. When everything was packed, we realized we had more "stuff" than we thought. But off we went.

Something delayed our departure from Columbus, Georgia; probably taking the time to shove everything we owned into the Studebaker. So, we only got to a place called Dublin, Georgia just before nightfall. The only lodging we saw was the Dublin Inn. The grounds appeared nicely trimmed and the buildings of the inn were nestled in a small pine grove. In front a gas station, diner, and registration desk occupied the same building. I entered the building to arrange for a night's stay and behind the desk a man sat wearing a green shade on his forehead; you know like accountants once wore as they poured over pay records or something. I asked for a room for the two of us. He wanted cash payment only. By this time I had money and could get by easily. He gave me a key, told me how to drive to the room, and then disappeared into a back room.

Okay, I said to myself, as long as the room is paid for and I have the key what is there to concern me. Maybe he needed to go to the back room to count some more money.

As I drove up to the room there the man stood. This time he wore a white leather service hat. On leaving my car he said he would take our bags and he acted as a porter. When we got into the room he explained how the heater worked, which we found it did not heat just made noise. He instructed us not to be loud, and that he did not tolerate drinking alcohol on the premises. I indicated understanding of the instructions and offered a tip. He declined, saying, "It's all a part of the service."

We looked around the room and we were surprised to see brick everywhere. Not only the building sported red brick but also the bed frame and the night stand.

The night air chilled every corner of the room as well as the two of us as snuggled together under a thin blanket.

Morning came too soon. The restlessness of a cold night prevented good sleep and we had to travel to Washington where deep snow awaited us. We woke, showered in cold water, got dressed, and decided to try the diner at the main building of the motel. As we entered the diner the smell of bacon and toast invited us to join a group of good-old-boys sitting at a counter. To our surprise the desk clerk cum porter stood at the stove flipping eggs, pancakes, and bacon. He wore a cook's hat and a white apron. Turning to us, he said, "Good morning folks; what'll you two have for breakfast." I do not remember what we ordered; probably scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, juice and coffee. The desk clerk, porter, and now cook promptly delivered our order.

After breakfast we returned to our Studebaker Lark VI and decided we needed to fill up before we depart Dublin for the north. So, I drove the car to the pump (gas cost about 35 cents a gallon then) and waited for an attendant to fill up the car and check the oil.

By this time we were not surprised to see the desk clerk, porter, and cook arrive wearing a baseball cap on which a winged red horse advertised Mobil Oil or some such gas company.

The desk clerk, porter, cook, now gas station attendant asked, "Fill 'er up folks?"

"Yes," I replied, "and check the oil.

After paying with my gas credit card, he waved us good bye. I wondered if he wore a different hat when he mowed the lawn or washed the windows.

Hotels and Motels

Recently I traveled to the East Coast where I stayed in a very nice hotel. The spacious room contained a large and comfortable bed, nice high definition television, warm and comfortable bed covering, a sofa, and a well attended to bathroom. The room did not remind me of any part of my destination. The room, the lobby, the elevators, and the hallways all had the same look of hotels I have stayed in on the West Coast, the South West, the Mid West, the North and South East, and even Europe. In other words, they are sterile environments.

I am not a cosmopolitan world traveler. Yes, I have traveled a lot. I think I have been in 44 of the United States. My travels have taken me to Asia and Europe, and I have been in six of Canada's 13 provinces and territories as well as two or three Mexican states. So, I do not have a wide view of hotel accommodations everywhere in this country or anywhere else. But I do have enough of a view to see how travel hostelries have changed over the past fifty years.

Back when serving as a Marine I often went on liberty in Oceanside, California. There in that town overrun with high testosterone young men there was an oasis of a hotel called the Dolphin. The Dolphin Hotel was an unimpressive building painted white over brick with green trim. The front looked like a store with large panes of glass on which were painted the words "Dolphin Hotel." Under a wooden canopy a large wooden door with glass panes in it beckoned to be opened. No doorman, no porter, no one greeted guests as they went in and out.

The clean lobby, often empty of human life, housed an orange tabby cat. When a guest arrived and found no one attending the desk, the guest simply punched at a small bell to get assistance. Either a middle aged man or his wife would appear from what seemed to be the manager's living quarters.

Because of the quiet atmosphere, I liked spending Friday nights there. Saturday nights I had the pleasure of being the guest of a local family. This arrangement went on for over a year. The Dolphin, however, had atmosphere. The place reflected a time gone by; prewar California. The Dolphin Hotel had once been the hotel of choice of people visiting the beach side city for vacations. In the days I stayed there the guests were not vacationers, but people like me who wanted a safe and quiet place to be. A significant number of guests were young women who were newly married to Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton. They often sat in the lobby's ornate lounge chairs, or mission style sofas under the eye of the manager's wife. She engaged them in conversation and helped them adjust to their new circumstances.

Mostly I stayed in the same room. A rare Friday night occurred when my room number differed from the previous week. The room had California pictures on the wall. The spacious bed reflected the 1930s and 1940s and the bed covering pictured sunrises over palm trees with a mountain background. To use the bathroom and toilet facilities one had to go down the hall and make certain no one occupied either the bathtub or the toilet.

On Thanksgiving weekend I had eaten in the mess hall, but nothing about that meal is memorable. On Friday night, however, the manager came to the desk as I entered the Dolphin and said, "You need a real Thanksgiving dinner."

My response, "You're right, but I won't get one until I get home next year."

The manager said, "There's no need to wait. Come with me."

He opened up the front desk, invited me in, and took me to the apartment he his wife had in the hotel. There at a dining room table were four young wives whose husbands were confined to duties at the camp. I joined them and we had a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner.

Now, talk about a hotel experience.