[speaker001:] some of the the more recent uh changes that I've noticed in society is I guess over the last ten to twenty years or maybe the technological advances you know ten to twenty years ago there wasn't a VCR in every home and there wasn't uh
[speaker002:] oh I know the remote control was a great big box that was connected to the back of the TV
[speaker001:] some some of the  uh that's true yeah and the old remote controls that were all by sound and you could drop a coin or clang some dishes and turn off the TV or change channels and all the things that have changed over the years
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] but along with that I unfortunately I guess there's been a down side to a lot of that stuff I mean another three or four years you're going to have a land fill full of VCR's that and the parts and things that don't work and
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] a lot of those things just don't go away and uh I guess the environmentalists have done their jobs that ten to twenty years ago I didn't think of it that much I knew about all the the uh organizations that tried to do that for a living you know let you know what what environmental impact was but just kind of recently uh the world's waking up to that so that's a change that's come along
[speaker002:] yeah you got to well let's see you I guess you grew up in the you were a teenager in the seventies right okay did you go to like Woodstock and all that
[speaker001:] yeah yeah no no never got around as it were but I uh I paid attention to it all being there so that that has changed people are uh I think the the outspoken people people who make a difference and make a change that age has come down it seems like uh you can make a difference at a younger age these days you don't have to be a an older part of the establishment to make waves
[speaker002:] no like that one little girl that wrote who did she write oh I think she was in some kind of a airplane crash seem like it was an eleven year old girl wrote Gorbachev Gorbachev or Noriega or someone
[speaker001:] oh yeah yeah
[speaker002:] I thought that was a lot
[speaker001:] it's true they can uh they can make quite a difference at no matter what the age nowadays plus there seems to be uh uh there's a few negative changes that have come along I was just thinking last night how different uh my kids' childhood is from uh when I grew up I I was allowed pretty much a free rein around my house to ride my bike uh you know all several blocks away even at the age of of ten or eleven years old I could ride
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] a couple of miles away I'd ride to school you know and it was it was right at two miles away from the house
[speaker002:] uh-huh but it's just not safe anymore
[speaker001:] whereas here uh yeah I won't let them go you know more than a block out of my sight there I'm just a little too paranoid these days with what's going on and uh
[speaker002:] hum-um um-hum
[speaker001:] yeah we get you know reports from the police will give us warnings about this neighborhood and some activity that's occurring there and then you know occasionally it works its way around to our neighborhood and we have to keep a real close rein on them won't even let them go out of our sight for a while and then
[speaker002:] uh-huh how
[speaker001:] after they catch that guy you know you can let him go out for a while but it's uh it's kind of sad
[speaker002:] well how old are your kids
[speaker001:] I've got a nine year old and a seven year old and uh they both like to ride their bikes off into never never land and you know be
[speaker002:] okay right well we used to ride around well I guess it would be a city block
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] my mom didn't mind I wouldn't dream of letting my little boy take off
[speaker001:] yeah I used to uh I grew up in kind of a good combination of between the country and the city
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh in East Texas and I had while we were in town we'd ride several miles away like to school and the like but when we were in the country we would ride ten twelve miles away we'd spend a whole day just two or three of us get together and take a lunch and go ride somewhere and eat lunch and come back and you know as long as we told the parents what roads we were going to be on and if there any
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] trouble was they could come find us but uh can't do that now just no safe place to let your kid go that long and of course it probably wasn't that good of an idea back then either it just uh
[speaker002:] hum-um well no but back even when I was growing up it wasn't drugs wasn't as now drugs was pretty bad but they weren't near as bad as they are now
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and this child abuse wasn't as bad as it is now either
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] and there's uh so many missing kids
[speaker001:] you know they they're saying that the uh uh the education is going to be enough or at least a major part of the drug deterrment and though I remember when I was in school they had a a drug awareness week type deal that we studied in the science classes and we got little posters and we did all sorts of stuff but that was nothing compared to the you know campaigns that are going on now but I guess it's just the the class of people or the area that we're in but I I'm not in contact with any kids that think it's it's it's it's a positive thing to do I mean it is it is really looked down upon even to the point of smoking I mean that kids are so ingrained
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] that they look down on them we have to tell them you know don't say anything in public to a stranger about his smoking you know not not quite that's not quite accepted yet now if he's in a nonsmoking area you might want to say something but
[speaker002:] well
[speaker001:] they uh they're so outspoken on the topic that uh  it's an interesting change in attitudes
[speaker002:] yeah that is because
[speaker001:] there's coming coming along with the education
[speaker002:] even in my time smoking was just cool
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] all the cool people did it
[speaker001:] yep
[speaker002:] went outside but my stepdaughter's getting like that and that's pretty hard because her granny smokes and we smoke so it
[speaker001:] yeah it won't take but a like uh maybe generation or so before it uh it it no longer the cool thing to do I don't know
[speaker002:] oh yeah have a smoke free
[speaker001:] hopefully hopefully we can get away from it yeah
[speaker002:] really
[speaker001:] it's quite an expense too now they keep deciding that's the thing to tax
[speaker002:] yeah they do it's what about two dollars a pack now
[speaker001:] yeah it keeps going up and up well I guess there's uh it's I don't know of any other major changes other than the political environment course that things are no longer the cold war scares and the things that are going on that realm and Russia's no longer the major enemy and
[speaker002:] well who is the major enemy now
[speaker001:] I I don't know if there is one one easy one to uh to pick that's part of the problem
[speaker002:] I don't when I was growing up I was scared of Red China
[speaker001:] yeah yeah
[speaker002:] now everybody told me that they had the biggest Army in the world which I guess they still do because
[speaker001:] they probably still do as far as humans go
[speaker002:] yeah because China's real densely populated unless they
[speaker001:] of course there you wouldn't be able to go over and attack them but I don't know that they'd be able to go anywhere and attack us they can't get all those people across the sea they don't have the ships to get them anywhere so they may have a huge army but it's going to stay put
[speaker002:] yeah hm
[speaker001:] uh it's kind of an interesting uh interesting problem not having any one enemy to focus on as a society tends to uh let that go out of the mind you're no longer concerned with the the weapon systems and the the defense area so now that Russia's gone as a major focused on enemy uh that whole defense issue is just not quite as important to people's lives so that's an an interesting social change I guess
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] course it'll surprise them some day when when all the hostilities start back up and some people aren't prepared for it so
[speaker002:] oh I don't think anybody was prepared for this last war