By Bob Gaydos

Every popular singer seemed to have a TV show once upon a time.

— Once upon a time, you could catch a sneeze and blow your nose in the same tissue without worrying about having to wash your hand. That was before one-ply masquerading as two-ply because, you know, the Donald says tariffs don’t raise the price of products. But maybe the size of products? This formula and situation applies to toilet tissue as well, if you haven’t noticed.

—  Once upon a time, all the cars in the world were not white, black or silver SUV’s, lacking any sense of style or individuality that sets them apart from the rest. I recently sat and purposely watched the traffic along a certain stretch of Route 52 in Pine Bush, N.Y. Of 10 vehicles that passed by, eight were SUV’s of the previously mentioned colors. Did it again. A maroon SUV slipped in, but other types of vehicles were limited to pickup trucks, which are ubiquitous in Pine Bush.

Who decided that passenger cars didn’t need to have any sense of design? That they all should look alike in the name of convenience? Or was it for conformity? Check it out as you drive down the highway. When did sleek lines become boxes? Who decided that boring uniformity was good?

— Once upon a time, as I told my friend while we listened to the radio while driving through that same downtown with all the boring SUVs, Rosemary Clooney, who happens to be George Clooney‘s aunt and was delivering a lovely rendition of “Silver Bells,“ had her own TV show. Once upon a time, Andy Williams, up next on the Sirius stream of Christmas music, also had his own TV show. And Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Pat Boone, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore and Tennessee Ernie Ford. In fact, once upon a time it seemed that virtually every popular singer had his or her own TV show. They were called variety shows. Early evening entertainment suitable for everybody.

Today? Nada. They’re all on TikTok all the time and they’re not all suitable for everyone.

— Once upon a time, we didn’t have heavily armed masked goons with no ID roaming our streets acting like police, grabbing people haphazardly if they have brown skin, look like they might be fluent in Spanish, throwing them to the ground, handcuffing them, dumping them in the back of vans and driving them off to some unknown site where lawyers, bathrooms and food are scarce. Age, citizenship, warrant for arrest are all now seemingly irrelevant. Court orders, too.

— Once upon a time, the United States was respected and admired around the world as a symbol of democracy and freedom for all. Today, its Navy missiles blow up fishing boats on the high seas, claiming without proof that they are drug smugglers, and killing survivors clinging to the boat rather than taking them prisoner. All in violation of U.S. and international law while the man responsible for giving the orders tries to lay the blame on a career admiral who should have known better.

— Once upon a time, an ink-stained wretch of a journalist who’s been doing this for 60 years, could focus his attention writing about what he perceived as pressing issues, such as how legalized sports betting is destroying professional sports and, indeed, making a mess of college sports. That’s because, once upon a time, the daily sports pages were the refuge every morning to escape from the insanity of the rest of the world.

— Once upon a time, there was a daily newspaper in every sizable town. People knew what was going on. The mayor couldn’t blow his nose without people knowing. Many newspapers are now gone and those that still exist today are as thin as, well, a one-ply tissue.

I’m beginning to see a pattern.

By Bob Gaydos

A blast from the past.

I got a surprise birthday present  three weeks ago from my cousin, Tom Nalesnik. It was a surprise because a) It wasn’t my birthday b) I didn’t think Tom knew my birthday was coming up c) The gift itself was a memory of an ever-more distant past d) How he came by it was perhaps more surprising than the gift itself.

Yes, that’s me dancing in the Go Go cage with Crickett in the photo accompanying this column. The photo  is the gift. It’s a framed copy of a story I wrote about 60 years ago for The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y. There’s no date on the article, but I started working in Binghamton in 1965 and I clearly wasn’t covering the political beat yet when I wrote this. Disco was just coming to the Triple Cities area.

I also was quite svelte and better dressed than I am today.

Wow.

Tom said he got the article from my mom, who never said a word to me about my newspaper career. Never. Not even when I got fired. But that’s a story for another birthday.

This one is about time flying. Some call it progress. We’ve gone from Disco to TikTok in a virtual heartbeat. Typewriters, like the one I used to write about Crickett and her partner, Gena, are now museum exhibits. Soon, artificial intelligence will be plagiarizing this article to write a history of dancing to recorded music in bars and of pieces of folded paper called newspapers.

But not yet.

Crickett and me.

I don’t know if Crickett (Karen Levine) ever realized her dreams of publishing a big music hit or breeding racehorses. Or if her partner, Gena Maloney, ever did anything with her love of photography. (See, I did  interview the ladies.)

As far as I can remember, the bright idea to put the skinny reporter in the cage with the go-go dancers came from the photographer, Renee Myrae, an institution in New York newspaper photography. Make for a better photo, she said. That’s why there’s an annual award named after her for the best photography in the state. At least there used to be, when there were newspapers.

Anyway, I “danced” for about 10 minutes, there was applause and, as I noted, no one offered to buy me a drink.

The article wound up in The Sun-Bulletin, somehow made its way to my uncommunicative mom in Bayonne, N.J., who shared it with my cousin, Tom, in Linden, so he could tell me 60 years later that I inspired him to pursue a career in journalism and communication.

Some things are worth waiting for.

***

(Tom Nalesnik’s video commentary, “Whims of Resistance,” can be seen on substack.com, Instagram and Facebook.)