mm

...all talking about how hard we had it growing up. The conversation went something like this IIRC:

Eric: Very passable, this, eh? Very passable.
Graham: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chasselet, eh, Josiah?
Terry: Oh, you're right there, Obadiah.
Graham: Ay.
Eric: Who would have thought, thirty years ago, we'd all be sitting here drinking Chateau de Chasselet, eh?
Michael: Them days we were glad to have the price of a cup of tea.
Graham: Ay! A cup of cold tea!
Michael: Ay!
Eric: Without milk or sugar!
Terry: Or tea!
Michael: In a cracked cup and all.
Eric: Oh, we never used to have a cup! We used to have to drink out of a rolled-up newspaper!
Graham: The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
Terry: But you know, we were happy in those days, although we were poor.
Michael: Because we were poor!
Terry: Ay!
Michael: My old dad used to say to me: "Money doesn't bring you happiness, son!"
Eric: He was right!
Michael: Ay!
Eric: I was happier then and I had nothing! We used to live in this tiny old tumble-down house with great big holes in the roof.
Graham: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
Terry: You were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in the corridor!
Michael: Oh, we used to DREAM of living in a corridor! Would have been a palace to us! We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House, huh!
Eric: Well, when I say "house", it was just a hole in the ground, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!
Graham: We were EVICTED from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in a lake!
Terry: You were lucky to have a lake! There were 15 of us living in a cardboard box in the middle of the road!
Michael: A cardboard box?
Terry: Ay!
Michael: You were LUCKY! We lived for three months in a newspaper-lined septic tank! We used to have to get up every morning, at six o'clock and clean the newspaper, go to work down the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
Graham: Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hours a day at mill, for two pence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle... IF we were lucky!
Terry: Well, of course, we had it tough! We used to have to get up out of the cardboard box in the middle of the night, and lick the road clean with our tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing cold gravel, work twenty-four hours a day at mill for four pence every six years, and when we got home, our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife!
Eric: Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and pay mill-owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!
Michael: Oh, ay. And you try and tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to round up my chauffer and have him drive me in my golden car down to the market to fetch more free caviar and champagne. God bless the United States of America.

Ron O

Never??? Wow are you Ms. Cleo?

Troy H

Germany is a socialist country. Over there, you pay, give or take, 50% more taxes than a comparably paid American worker. A driver's license doesn't cost $24 for 5 years, it costs hundreds of dollars per year. A registration doesn't cost $36 dollars a year, it costs like a California plate does, but for everyone in the whole country. Furthermore, the autobahn is part of Germany's national identity, a huge part in fact. If you asked a German what the most important thing in Germany was, he'd either answer the Black Forest or the Autobahn. How many Americans do you think would name the Interstate Highway System as the cultural icon of America?

Until Americans become willing to pay for a truly beautiful and well-built highway system, we'll forever be stuck with what we've got now.