By Billy “Kneecap” Braddock

Here I am getting excited about the upcoming Daytona Bike Week. Who wouldn’t be excited with approximately 500,000 bikers coming to their neighborhood for a rally that includes motorcycle racing, concerts, parties, and street festivals? The rally started back in 1937 but took a break between 1942 to 1947 because of World War II. I must admit I haven’t been to all of them but I did make many.

I started thinking, “Oh My God”, I made it, and according to today’s standards I shouldn’t have. Things have changed dramatically since I was a kid. I realize life has an expiration date, but I guess mine is longer than the one on my milk carton.

When I was growing up we didn’t have child car seats or airbags. The thing that protected you from going through the windshield was your mother’s outstretched arm across your chest. When one of your classmates died, you dealt with it. The school didn’t send in “grief counselors”. ADHD wasn’t heard of and kids were not given Mind Altering Drugs. Nobody cared about your “self-esteem”. If you failed you learned to deal with the consequences. Not everybody made the team. This had a way of making you stronger. I ate eggs fried in bacon grease. The biscuits, pie crusts, and fried foods were made using lard. Spam came out of a can, not in your e-mail. Come to think of it, we didn’t have the Internet, computers, cell phones, Xboxs, play stations, tablets or television with limitless channels. We had real friends and real books not a thing called Facebook. We even got into fights with other kids, even our friends. We’d end up with bruises, scrapes, cuts, and sometimes even broken bones. I rode horses, went hunting when I was 10 with a real gun, and drove a pickup long before I was old enough to get a license. I was spanked by my parents and the teachers at school when I needed it. Of course, I would never tell my folks that I got my butt spanked at school because I knew they’d whip my ass again. That did teach me something. It was called “respect”. I carried rifles and shotguns in my pickup and I never remember hearing about killings in our schools. The “Pledge of Allegiance” started my school day. I didn’t even lock the doors of my house or my pickup. I do believe it was a safer time and never worried about going out after dark. There were bad things and good things but we didn’t need the government to tell us what was right or wrong. The 10 Commandments told me. I was not Politically Correct, because I wasn’t afraid to say what I felt and thought. On second thought, maybe it was all the lead-based paint that I chewed off the windowsills that led me to be able to write this column.

When we have a meeting of the minds, mine has a tendency not to show up.
Read more from my website nobodiesopinion.com

See you on the shiny side up tomorrow…