Nostalgia Freaks- Post Cards from When it Was a Man's World
If you're reading this, and you're a member of SRP, odds are good that like me, you're a nostalgia freak. I mean lets be honest, we are for the most part a bunch of guys who get a kick out of shaving the way our great grandfathers did (just because it's manly and waay cool). Discussions of men's hats, pipes, cigars, snuff, liquor, beer and other things generally considered retro (i.e. moustache wax, classic aftershaves and soaps) are common place.
Also like me, many of you are nostalgic for times you never knew and have no real frame of reference for. In short we are nostalgic for times few of us ever actually lived in. I recently watched the movie Tombstone. Back then it was CLEARLY a man's world. Almost everyone had a huge cheesy moustache, men pretty much did as they pleased (which normally involved large quantities of alcoholic beverages, gambling and wreckless discharge of firearms ) without much regard to what women thought and women, of course were obliged to do women stuff which back then wasn't very cool at all. Now, I'm certainly not advocating a return to such a lopsided world (i.e. men had all the money and all the fun) I'm just sayin' back then it was a man's world and today it seems more...well...effeminate (is that the word for a world where a man can't have back hair, exfoliates, and is expected to be sensitive and require tissues for watching movies on Lifetime?) So I decided to take my research further and indeed it would seem that even up until fairly recently it was a man's world. Could modern men get away with any of this?
Would you like the chicks to really dig you? Well, all you really need to do is blow cigar smoke in their faces.
http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/v...cigarsmoke.jpg
Any guy sharing a house with a modern woman knows of a few immutable facts. First, you have to cater to them. Second, few of them have cheap tastes and third, any season or holiday that requires you to buy a present for your woman is an absolute nightmare. Apparently our grandpas didn't have that problem:
http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/v...dGI/giftcl.jpg
http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/v...dGI/Vacuum.jpg
http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/v...I/beeropen.jpg
Now, I can't speak for everyone, and the fetching Mrs. GI is probably as reasonable as any woman out there and has a decent sense of humor BUT if she ever got a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, I'm pretty sure she'd jam it up my arse and have a puppet show for the neighborhood kids shortly there afterwards.
These days, a woman's comfort means everything. Back then apparently as important as it ever got was keeping them from infringing on men's good times. Case and point:
http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/v...ldGI/midol.jpg
And finally, I came across this gem and started to wonder if this explained why so many of us are fond of the occassional after work cerveza:
http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/v...stfeedbeer.jpg