The Decline of Courtesy in American Society.

My part in this tragedy begins in the eighties. Not because I had not declined prior to then, but simply for the fact that I was a child. My siblings and I are the fifth generation to grew up in this town of fifteen thousand people. Barbara Mandrell was putting peanuts in her Coke, Eternal Flame was on the radio, I was on my bicycle roaming the streets of our small West Texas town. Cut off jeans, worn t-shirt, pony tail... I was a modern day Scout Fitch, following my older brother around as a lost duckling. There was no crime. Undoubtedly there was crime, but I was either too young to witness it or it was more minimal than anything that would later infiltrate my naive world. "The last town on the way out of the state", I pinpointed it to people later on after I had moved off to college in the city I could never dream of. Three major highways intersected at the hub of our town. I suppose if anyone ever got the notion to take me from the metal production I claimed as my own they would have been in one of the four neighboring states within hours.
We knew our neighbors, and their neighbors, and the people down the street. There were no strangers. Everyone waived at you on the highway, not just farmers and truck drivers. Slower traffic pulled to the shoulder so you could pass and be on your merry way. People in line let others cut if they hadn't many items or seemed hurried. My father shut our neighbors' door once when it blew open. My granddad and grandma would feed whomever was at their house at meal time and would always have enough. He sometimes would perform work for people and when they couldn't pay, he would accept payment in other forms. Sometimes services on his own land, sometimes sewing for my grandma... honesty was the best policy. It truly was a more simple time. There were no clerks that had to deal with people on cell phones. People held the door open and whomever was walking through would then say thank you. A man's word was his binding contract. No one was late. People weren't afraid to pick up hitchhikers and those broken down on the side of the road were only stranded till the next passerby came along. Who knew that the American culture would slowly slide?