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Our View: One glass ceiling down, more to go

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Luzerne County Council Election Inquiry Committee wrapping up recommendations

There was this time when Dick Tracy threw a party and &#8211; unbelievably &mdash; all the bad guys he&rsquo;d battled over the years showed up at the station house with gifts.
				The maniacal killer Flattop Jones, a neatly wrapped package under his arm. was rubbing shoulders with Tracy and his partner Pat Patton. The Mole and Flyface were in the crowd, while Tracy&rsquo;s gal Tess Trueheart looked on adoringly.
				I was doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles 70-some years ago, but that scene drawn from the cast of the mega-popular Dick Tracy comic strip was my favorite. The puzzle was big and colorful, with lots of pieces &#8211; not too hard, but not too easy either. It was enough to keep parent and child busy for an entire evening.
				Believe it or not, there was a time when simple pleasures like putting the Dick Tracy puzzle together was a common way of families occupying themselves, having fun and bonding.
				In a time when frustration is high because so many of our usual haunts are shuttered, perhaps there&rsquo;s a lesson in remembering this past era. Let&rsquo;s look at some of the ways we once occupied ourselves in the evening.
				Model building: Does anyone today spend hour after hour, evening after evening painstakingly putting together railroad engines, clipper ships, antique cars and World War II aircraft? The patience of model craftsmen, who bought their kits and microscopic tools at hobby shops, amazed me. The railroaders in particular were self-taught wizards of carpentry and electricity.
				Board games: Mid-20th century was the golden era of parcheesi, backgammon and a host of other pastimes. These games were designed to be played by adults and kids old enough to learn the rules, which meant that they served entire families as evening entertainment. In time, the young folks would themselves grow into sage wizards of checkers and chess.
				Making music: In generations past, nearly every living room held a piano and nearly every family had at least one member who could play well enough to get a musicale going. In our case, my mother was quite good at the keyboard, while my father could coax jaunty tunes out of an accordion. Since we knew the words to all the traditional songs, we&rsquo;d spend a happy evening listening and singing at our very own concert hall.
				Visiting: Do families visit one another&rsquo;s homes these days? At one time it was common for relatives, co-workers and people who just plain liked one another to cluster in neighborhoods, a practice that promoted togetherness. Adults could settle the problems of the world, exchange recipes or speculate on what those dang UFOs might be. Card playing (Canasta was a favorite) bonded many couples. Today, I think, your neighbor might be a Uranian and you&rsquo;d never know it.
				Mass media: The old photos you see of entire families clustered around a floor model radio or black and white television were not fantasy. That&rsquo;s the way households entertained themselves in the evening &#8211; young and old listening to or watching the same shows. The generation gap is more a product of a later age, when TV channels multiplied, cable grew common and TV entrepreneurs began to target sub-audiences via platforms.
				You can&rsquo;t recapture the past? Maybe you can. To refresh my memory, I searched online for an image of the old Dick Tracy puzzle I&rsquo;d enjoyed. Suddenly there it was, selling for $33. Sounds a bit steep, but &#8230; Flattop, Mole, Flyface &#8211; advise me. Would passing it up be a crime?

Remember When: Oh, how we amused ourselves at home