High Trust Society I love the snobby ring to that term. Very elitist. I grew up around dirtbag kids, scummy weirdos, freaks and fuck ups, during an era and in

High Trust Society I love the snobby ring to that term. Very elitist. I grew up around dirtbag kids, scummy weirdos, freaks and fuck ups, during an era and in a zone where people are still uncertain about what the effects from lead poisoning were, immediately prior to my childhood. I have older siblings with... stories. I look around now, and I have to admit, the world does not seem to be strewn with the human wreckage that existed prior to the crack epidemic that emerged in the 1980's, but I do remember what people were like back then. I really think leaded gasoline, coupled with alcoholism, drunk driving and many other drugs, ripped the banality of the 1950's to shreds, and scared the hell out of a lot of people, who still remember what that looked like. The world was not "safe" or anything that looked like it. People were scary. I'm not going to go into details, because HN winces to think of such things, but really, I could paint vivid pictures of the fears people have. I'll say this much, illicit gambling was rampant and normal in dens of vice, rendered an impenetrable haze of cigarette smoke that hung four feet off the ceiling, right down to the tops of the door jams. That gambling atmosphere was pervasive. Everyone just felt like the abandon of wagering it all, any old time was normal. Such was the case with so many freaks on the loose. Things aren't like that now. But it's not as far away as anyone would love to claim. Helicopter parents seem uptight, and relative to the world as it has been for but a pair of decades or less, they are. But a lot can happen in a single generation. We'll see how things go.