John Railey: Maybe 'The Good Old Days' are now

I've just returned from a trip back in time.

Like always, I went back to my rural Virginia hometown for Christmas, visiting with my mom and the rest of my family, sleeping soundly in the house my grandfather built and thumbing through yellowed newspapers that my late father carefully saved for me. My nostalgia was heightened this year by a book my wife gave me, Chris Matthews' "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero."

Matthews, the MSNBC TV show host, is obviously a Kennedy admirer, though he doesn't overlook Kennedy's womanizing and other faults. But Matthews, drawing from lengthy conversations over the years with those who knew the assassinated president, achieves his goal of letting the reader know what Kennedy was really like, and why he appealed so strongly to my parents and so many others. He'd served in the South Pacific during World War II, just as my father had. And Kennedy was a war hero, a tycoon's son who'd proved his own mettle by putting the lives of his crew members above his own after a Japanese destroyer split in half the PT boat that Lt. Kennedy commanded.

Kennedy, Matthews also notes, was a bridge builder. The writer details something I'd never known, that Kennedy and Richard Nixon, both World War II veterans, had a grudging admiration for each other during their early years in Congress. Nixon won the vice presidency in 1952 and 1956 on the Eisenhower ticket. But in 1960, Kennedy beat Nixon for the presidency.

For me and, I suspect, many other baby boomers, the three years that the young Kennedy family had in the White House were great ones. So, for that matter, were the 1950s, a time when the World War II generation was making America the greatest nation on earth. The economy was booming. Democrats and Republicans, at least to a certain extent, worked together.

But take off the rose-colored glasses, and things weren't that great, as others have noted.

We lived in fear that Russia would drop the big one on us. Remember fallout shelters? I remember them, and being shown movies in elementary school about what would happen in the event of nuclear war. I envisioned having to live years in some bunker underneath the smoldering earth, subsisting on stale saltines.

JFK got us further involved in Vietnam. Racism raged throughout the land — yes, in the North, too — in the 1950s and 1960s. Women were second-class citizens, too. Gay people, not even close to turning the handle on that closet door, lived their lives in fear that they'd be found out and exposed to massive ridicule or worse. Factories, barely checked, belted out poisons. We tossed trash out of our car windows with barely a thought. Drinking and driving were taking an enormous toll. Moderation for many men was keeping the beer count to a six-pack on a two-hour drive. Cigarette smoking was also a massive killer, and many doctors smoked in their offices. Most preventive medicine — colonoscopies and all the other practices and procedures that have saved so many lives and eased so much suffering — were a thing of the future. And after Kennedy's assassination, the nation still had to endure the assassinations of his brother Bobby and of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Not to mention enduring Watergate.

Contrast that to today. Nuclear war is not the threat it was in the 1950s, but conventional warring still rages worldwide. We still have racism to work through, but it's not the law of the land. Many Americans like the first black president and his young family, despite their vocal disagreements with his policies. Women share much of the power in our country. Gay people openly debate their critics on our pages and in countless other public forums. Environmental regulations are part of life, and only real low-lifes toss their trash into roadside ditches. We've got far more designated drivers than devastated drivers. New Year's resolutions to quit smoking are actually carried out, just as are ones to get that colonoscopy. As terrible as the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was, the widespread shock at it also underscored the fact that, thank God, our leaders seem safer today than ever before.

The economy certainly needs to get a lot better. And Republicans and Democrats need to stop cutting and running from each other.

But it could be a lot worse. Fifty years from now, China could be the No. 1 superpower and America could be No. 2, in large part because we didn't work together on education, economic development and other issues.

Maybe one day in 2062, my daughter will look back through the newspapers I left her and decide that the first years of the 21st century really were The Good Old Days.

Happy New Year.