David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Aug. 5, 2003

The Golden Age of the buggy boy has long since passed

Back in my day ...

Oh, wait, that's a horrible way to start off a column. "Back in my day ..." is what old people say. It usually precedes a story about going to the movies, buying some popcorn, a large Coke and a chocolate bar -- all for a nickel, and still having change left over to refinance your house on the way home. Of course, the trip to the movie theater an 11-mile hike. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways. Barefoot. There were many a hardship back in their day.

Well, back in my day, the hardship was, shall we say, relative. Back in my day, I had to push buggies by hand. In the heat. On the blacktop. While wearing long pants. With a tie on! I'm amazed I survived to tell the tale.

Buggy boys today? Ha! They don't know the first thing about sweat, sacrifice and the proud buggy-boy tradition.

Indeed I was a buggy boy, and things were rough "back in my day." The year was 1987, methinks, and it was a different time -- a time of upheaval and drama. Jim Bakker provided Johnny Carson with endless material. The Supreme Court changed the landscape of Rotary Clubs everywhere by ruling that they must admit women. We are learned what a Contra was. Johnny Depp gets his start on "21 Jump Street," and we all enjoyed a much-needed laugh as biking shorts were all the rage. Yes, it was a magical, wondrous time.

It also was the year that I was a buggy boy at Target in West Knoxville. In those trying days, there was but one Target out west, and Wal-Mart had yet to gain a foothold in our tumultuous little burg. My "official" job was cashier, but often I was asked to roundup the buggies from the parking lot's buggy corrals.

Back in my day, guys working at Target had to wear ties. We didn't want to, believe me. No 17-year-old boy in the Western Hemisphere wears a tie by choice, and I can tell you from personal conviction that 17-year-old buggy boys really don't like to wear ties. Ties are bad enough in and of themselves, but when you're pushing 30 carts through a parking lot with Cadillac-driving little old ladies bearing down on you, it can be a real test of character.

It was the '80s, remember? Style over substance -- it was better to look good than to feel good, right Fernando?

From September until May, life as a tie-wearing, Cadillac-dodging buggy boy wasn't too bad. Summer, my friend, was another issue. I may have looked good, but I sure didn't feel good. Retail store parking lots were littered with the corpses of buggy boys who fought the good fight. Many times the boys were found in the late stages of rigor mortis, their stiffened hands still clutching their ties in an hapless attempt to save themselves. For the ladies in the Caddies, they were just additional speedbumps.

Fast-forward 16 years and what do my wandering eyes see? Buggy boys strolling through parking lots wearing shorts, cutoff T-shirts and, of course, no ties! In 2003, apparently it's better to feel good than to look good. And if that weren't enough, today's buggy boys don't even push the carts back to the store. They use pantywaist, motorized buggy-pullers that tug 50, 60, 70 buggies at a time, with little or no buggy-boy effort. My oh my, has the proud buggy-boy tradition taken a hit. Back in my day ... well, never mind.

No wonder obesity is at record levels in this country. Even the buggy boys don't get a decent workout anymore.

I predict that within the next 25 years the buggy boy will be extinct. Somehow, some way, the buggies will return to the store like magic. Perhaps the buggies of tomorrow will use radio-controlled homing devices, or maybe they'll be GPS-guided. Better yet, maybe the buggies will get sucked down to an underground tube like a bowling ball and roll off a conveyor belt in the store.

However the buggies find their way, you can bet old-school buggy boys like me will have a special place in their hearts for the good ol' days when boys were boys, buggies were buggies, and the ties restricted your flow of oxygen.

For me, 1987 was the Golden Age of the buggy boy.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.