The backward-looking Glance

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: I'm not very nostalgic. Are you? I believe in "Move on, people."

RN: Come on, at your advanced age, I suspect that you have a few soft-focus, rose-tinted memories to which you cling.

CP: Sure, there are things I miss. More of them, in fact, with each passing day. The Watergate hearings, for instance. Politics in 1973 were both more decorous and more outrageous. Who's our Sen. Sam Ervin today? No one, that's who.

RN: And well-groomed male eyebrows everywhere are breathing a collective sigh of relief. What else?

CP: College, but not high school. Cassette tapes, but not vinyl LPs. Shinder's but not the Conservatory. Skiing but not skating.

RN: The Cooper Theater but not the Skyway Theatre. Dayton's but not Donaldsons. Red Owl but not Country Club. "As the World Turns" but not "Guiding Light."

RN: Then there's the thrill of seeing my first musical, I'll never get that back. For the record, it was "Annie Get Your Gun" at Park Center Senior High School in 1971.

CP: I would have reached for a gun if I had to see that. But your memories are dear to you, and I need to honor that.

RN: I long for the era when personal responsibility meant something. I was recently in a car accident, and I'm footing the bill for the repair to my car because the other driver -- the one at fault -- lied to his insurance carrier. "I can't afford it," he told me. As Sharron Angle would say, "Man up." My guess is that he was texting while driving.

CP: In the days before cell phones, it was rare to hear someone's banal, dull or outrageous and dysfunctional one-sided phone conversation. Put a cork in it, peeps.

RN: I miss the days when my parents would look at their offspring and bark, "Go outside and play," and we would, for hours, minus the tether of a phone, text or GPS connection. For all they knew, we had hopped a bus to Bridgeman's and were splitting a Lollapalooza.

RN: Please. We were so squeaky clean we could have been mistaken for Windex. I miss that, too. Anything else?

CP: My first boyfriend. And those packed Christmas parties you used to have at your old apartment. I could go on. But since I'm not nostalgic ...

RN: Certainly not, although riddle me this, Mr. Don't Look Back: Why is your Frigidaire plastered with photos of friends and family? That shot of your sister and her kids is adorable.

CP: It only takes a mini-magnet to hold a Precious Memory.