If you were an outsider of this generation, what do you think your thoughts would be on how our culture is today?

The journalism class recently took a trip up to Nichols Village for a bit to talk to the residents about their life stories and thoughts on our culture today.

One man, by the name of “Art” (Arthur Milly), had a very bittersweet life story to tell. The interview started off with the story of how he met the love of his life. It was told that he was asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance early on by one of his friends, but when it came time for the night of the dance, the girl he was once asked by now had a boyfriend. So, Art was set up on a blind date with one of her friends. Little did he know that this girl would one day be his wife. After that night, he wanted to continue going on dates with her and as they continued going on dates they just fell more and more in love. But, soon after they got engaged, he got called into the air force for duty. He worked in the air force for a long 4 years and somewhere along that time he asked his fiancé to come out to England where his base camp was and marry him. Though he asked this question, he didn’t really think his fiancé would go all the way out to England just to get married. But, to his surprise, she did, and next thing he knew they were getting married right at his base camp in England.

These two people had the time of their life after they got married, traveling the world and going on wonderous adventures with their 4 kids. Now, “the nest is empty” and all of their kids have grown up, but they are blessed with 8 grandchildren.

Sadly, Art’s wife passed away 6 years ago. She was a resident of Nichols Village with her husband up until her death. She is missed dearly, but Art looks on the bright side, realizing that he had done everything on his bucket list with his wife and likes to think she left him in a good place. He thoroughly enjoys living independently at Nichols Village and even has his own shop in his condo where he can work on projects and making things for the other fellow residents.

After talking about his life, we started to talk about today and I got some interesting thoughts from Art about people and culture today. One of the first topics was drugs and alcohol. He didn’t recall these two things ever being an issue when he was in high school, but now, as many of us know, it’s a pretty big issue among teens today. As Art continued talking, he kept mentioning how it’s not smart that people do drugs and alcohol, he claims “it’s a waste of life”. He strongly believes that teens should just be enjoying life with the time they have and not making bad choices.

Another interesting topic was the way people dress today. Apparently, Art doesn’t really see a difference in the way people dress today from back when he was younger, but he has noticed some change in how ladies dress. “They definitely don’t hide anything nowadays.” he said. Following that response he also added “Teenagers will be teenagers.” But, though teenagers will be teenagers, there is a fine line between dressing appropriate and then crossing the line.

It was very interesting when the topic of music and culture came up. Because Art talked about how he isn’t really into music. Though he does enjoy listening to it when it’s played, he is unable to play an instrument himself. It was also fascinating to talk about phones and technology. He talked about how there never were iphones or texting back in the day and that he isn’t really into the whole electronic era. He was extremely fascinated when one time him and his son skyped his daughter who is in the South. This was a new experience and opened his eyes to the technological world we have become.