Recently, Michael Bell blogged about the "Mayberry" days, those sepia-toned memories of a time when doors were left unlocked and drunks cheerfully walked to the jail and locked themselves in instead of getting behind the wheel of a car and killing someone else.

He caught a lot of flak about it too, from those who know those good old days weren't that good, unless you were male, white, and in reasonably good physical and financial health.

That very night, on The Daily Show, the guest was the author of a book about that same tendency to look back on the "Good Old Days" wistfully. He called it "Naive nostalgia."

I can see both sides. I spend my summers, from the time I was 10 until I left for college, roaming the countryside (and often downtown Tullahoma) on my horse. I would never think of letting my own kids do that at that age.

We never locked our doors. The delivery man from the dairy opened our front door and left the milk and eggs in the foyer if we weren't home.

If we got caught getting into trouble, the local police officer chewed us out, took us home and watched while our parents chewed us out, instead of throwing us into theback of a patrol car and booking us. I got three licks from principals in high school -- and deserved every one of them.

In many ways, life was much better then.

And yet ... and yet ...

When I was in high school, despite the number of African Americans also attending, and despite the fact that I played basketball with many of them, we weren't friends. The two groups simply didn't hang out together. Now, I see my sons hanging out with their friends, who include African Americans, Indians and Asians, and I'm thrilled that some things have changed.

In the medical world, I am very glad things have changed. Only a few years after my father died because of a blood clot, they discovered that something as simple as aspirin could have saved his life. My husband took less time to recuperate from his 2007 triple bypass than my father did from his 1974 appendectomy.

I'm having an arteriogram Tuesday, where they will run a tiny catheter through my blood vessels to look for clots. If possible, they will open a clogged vessel on the spot with a stent.

And they will do this as outpatient surgery. I'll be home for supper.

Can you imagine them doing that in 1960s Mayberry?

The ideal sitution would be to preserve the best of the good old days and take them with us into a promising future.