That was then.....

Come, let us remember
The joys of the town,
Gay cars and bright buses
That go up and down.
Shop windows and playgrounds 
And swings in the park,
And street lamps that twinkle
In rows after dark.


This was the first line of a hymn that was very popular when it was written in the 1950's   It appeared in all the Children's hymnbooks used in schools and Sunday school.  In the extra you will see a chart showing the distribution of when it was used in books.


Then came a linguistic twist of fate!     It never was great poetry to say the least - but I don't feel all that comfortable that it should have been dropped just like that because of peoples' supposed - and not well justified - discomfort.  


(Blip is still acting strangely!    The Extra I was trying to, and failing to, upload showed a graph of the hymn steadily climbing in popularity till 1975, when the graph drops like a stone and dies. )