Mr. Gallant has met Mr. Brown before.

Brown: Good afternoon, Mr. Gallant. I’m Jack, Jack Brown.
Gallant: Good afternoon. So you are Mr. eh...
Brown: Brown.
Gallant: Oh, sure. Ah, I’m afraid I’m old.
Brown: Oh, no, you’re not. What a nice garden you have here!
Gallant: Yes, it is beautiful. Thank you. Why not have a seat?
Brown: Thank you.
Gallant: Tea or coffee?
Brown: I think I prefer tea.
Gallant: So, you want to know something about the changes happed here in the past decades.
Brown: Yes. Few people living here know as much as you do nowadays.
Gallant: Well...many of the old dwellers have moved away because of the changes that have happened here. You know, this beach used to be a lot less crowded then.
Brown: When did you move here?
Gallant: Mm...1933, right after the Crisis when my father lost his job.
Brown: What was your father then, Mr. Gallant?
Gallant: He worked in a factory.
Brown: Why did your father chose here, by the way?
Gallant: I don’t know for sure. Probably he couldn’t find a job elsewhere.
Brown: That’s reasonable. Is this the house that you first moved in?
Gallant: Yes. We built it all by ourselves. Nice house it is.
Brown: I would also say so.
Gallant: I remember I used to sit here all alone and watch the waves shining and the sun go down. It was very quiet, very peaceful—no transistor radios playing rock music, no traffic noise, no jet planes shrieking.
Brown: It must be very enjoyable living in such an environment.
Gallant: You bet. In those days, all you could hear were the waves coming into shore. It used to be a lot cleaner too.
Brown: You mean the water？
Gallant: The beach as well. You didn’t see any cans or bottles of junk like that—just some pieces of wood from the sea.
Brown: How about the town?
Gallant: The town was different too. Of course, it was a lot smaller then. There were some shops, and a few banks, and a movie theater, and that’s about all. You didn’t have all these fancy hotels and stores back then.
Brown: But I saw many buildings along the shore when I drove here.
Gallant: They were newly built in the past decades. In those days when I was young, there were no apartment buildings. Most people lived in small wooden houses, painted all white and pretty.
Brown: When did all that happen?
Gallant: All that changed after the war. Soldiers who were based here came back and settled down. They started to raise their families and the population grew. And then the tourists started coming.
Brown: When was that?
Gallant: Early seventies if I remember right. More and more every year. That’s when they began to build all those hotels here—each one bigger than the next. All of them like monsters looking out to sea and waiting for the next planeload of tourists.
Brown: But tourism has brought economic progress with it?
Gallant: Of course, tourist money meant more jobs, but it also meant more roads, more cars, more pollution, and higher prices. Have you been to the supermarket? Have you checked out the prices? Did you know that we have the highest food prices in the U.S.?
Brown: I didn’t know that.
Gallant: Well, that is not all. We’ ye also got the highest housing costs. You certainly have looked in the newspaper. It’s unbelievable. An average person just can’t buy a house here any more. You have to be a millionaire. While you call this progress, I would call it changes. Well, you can have it, progress I mean. I’ll take the good old days, without changes.
Brown: Yeah, many people enjoy the past a lot more than they do the present. One more question, by the way, where did your family move here from?
Gallant: From Utah, near Salt Lake City.
Blown: Why didn’t your father join the war?
Gallant: He was not healthy enough for that.
Brown: It’s been very nice talking to you, Mr. Gallant.
Gallant: Nice to talk to you too.
Brown: You won’t urge me to publish this interview, will you?
Gallant: No, no. But I look forward to reading it.
Brown: Thank you. Good-bye.
Gallant: Bye.