Once upon a time in America -- when the world was young, the air was clean, the moon was blue, and kids drank water straight from the hose on hot summer days -- we were really something.

OK, maybe it was all a dream our grandparents told us. We all remember the stories, the tales, the fables. There were stories, back then, of a "made in America" America, when it was always summer, where boys home from France sat in their khaki suits at player pianos in the parlor and tinkled out "Moonlight On The Wabash," and when girls only had one beau and probably married him.

Maybe it was just a movie I saw once.

So there I was, standing in the shower in a Boston hotel with shampoo water running down my face, and I looked up and saw a symbol of a country changed and a world gone mad: There were no shower rings on the curtain. There was a tiny sign sewed to the inside that read "Shower Ring-Free Curtain." Yeah, like "sugar free" or "fat free." Only this has bitter consequences.

So I went down to the bar before dinner and had my maximum allowance of three glasses of fine merlot and sat staring into space. No curtain rings.

Into the second glass of fine merlot, I began to imagine this Midwestern landscape, a small town on a picturesque river with trees full of cicadas and bushes full of crickets. Maybe this was once a town that prided itself on making the finest wooden shower rings in America, and then even when things went bad, turned to plastic rings. But still, they made them and we all used them.

Maybe they even exported them, and some poor German or Italian person had to spend 30 minutes, as I have, trying to link them into those small holes and cursed this small town in America for making them.

Maybe you had a relative or knew someone in the army, back then, who came from a town like that and bragged about how they were famous for making shower rings. I'll bet they had annual "Shower Ring Days," when all the guys from the factory would bring their families to picnics with barbecues, ring-tossing games and even "Miss Shower Ring" competitions. Some lucky girl, way back then, might have started her career as "Miss Shower Ring" and worked it into a brief career in Hollywood before coming back home brokenhearted and marrying the owner, the "Shower Ring King," of this town. What's wrong with that?

Some stories do have happy endings, but this one doesn't.

This is the story of an America that was once full of little towns like this, towns that were famous for making Popsicle sticks or toothpicks, hairbrushes and quality shirts, the kind you saw on movie stars sitting on bar stools with other movie stars.

Now you're probably hanging out your husband's shirts that were made in Singapore, using clothespins made in an alley factory somewhere in China.

Sure, you've heard this story a thousand times on every channel's news hour and on page 23 of every newspaper, and you remember when it used to be on Page One. I'm not selling breaking news here.

If you're looking for Barack or Hillary or John to give you a solution to this problem anytime soon, forget about it. They have bigger fish to fry.

And that spatula they're using to flip the sand dabs with?

There was once a town on a picturesque river long, long ago, that was known as the spatula capital of America. Some stories have a happy ending, but don't think this one will.

J.P. Devine, a freelance writer, lives in Waterville.