It’s obvious to anyone that being a police officer in 2023 sure is a lot different than it might have been 50 years ago.

But just how different? The Wareham Police Department gave us some insight into that with a Facebook post Monday evening.

Shared to the department’s official Facebook page was a copy of the text of the police log from 50 years ago – April 17, 1973.

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The day started out quiet, with the first entry noting that one of the portable radios had not been recharged by the night shift. Considering how long those things took to charge, there was probably a pretty good reprimand for that.

Other entries noted things like a portion of Martin Street being closed down for a few days, and “a blue van will be recruiting paper boys.”

Can you imagine how much people would freak out these days if a van was driving up and down the streets of Wareham, looking for young boys? And rightly so.

Other calls ran from the mediocre – escorting staff from Angelo’s supermarket (that was the precursor to Stop & Shop, kids) to the bank, a barking dog, a strange man in the doorway – to a life-saving effort when a detective and the chief of police teamed to save three small children in a rowboat that had drifted away from shore.

Speaking of kids, how about the guy who called the cops because some kids were “digging up the yard of a house?” If this happened in 2023, he would have taken it to the Wareham Matters Facebook group first and posted something like, “Parents need to control their kids, we don’t need them digging up yards” while someone would immediately respond, “At least they’re outside and not inside with their faces stuck to a screen,” or something like that.

A few of the calls are distinctly 1970s, though. Someone stole an eight-track player from a vehicle? They probably did you a favor. Those things never worked right.

I do hope, though, that the woman who reported her 1972 Nova taken from her home ended up getting her car back. Those are pretty cool cars. They even got radio legend Casey Kasem to voice the commercial.

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