Where have they gone?

Remember that Paula Cole song, "Where have all the cowboys gone?"  I listen to alot of GenX radio, so I hear it all the time.  Up until a couple of days ago it wasn't much more than a song I used like while I was washing dishing in the kitchen.  Then one day I was figuratively slapped in the face.

As I was walking up to a store front there was an older man approaching from the opposite side of parking lot.  Since it turned out we were both headed into the same store, part of me prepared for him to open the door for me; not that I'm conceited, or I always expect better treatment than others, but because that would have been the gentlemanly thing for him to do.  That is simply how I was raised, with manners; and where I come from most people have them and know how to use them.  Now, I do try to hold an open mind, sometimes I hold doors open for my elders, man or woman, out of respect, I also will hold the door open for my husband because I love him.  And when anyone opens a door for me I will look them in the eye and thank them.  This man did none of the above.  I held the door for him, greeting him good morning and looked him in the eye.  He said nothing, not even a mumble (where in some parts of Texas is an acceptable form of communication), not even a head-nod.  That's not the part that went all over me, I can handle rude people, I just left it alone.  No, the part that pissed me off, when he jumped in line in front of two people at the counter.  One lady said nothing, presumably too stunned to speak, the other lady, who happened to be the first in line, said to the clerk "I was first" and gave the old man a dirty look.  That was when I decided that whatever it was I came in there for really wasn't that important, I left.

The whole thing got me thinking, thinking about some of the men I knew, my husband, my dad, my father and brother-in-law, my brothers, my best friends from high school.  Not a single one of them would have done that.  I think that they all have more respect for themselves as men than to do something like that.  And not to mention that they each have a wife who'd give them a good tongue lashing if they did, but even that is beyond the point.  I suppose my question is, where have they all gone?  And where are their mothers to smack them upside the head and tell to mind their manners like I do my kids?  It goes back to a basic fundamental I thought everyone were taught as children, when you disrepect others, you disrepect yourself.