Some things were better then- the music, the way people dressed, the lack of patriotic correctness (we didn’t sit around gushing "the troops…the troops… oh my God…the troops the troops) . Childhood was better, we played baseball outside all day in the summer, got plenty of exercise and made up our own teams and dealt with disagreements on who was safe or out. When your favorite college team was on TV it was a big deal. We had political disagreements but at least we all agreed on what the facts were. There was more opportunity, one could walk out of high school and into a factory, get a well-paying job, and support a family and put the kids through school.
Some things are obviously better now. We are far more accepting of minorities and gays, though we still have a way to go. Cars are built better, safer, and last longer. Medicine is infinitely better. Televisions are far superior though at times the programming is not.
All things considered, I’d love to go back in time for a visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
With the patriotism, wouldn’t it depend on when you grew up? I would imagine someone people were far more patriotic say in the 30’s-50s than say through the 60s-70s, I could be wrong though. Not saying I disagree with you, I’m only 29, just looking for perspective.
I grew up in the 1960s with the Vietnam protests. I think a healthy skepticism of what your country is doing is a good thing. Nowadays, oh my God the troops can do no wrong- in my opinion an unhealthy attitude.
That is because a lot of the Vietnam protesters were irrational dicks who took their grievances regarding foreign policy out on the troops themselves many of which were draftees (or at least that is the general perception). The reason so many people go overboard today to support and celebrate the troops are a direct effect of what you see as healthy.
I think you missed the most common reason we over-rate the past - it’s what we grew up with, so it’s what we think is right. Being able to play outside from dawn to dusk is better that 57 channels when there’s nothing on. Weirdos flashing you in the woods is no big thing if you can run away. Boxing a kid’s ears is probably less damaging that carefully designed ‘play dates’ and selecting a pre-school designed to get the kid into the appropriate ivy league …
OTOH, you are dead right about being the end of the baby boom. Blue collar middle class instead of white collar poverty; education, vaccines, social conscience, safe sex (STDs or pregnancy), personal privacy, … wait, how is life better now?
It certainly would have mattered where you grew up. I grew up in West Texas, and the locals all waxed poetic – or at least what passed as poetic among rednecks – about our boys in Vietnam saving the world from the “godless gooks.” And the troops themselves? Older brothers of friends would come back and laughingly regale us with tales of how many “gooks” they killed. Anti-war sentiment? None where I was. If there was any, it was kept well hidden for the holder’s own good, but I’d be surprised if there had been any, let alone much. The troops could do no wrong. This was in the 1960s, not 2000s.
As for kids playing outside from morning to night without their parents knowing where they were, when and where did you do this? I sure didn’t, but then again, I grew up in a big city.
About 10 years ago, PBS aired a British TV series called “The 1900 House”. A family lived in a reproduction of a 1900-era house, with the according lifestyle, for several months. The father was in the military, and he had to have a uniform made because they couldn’t find a period uniform that would fit him; he was significantly over 6 feet tall. At one point, the mother needed some dental work, and went to a dentist who had a collection of antique dental equipment. She had a choice between the modern drill and the foot-powered one; she chose the modern tools. They also chose to use modern feminine hygiene products.
And the most telling thing was this: the family had 5 kids, including identical twins. A narrator, doing commentary on life then and now, said, “In 1900, it would be very unlikely for all 5 children to still be alive.”
That’s probably the difference. I grew up in KY during the 60s and 70s and yeah, during the summer we headed out after breakfast and tried to get back for dinner. We were in the woods climbing trees, playing near train tracks, and various other things that were dangerous in hindsight, even worse when we got dirt bikes and mopeds.
I spent a week in the hospital with it. Was barely able to get up to use the bathroom, the stuff is no joke. I was in my mid-20s, I can’t imagine what it would do to someone elderly or very young. There is a Pneumonia Vaccine that they reccommend to the elderly or other factors.
I grew up in the 1980s in suburban England. I still live in the same house, so I have a pretty good basis for comparison.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have much money, we ate rather crappy food (frozen pizzas, sugary cereals, etc etc), and I recall that power cuts were a fairly regular feature. Looking back at photos, everything seems rather drab, too - drab colours, drab fashions, drab decor.
I played outside with my friends - we didn’t often disappear all day, but from a fairly early age I could go off for hours at a time as long as my parents knew roughly who I was with. But kids today still do that. I just don’t buy all this “kids today don’t play outside” nonsense; it simply isn’t true. Now I’m the homeowner getting pissed off with footballs coming into my garden, or being kicked against the fence, just like I was the annoying kid 25 or 30 years ago.
Now, although we still live in the same house, it is much more comfortable - better furniture, better heating, a kitchen and bathroom that don’t suck, etc etc, and I have enough disposable income that we can eat nice food, drink wine etc (I don’t recall my parents ever being able to do that except on special occasions; my dad had the occasional can of light ale at the weekend).
The town itself has suffered, though. Several small shops have closed. I don’t know nearly as many of my neighbours as my parents did when they lived here - although that is improving since we had a daughter and so meet people through children’s activities etc. Public transport has got worse. As a teenager I used to be able to get a bus all the way to London from my little hometown. Now there aren’t even that many buses to the next town over.
I think people kind of over-romanticize working in factories. I did some temp work in factories and warehouses when I was in college. I thought it was terrible. Having to stand at a machine or station all day. It was usually hot, noisy and dangerous. The people who worked in them were mostly uneducated. And I have a hard time believing that any of them paid “well”, even back in the day.
You don’t really know when your growing up about what your going through.
Take American Graffiti for example … why is it such a great film capturing a moment in history that many have been through from graduating from high school going on to college or joining the military, having a date, having a date get in the back seat, drinking, smoking, drag racing?
You can redo those memories from the fifties to the nineties that include all of the above.
You don’t know your going through something till your going through something. Yes I love the late fifties and early sixties full of great memories, but now I am old and you can’t go back.
All that’s left is the movie American Graffiti and the oldies but goodies of Wolfman Jack. I grew up in Southern California by the way.
My father grew up in small town Indiana where the biggest employer was ACDelco. It was customary to get a job there right out of high school and pull in a respectable middle-class salary. No, you weren’t going to send your kids to Exeter. But you were guaranteed the trappings of “success”. A nice house with a yard for the kids to play in. A brand new car. Vacations. Stuff that seemed very impressive to my father and his siblings since they’d grown up very poor.
He felt the tug to work there instead of going to college. What’s the point of going to college to get a middle-class job when you have one waiting for you down the street? But he went to college because his mother made him (the war was also good motivator). He just tried not to be jealous of his friends, who must have thought he was some kind of sucker.
It took him a good fifteen years of working in education before his salary matched his sister’s–the sister who worked at the factory. He surpassed her by leagues shortly after that, but still. I imagine that up to that point, he thought he had indeed been suckered.
Factory work is hard. But during the glory years of American manufacturing, most jobs were pretty awful. At least factory work was unionized and paid better. My aunt probably wouldn’t have been able to find a job somewhere else making that kind of money, not unless she’d gone to school and gotten out of town.
My dad worked in factories and was able to support a family of four by himself. However, he came home filthy, smelly, and very tired. Although he died basically of old age, he said a disproportionally large number of his co-workers died early of various types of cancer. He suspected the horrid fumes they breathed in all day had something to do with that.
My mother would have loved to go to college and develop a career. But her father not only didn’t help, he said he would disown any of his kids who were snooty enough to go to college and think they were better than he was. Back in the day there was certainly no equal opportunity for women.
