THIS IS LIKE WALKING BACK IN TIME FOR ME….A REAL NOSTALGIA TRIP. OUR KIDS PROBABLY CANNOT RELATE AT ALL TO ANY OF THIS. IT WAS A GREAT ERA TO BE BORN INTO.This special group was born between 1930 & 1946…..a 16 year span.In 2022, their age range is between 76 and 92.You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900’s.You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.You saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into tin cans.You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.Discipline was enforced by parents and teachers.You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio.With no TV, you spent your childhood “playing outside”.There was no Little League.There was no city playgrounds for kids.The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.[I don’t believe that – we read the newspapers and listened to the radio news, which provided a far more rigorous, unbiased view of world events than the MSM does today! We were well-informed, IMHO]
We got black+white TV in the late 40s that had 3 stations and no remote.Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines), and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked.Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon.‘INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening. (your dad would give you the comic pages when he read the news)New highways would bring jobs and mobility. Most highways were 2 lanes (no interstates).You went downtown to shop.You walked to school.The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into working hard to make a living for their families.You weren’t neglected, but you weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus.They were glad you played by yourselves.They were busy discovering the postwar world.You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves.You felt secure in your future, although the depression and poverty were deeply remembered.Polio was still a crippler. Everyone knew someone who had it.You came of age in the ’50s and ‘60s.You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.World War II was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life.Only your generation can remember a time after WW2 when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better.More than 99% of you are retired now, and you should feel privileged to have “lived in the best of times!”If you have already reached the age of 80 years old, you have outlived 99% of all the other people currently in the world!“You are a 1% ‘er”!
