My dwindling cohort – Memories from Anonymous
For those of us who were born in the depression and early world war II years this essay, author unknown (from a google search,possibly Ted Nugent -https://m.facebook.com/tednugent/posts/10154501062527297), forwarded to me from my sister in law is a memory jogger. I grew up in the era, and have both fond memories and permanent scars. If only I could pick and choose what to bring forward!
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> Children of “The Greatest Generation”
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> Born in the 1930s and early 40s, we exist as a very special age cohort. We
> are the Silent Generation. We are the smallest number of children born since
> the early 1900s. We are the “last ones.”
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> We are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember
> the winds of war and the impact of a world at war which rattled the
> structure of our daily lives for years.
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> We are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to
> shoes to stoves.
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> We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.
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> We hand mixed white stuff with yellow stuff to make fake butter.
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> We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available.
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> We can remember milk being delivered to our house early in the morning and
> placed in the milk box on the porch. [A friend’s mother delivered milk in a
> horse-drawn cart.]
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> We are the last to hear Roosevelt’s radio assurances and to see gold stars
> in the front windows of our grieving neighbors.
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> We can also remember the parades on August 15, 1945, VJ Day.
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> We saw the “boys” home from the war build their Cape Cod style houses,
> pouring the cellar, tar papering it over and living there until they could
> afford the time and money to build it out.
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> We are the last generation who spent childhood without television. Instead
> we imagined what we heard on the radio. As we all like to brag, with no TV,
> we spent our childhood “playing outside until the street lights came on.”
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> We did play outside and we did play on our own. There was no Little League.
> There was no city playground for kids. To play in the water, we turned the
> fire hydrants on and ran through the spray.
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> The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had
> little real understanding of what the world was like. Our Saturday
> afternoons, if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the Holocaust
> sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.
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> Telephones were one to a house, often shared and hung on the wall. Computers
> were called calculators and were hand cranked. Typewriters were driven by
> pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon.
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> The Internet and Google were words that didn’t exist. Newspapers and
> magazines were written for adults. We are the last group who had to find out
> for ourselves.
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> As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth. The G.I. Bill gave
> returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to
> grow. VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent-up demand coupled with new
> installment payment plans put factories to work.
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> New highways would bring jobs and mobility. The veterans joined civic clubs
> and became active in politics. In the late 40s and early 50s the country
> seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order as it gave birth to
> its new middle class (which became known as Baby Boomers).
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> The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands of stations. The
> telephone started to become a common method of communications and “Faxes”
> sent hard copy around the world.
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> Our parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the
> war and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never
> imagined.
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> We weren’t neglected but we weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus. They
> were glad we played by ourselves “until the street lights came on.’” They
> were busy discovering the post war world.
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> Most of us had no life plan, but with the unexpected virtue of ignorance and
> an economic rising tide we simply stepped into the world and started to find
> out what the world was about.
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> We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity, a world where we
> were welcomed. Based on our naïve belief that there was more where this came
> from, we shaped life as we went.
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> We enjoyed a luxury. We felt secure in our future. Of course, just as today,
> not all Americans shared in this experience. Depression poverty was deep
> rooted.
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> Polio was still a crippler.
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> The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 50s, and by mid-decade,
> school children were ducking under desks.
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> Russia built the Iron Curtin and China became Red China.
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> Eisenhower sent the first “advisors” to Vietnam, and years later, Johnson
> invented a war there.
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> Castro set up camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.
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> We are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no
> existential threats to our homeland. We came of age in the 40s and early
> 50s. The war was over and the Cold War, terrorism, Martin Luther King, civil
> rights, technological upheaval, global warming, and perpetual economic
> insecurity had yet to haunt life with insistent unease.
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> Only our generation can remember both a time of apocalyptic war and a time
> when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. We have
> lived through both.
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> We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting
> better, not worse.
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> We are the Silent Generation, “the last ones.”
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> Author unknown
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> The last of us was born in 1942, more than 99.9% of us are either retired or
> dead, and all of us believe we grew up in the best of times!