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For those of us who grew up during that period, we were lucky enough to be born in the greatest times of America. We've experienced what it is like to be without today's novelties like TV, Computers, and cell phones, and we survived.

It wasn't a sad time because we didn't have those and other marvels, we never heard of them, so we didn't miss them.

I remember my Dad coming home with a new Ford, with factory installed turn signals...THAT was a biggie then.

I remember people laughing about that "useless" radio band called "FM"...it was only good for classical or "elevator" music.

I recall "Stereo" being a new and exciting way to listen to music. Record companies put out special Stereo "demo" records so we could hear the sound of a train moving from one speaker to the other, and jet plane sounds whizzing through the living room.

We we did finally get TV, it was a 7-inch, black and white screen that took 5 minutes to warm up before you got a picture, which was usually "rolling" or skewed beyond visibility.

Beer in cans had to be opened with a "church key", the puncture type can opener, as did the early "canned" sodas.

My mother did our clothes with an old wringer-type washing machine, and hung them on the clothesline to dry. My grandmother still boiled them in a big iron kettle in the backyard.

My grandmother lived 16 miles away, yet it was "long distance" to call her on our old dial telephone...and you had to go through the operator to make the call.

In our age group we are privileged to have seen all these moments in history and watch technology change from things our kids would find ancient, to the rise of digital age.

We are the ones who should be in a place to judge America's progression, or regression. We know how it was then without seeing it through the prism provided by some 25-year-old journalism graduate.

We KNOW what life was like under Eisenhower, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan...we don't have to read it in some revised history book. The media can't tell us that Reagan wasn't great, we lived the era and we know that things were much better under his watch.

We also sat in gas lines in the carter years and paid double-digit interest on everything. That is how we know where this obama administration is coming from, and where it's headed...we've lived it.

It's been said that the concept of history for most of us begins when we were born, everything before that is just what you read and hear from elders. For those of us who came along in the 40's, our concept of history is based on being there, not reading about it or making it up to suit our current purpose.

I think the late 40's and the 50's were just a brief moment of the real America, or it could have been because we were just happy, carefree kids, safe in our world with very few responsibilites.

Amen and amen!

AMEN! Kids played outside with their friends & their imagination...not on the couch with video games. We were healthier, too, with food from the backyard garden. Fresh tomatoes...yum!!

Sure we had the threat of the “Cold War”, but that’s what kept everyone in line. This country was strong then.