Posted on 10/06/2021 12:35:08 PM PDT by sodpoodle
This special group born between 1930 &1946 = 16 years.
In 2021, the age range is between 75 & 91. Are you, or do you know, someone "still here?"
Interesting Facts For You
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 which 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 saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" on the porch.
You are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.
You saw the 'boys' home from the war, build their little houses.
You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio.
With no TV until the 1950's, you spent your childhood "playing outside." There was no Little League.
There was no city playground for kids.
The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like
On Saturday mornings and afternoons, the movies gave you newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.
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 which did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening.
As you grew up, the country was exploding with growth.
The Government gave returning Veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.
Loans fanned a housing boom.
Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans opened many factories for work.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility.
The Veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.
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 exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
You weren't neglected, but you weren't today's all-consuming family focus.
They were glad you played by yourselves until the street lights came on.
They were busy discovering the post war world.
You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves and felt secure in your future though depression poverty was deeply remembered.
Polio was still a crippler.
You came of age in the 50's and 60's.
You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
The second world war was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.
Only your generation can remember both a time of great war, and a time 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...
You are "The Last Ones."
More than 99% of you are either retired or deceased, and you feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!"
Amen!
God Bless.
My parents are in this group. Mid eighties now.
Dang. Missed by a year.
There was LIFE magazine. And who thinks TV gives you any understanding of what the world is like?
My husband remembers the wooden wheels on his sister’s carriage because rubber went for war supplies.
Au Contraire...those kids had a FAR BETTER understanding of what the world really was like.
Your group had it harder than us but also easier. You had full company paid healthcare plans and generous retirement packages that enabled you to retire in your late 50’s or early 60’s.
Many of you have been on retirement longer than what you worked.
Many of you had jobs for life and never had to worry about offshoring or being replaced by Baboo from India
Young kids today will have it the hardest. Job uncertainty, high taxes and super intrusive govt. And loss of freedoms
I doubt that anyone born in the USA in 1946 remembers ration books.
Bookmark.....................
I remember someone knocking on our back door in the mid 1930s and asking if we could give him something to eat. Our cook gave him a sandwich of some sort, probably peanut butter.
Newspaper reporters did not quote the opinions of random citizens to support the particular narrative they were pushing.
What street lights?
My wife, our siblings and most of our cousins fall into this age group. Most of us are still alive. Covid and the delay in getting standard health care took out many of our friends and some relatives in the Covid wars.
We realize how fortunate we were and are.
Thanks for posting this.
Big US cars in the village streets near the local airport.
Rations of powdered egg in brown wax packs and orange juice in bottles...free milk at school in small glass bottles.
Being sent down to the village store to buy 3 pennyworth of broken biscuits.
Biro pens...and the messy machine in the village store to refill with blue ink.
Annual Christmas food parcel from rich uncle in Australia.
And interesting fact is that people didn't make many babies during the Great Depression because they couldn't afford to raise them (no welfare, no abortion). There were obvious exceptions (i.e. if you grew up on a farm your family was probably self-sufficient and kept making plenty of babies during the Depression). But basically birth rates were way down even before the men went off to fight the war.
And with no birth control pill. No IUD. No thingy in the arm. And condoms that were about as comfortable as the business side of a Goodyear tire.
Yet with all that working against them they knew how to be responsible and not make babies while they couldn't raise them. And today we talk like it's impossible to refrain from making babies.
1938 Here so remember all those things. Yep we were as poor as church mice, would,t train it for anything.
I still have one of my WWII ration books. For meat, I believe.
It certainly was a different world.
Not sure what the 1% refers to, as people between 75 and 91 make up about 6 or 7 percent of the population. You’re special, but not as rare as you think.
We had hobos in our little town. Our neighbor fed them.
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