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It's no wonder as cars in the 50s were crap compared to what we have today. A washing machine cost a months wages and other appliances however poor they were by today's standard were also pricey A "big" screen (21 inch) black and white cost a small fortune...No affordable or practical air travel...Medicine still in the dark ages...Too many people had virtually no equality.....No, I think I'd rather stay in today's world, thank you.
I'm not saying everything was better about the 1950s, but less dependence on cars was one of the things that was.
Nowadays in America, cities sprawl out in every direction and you are effectively forced into driving everywhere whether you want to or not. Cars were not as much of a necessity. I object to the lack of choice in being able to live an urban lifestyle in most of America's metro areas.
We all lived in a constant low-grade state of worry.
I don't see how that's any different today. The things to worry about change, but humans are pretty much in the same fear state as they've ever been in.
This comment is the most true of any on the thread.
No great societal shift ever happens in a vacuum- they are always a result of something that has gone rotten to the core in earlier times.
I grew up in the 50's- I went into the 1st grade in 1951 and graduated in 1962, just after the decade ended.
RPON's warm and fuzzies were not my recollections of those years. My family was intact and happy, but we were farmers, and our prosperity was not a constant- for as many years in the 50's as not, our farm mostly broke even, and was as subject to the ups and downs of the agricultural price swings as farms have been ever since. We did all right, but no better or worse than millions just like us.
Even though we did all right, there were a lot of people who never recovered from the Great Depression. They were all over, everywhere, and for them, the 60's were the times when some finally gained some stability in their lives for the first time since the 30's out here. I remember a lot of suicides among those folks back then, and we all knew families that were seemingly impoverished forever who were neighbors and friends.
While it's true that kids who got other kids pregnant got married- a couple of my friends were among them- really a lot of those marriages didn't last long after the baby came. The pressures on a young couple were just as great then as they are now, and the shame of divorce added an extra burden on both when they split up. Many of the marriages broke apart as soon as the responsibilities of parenting were over, and divorces back then were often very scarring to the couple and to their families.
The thing I remember most about that time was the deep, constant and persistent fear of a nuclear war with Russia. The fear was always present, even in rural Idaho, and often became paranoic during any brief flare up.
The Cold War wasn't cold when it came to this. The fear of Communism was the only reason we went into Viet Nam later, and went into Korea. It was the reason for the space race, and the reason why, after almost 30 years after Communism went bust as a political philosophy, it is still so feared here today.
We all lived in a constant low-grade state of worry. It was like having slow growing bone cancer in our society; at any time the worry could turn into brief terror and fear, then would always lapse back into worry again. Mutually assured destruction was a very un-assuring way to keep the peace. A policy of We die-You die did a lot of psychological damage to us all, and created a state of perpetual tension that was bound to blow up in other areas of our society eventually.
I'm a few years younger, and the bold is the absolute Gospel truth. It was a true in western Pennsylvania as it was in rural Idaho.
So you prefer flash mobs,sky high crime etc etc...everything that has come with giving black folks "equal rights". I say it gave them free reign to destroy themselves and they did a damn good job of it unfortunately the bad ones are taking down the ones who are actually trying to make a living for themselves and destroying everyone's America as we once knew it.
Opinions like this are what happens when you watch too much Fox News and never get out of "My Own Private Idaho".
Go back in the times when "Jim Crow" laws were enacted to keep blacks in their place? A time when segregation was the rule of the land? When bigotry and injustice reigned supreme?
Go back when women were supposed to stay in the kitchen and those with ambition to climb up the corporate ladder faced frustration? Go back to a time when the only option for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy was a back alley abortion involving coat hangers?
Go back to the day when gay people were arrested, harassed, persecuted and faced discrimination everywhere in society, in jobs, housing, education, etc?
Bring back the corruption and witch-hunts of the McCarthy era?
No way!!
This nostalgia for the 1950s is symptomatic of people simply not being able to adjust to a changing social and demographic environment.
I'm not saying everything was better about the 1950s, but less dependence on cars was one of the things that was.
Nowadays in America, cities sprawl out in every direction and you are effectively forced into driving everywhere whether you want to or not. Cars were not as much of a necessity. I object to the lack of choice in being able to live an urban lifestyle in most of America's metro areas.
The sprawl was well along by the mid 50's. It was a time when former city dwellers began to want a single home, and much of the suburban sprawl we contend with today is just a continuation of the mentality that began then.
The biggest difference between then and now is, back then, the U.S. population was half of what it is now. There was plenty of room to sprawl, and the earliest suburbs were not very far away from city limits. Many cities have grown and engulfed some of them now, and they are part of an urban, not a suburban community any more.
That lack of choice you mentioned may be true in some cities, but not others. There are lots of younger couples who are abandoning their suburban upbringings and moving back to cities; it really all depends on the individual city and the folks who are moving back as to whether a lack of choice remains, is changing, or will change in the future.
I'm a few years younger, and the bold is the absolute Gospel truth. It was a true in western Pennsylvania as it was in rural Idaho.
That fear was graphically reinforced in my neck of the woods.
B-47 bombers used our ranch as low-elevation practice, due to it's terrain, which was very similar to some of the approaches the bombers would have taken en route to bombing several of the major targets in the Soviet Union.
More than once, I could have easily hit a B-47 with a hard-thrown rock as they flew over, low and slow. One would think that I would have felt safer as a kid, being able to see our military might at such close range I could literally count the rivets in the aircraft as they flew over, but it wasn't so... they never failed to scare the crap out of everyone, because we never knew if they were practicing on the way to deliver the goods.
Were the bombers loaded? We never knew, and they never said. It sure kicked up the horrors in one's mind, both for us and for the poor bastards on the other side of the world.
That fear was graphically reinforced in my neck of the woods.
B-47 bombers used our ranch as low-elevation practice, due to it's terrain, which was very similar to some of the approaches the bombers would have taken en route to bombing several of the major targets in the Soviet Union.
More than once, I could have easily hit a B-47 with a hard-thrown rock as they flew over, low and slow. One would think that I would have felt safer as a kid, being able to see our military might at such close range I could literally count the rivets in the aircraft as they flew over, but it wasn't so... they never failed to scare the crap out of everyone, because we never knew if they were practicing on the way to deliver the goods.
Were the bombers loaded? We never knew, and they never said. It sure kicked up the horrors in one's mind, both for us and for the poor bastards on the other side of the world.
In a way there isn't much a difference between 1950 and the 2000s and 2010s, in the aspect you mentioned. I remember when 9/11 happened. I asked my neighbor if it would be possible for me to go hang gliding around where I lived. She said I might get arrested because of the security situations.
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