America's First "Greatest" Generation"? (England, country, United States)
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I have always wondered if others felt that America's pre World War 2 generation(parents of those whofought WW2 and who made it through the the Great Depressionand the Dustbowl) became largely unsung heroes.
I guess I felt that way because of what I knew about my mothers parents(my grandfather was born around 1900 and was too young for WW1 and too old for service in WW2 but his oldest son was in the Navy and helped land troops at Normandy).Tough as nails "hill people" from Upstate SC ( which back then was as rural as you could get) that lived off the land , had 6 kids and who got through those times by hunkering down and by saving what money they had and from what I know not worrying much about the future. I am convinced it's people like them (and those from cities too-think "Cinderella Man") from that time that made the "steel core"of America. Even before WW2 they passed their best qualities (maybe most of all the trait of perseverance) on to their children that Tom Brokaw called the "Greatest Generation".
My mother seems to be pretty unaffected from that time and she says they had more money that most families and they never wanted for basic things and my grandfather always had "cash" in his pocket and was able to stay employed (working in the cotton mills and later quitting the mill to buy a farm to be his own man). One thing that not many people know about now is that before the technical start of the Depression in 1929 the South was hit hard early on in the 20s because of a near collapse of cotton prices after WW1.So people in the South had to endure not just the 30s but most of the 20s as well.And lets not forget the "Okies". The most amazing thing about the Dustbowl was that most farmers in the area affected stay put!
Last edited by senecaman; 02-07-2015 at 01:34 PM..
Can't agree more. That generation had no public recognition whatsoever. They were neglected as children to elders. Others got the benefits from child protection in the Progressive ra to Medicare as elders. They lost out pretty much everywhere.
I was curious if you're from the South.I didn't want anyone to get too caught up in the phrase "Greatest Generation".
The thread is not about the WW2 Generation or which generation is the best. Its about the parents of the WW2 Generation (people born shortly before and shortly after 1900) and their largely forgotten efforts to keep the country going through hard times and how they passed the best of their qualities onto their children who fought WW2.
My grandparents (mothers parents) were from Upstate SC and were mill workers and then they bought a farm.In the first post of this thread I told a little bit about them and why I felt that people like them are unsung heroes.I am in no way demanding that they be called the "Greatest Generation" but what I am saying is that what they did(surviving the Depression and raising the children that would go on to fight WW2) was one of the greatest accomplishments in American History that was forgotten after WW2 and the prosperity that followed. And if you 're from the South I would think you might have some personal experience with people that lived during that time(parents , grandparents ect.).If you didn't get a chance to read the first post of the thread go back and read it and then tell me what you think.
Yes, part of my family has deep roots in the South. Before WWII and during the Depression, my family struggled, but I wouldn't say there was undue hardship. They'd been in their communities for a long time and were no longer farmers, which made is easier to stay (more or less) employed. However, things were difficult enough to have to move a lot, each time to a town where there was work and extended family. Living in a single family house would have been the first choice, but that wasn't possible. Instead they lived with relatives, rented a tiny apartment attached to the main house, rented a duplex, rented an apartment, and lived in a boarding house. Those are the arrangements I've heard about. They had to work hard and live modestly, but they had the opportunity to work hard thanks to both family and community connections. Being white also helped. Fast forward a few decades and these same people had professions, owned homes and were on their way to comfortable retirements.
My family deserves credit for their hard work and coming together to help each other when times were hard, although I don't think I'd go so far as to call this generation unsung heroes. If heroism is rising to the challenge in a difficult situation while passing on good morals to the next generation, and the situation is surviving, then the label could apply. The difficulty is defining how "difficult" a situation must be. For many, it took heroic qualities to survive the Depression, but is that enough to call them unsung heroes as a group? I don't think so, especially when considering the South. The extent to which the white part of this generation upheld an extreme level of institutional racism is disturbing and should have some bearing on whether or not the label unsung heroes might apply on a collective basis. While the rest of the country also had it's share of institutional racism, for which history should hold them accountable, no other region's level of racism even approached the South's.
The parents of the 'Greatest' were GREAT HEROES, themselves.
As it is, the Greatest Generation has, only now, pretty much finished handing over control of America to the 'Baby Boomers'. They held on to control for a very long time.
So, it is quite conceivable that the generation preceding them, those born around 1900, would have been quite actively still "building America", well into the 1960s. And the 'Boomers' generally began working as teens - beginning around '57. So, it is absurd for so many to assert that America's enormous boom, following WWII, was due primarily to the efforts and talents of the 'Greatest Generation'.
I don't actually come from much of a 'family'. But my Mississippi friends who actually did come from decent families, remember that 'Pre-Greatest' generation as being the ones who established their family fortunes.
These people reached adulthood at a time when the Boll Weevil and various 'panics' had bankrupted a huge number of Mississippi farmers. I believe that on one day during the worst of it, one third of all the land in the state went onto the auction block. Bank and tax foreclosures, I presume... So, most of that generation began with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Someone half-a generation older than me read me his grandfather's scribbled memoirs. That grandfather had found himself young and destitute - walking down the road, hungry, tired, and SCARED, in search of a job - any job. Finally, someone took pity on him, and gave him a little job. This grandfather worked 'from can't-see to can't-see, for decades, as a farmer. It was heartbreaking, because times were so bad, no matter how hard he slaved, the farms did not turn a profit. Then came the Panic of '25, which wiped-out a fair amount of savings and land equity he'd managed to amass during a cotton boom. GONE. OVERNIGHT. Finally, he got a break or two, and managed to start a lumber mill, as well as paying-off some land. He had had the sense to marry a big, responsible Viking-type girl, who worked as hard as he did. They saved every penny. My friend's grandmother said, "We went without so much as a Coca Cola, for years and years." They did not have money for clothes good enough to wear to church. So, they did not go to church. They did not entertain - EVER. But at the end of their lives, they owned plantations, a housing development, a lumber company, and had more cash-on-hand (in various accounts) than did Nelson Rockefeller, who died at roughly the same time. That heroic grandfather's 'Greatest Generation' children are just now dying, and have only recently handed control of family corporations to their 'Boomer' children. The boomers have returned profitability to the corporations, where their "Greatest Generation" parents had the corporations doing little more than paying salaries big enough to keep them in Cadillacs and vacations. Many of the assets were in shambles, due to the 'Greatest Generation's disinterested management. That 'Pre-Greatest' grandfather and his advisors had diligently and devotedly structured transition of assets from one generation to the next: laying aside monies for paying inheritance taxes, setting up trusts, etc.
One time, my source's grandmother, born in 1900 (and, by then, worth millions) looked at him and said, "Being broke is HELL." "There was so much sadness and horror in her voice, it still hurts me to think about it." I think that MOST of Mississippi, during the era of the Depressions (there were several) experienced destitution and distress on a level equaling the horrible Post WWI years in Germany, which drove that nation collectively insane - paving the way for the rise of Hitler. Most of the white people surrounding us in Jackson, even the rich ones, had "money issues" on top of money issues on top of neuroses. Life must have been HORRIBLE, for the effects of the Depression Era to have so profoundly affected even those born amid relative affluence and security, in the 1960s. Mississippi's white people (and some of the browns/offwhites, like me) are just plain sick, when it comes to money.
In contrast, my source's parents' "Greatest Generation" seemed much more preoccupied with conforming, "fitting-in", "being normal", buying airplanes, motor boats, fancy cars, furs, jewelry, going to Florida, going to Six Flags (the grandparents had never taken even one vacation), going to see "Ice Follies", joining all sorts of clubs, building lake houses, being football fans, playing football, being cheerleaders, being in hunting clubs, and a host of other downwardly-mobile wasters of time and money. This friend, like most people in Mississippi his age, remembers his grandparents as being heroes, and sees his parents' generation as being a bunch of "Spoiled brats and just-plain-fools." Only one, among his parents and their siblings bothered (eight, in total) to finish college, although both sets of grandparents had tried to send all of them. Two of the girls got knocked-up while at college. Two got knocked up before they could be sent off to college. And three of the boys just simply dropped-out of Ole Miss and State, and went to work. The Uncle who did finish (from the side of my friend's family not described here) was really too young to be considered 'Greatest Generation'. He harbored enormous resentment toward his hard-partying and extravagant older siblings.
If this sounds sort of like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to you, that's because Tennessee Williams rather accurately depicted those sorts of families, because he'd grown up around them. Sister Woman was like half the women in Mississippi, in the 60s: greedy, needy, loud-mouthed, not paying Social Security taxes for their maids, while doing all sorts of churchey things, and obsessively buying cheap diamond jewelry. Only the amount of wealth, and the house, are atypical.
Variants of my friend's story describe virtually all of Mississippi's prosperous families. The Depression and bank panics rocked early Twentieth Century America as a whole. But the Deep South had more panics, and had only begun rebuilding from near-total-devastation, following the Civil War. Too, there was the Boll Weevil, which devastated the region's primary cash crop.
And then there were the couples where the wife worked, too. Both as children, would have known times of near-starvation during the bad times. Some had gone barefoot, and been dressed in scratchy burlap fertilizer sacks, as children. The wife would have have known hard work since girlhood. She would have saved up egg money, money made picking up pecans, money made picking cotton, and would have paid her own way through 'normal school' (teaching) or nursing, or a secretarial course. Striving was all these people knew. In addition to their 'money jobs' they grew their own food, put up canned goods, filled up freezers every year, made most of their own clothes, saved cloth scraps and made those into quilts, landscaped their yards with passalong plants.
Booze was not allowed at all. Men smoked, but decent women did not. People saved to buy land. They saved to invest. Both worked really hard, from their teens, until the women retired from their jobs, and the men dropped-dead. Most of the menfolk dropped dead, instead of retiring. They left their children farms, thriving businesses, and big insurance policies. A great many of the big homes, all around Jackson, were paid for by "Mamaw's Life Insurance policy. She was the County Extension Lady back home, you know..."
If this sounds like Iowa and Nebraska, that's because, for the most part, It was like Iowa and Nebraska.
My impression is that the Greatest Generation, while hard workers, did an awful lot of partying and spending. They had dramatic lives, mimicking behavior and lifestyles they'd grown up seeing in movies. And, most importantly, they frequently walked into jobs/industries/wealth/advantages created by the industrious and thrifty generations preceding them. I've seen enough to believe that the Greatest Generation tended to view their parents as embarrassments and misfits. Mocking Mama seems to have been a rather commonplace activity for Greatest Generation women.
My 'Boomer' friends seem to have been desperate to work, as teens. "But Mama and Daddy were more worried about whether we were going to play football or be debutantes and cheerleaders, than whether we finished college or had summer jobs. And they saw good grades as being irrelevant, and teachers as being pitiful little leftover women who didn't have lives. They were much more worried about nice Easter dresses and church programs and school programs, than about what our majors were going to be in college. They were full of advice, like "Go ta Ole Miss, 'cause you'll be a Sigma Nu legacy" or "Welly, you GOTTA go ta state. Your Daddy went ta State! This was their reasoning. These were their priorities. They didn't give a flip about whether we got work experience while in high school or college - and couldn't imagine why we'd want work experience. Not once did Mama or Daddy or any of my aunts or uncles find me a summer or after-school job, no matter how desperately I begged. They did not want to be bothered. They'd always had their own mamas and daddies providing opportunities for them, and didn't realize that opportunities did not just materialize out of thin air. They'd never had to think about it. They thought we were weird for thinking about it.
" And they obsessed, nonstop, about whether we were "popular", and going to parties, and "being included" and having enough dates. I went up to Jackson just before graduation, and got my first job, all on my own. Moved up there the day after graduation, and have been working like crazy ever since. Mama and Daddy act like the biggest victims in the world, because they don't have absolutely EVERYTHING in the world. They had a big motorhome, and drove all over creation. They played golf. They drove HUGE luxury cars. They were big in church. They think we're scum, for not doing all that mess. They have no idea how hard it is, these days."
As it is, the Greatest Generation has, only now, pretty much finished handing over control of America to the 'Baby Boomers'. They held on to control for a very long time.
So, it is quite conceivable that the generation preceding them, those born around 1900, would have been quite actively still "building America", well into the 1960s. And the 'Boomers' generally began working as teens - beginning around '57. So, it is absurd for so many to assert that America's enormous boom, following WWII, was due primarily to the efforts and talents of the 'Greatest Generation'.
I don't actually come from much of a 'family'. But my Mississippi friends who actually did come from decent families, remember that 'Pre-Greatest' generation as being the ones who established their family fortunes.
These people reached adulthood at a time when the Boll Weevil and various 'panics' had bankrupted a huge number of Mississippi farmers. I believe that on one day during the worst of it, one third of all the land in the state went onto the auction block. Bank and tax foreclosures, I presume... So, most of that generation began with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Someone half-a generation older than me read me his grandfather's scribbled memoirs. That grandfather had found himself young and destitute - walking down the road, hungry, tired, and SCARED, in search of a job - any job. Finally, someone took pity on him, and gave him a little job. This grandfather worked 'from can't-see to can't-see, for decades, as a farmer. It was heartbreaking, because times were so bad, no matter how hard he slaved, the farms did not turn a profit. Then came the Panic of '25, which wiped-out a fair amount of savings and land equity he'd managed to amass during a cotton boom. GONE. OVERNIGHT. Finally, he got a break or two, and managed to start a lumber mill, as well as paying-off some land. He had had the sense to marry a big, responsible Viking-type girl, who worked as hard as he did. They saved every penny. My friend's grandmother said, "We went without so much as a Coca Cola, for years and years." They did not have money for clothes good enough to wear to church. So, they did not go to church. They did not entertain - EVER. But at the end of their lives, they owned plantations, a housing development, a lumber company, and had more cash-on-hand (in various accounts) than did Nelson Rockefeller, who died at roughly the same time. That heroic grandfather's 'Greatest Generation' children are just now dying, and have only recently handed control of family corporations to their 'Boomer' children. The boomers have returned profitability to the corporations, where their "Greatest Generation" parents had the corporations doing little more than paying salaries big enough to keep them in Cadillacs and vacations. Many of the assets were in shambles, due to the 'Greatest Generation's disinterested management. That 'Pre-Greatest' grandfather and his advisors had diligently and devotedly structured transition of assets from one generation to the next: laying aside monies for paying inheritance taxes, setting up trusts, etc.
One time, my source's grandmother, born in 1900 (and, by then, worth millions) looked at him and said, "Being broke is HELL." "There was so much sadness and horror in her voice, it still hurts me to think about it." I think that MOST of Mississippi, during the era of the Depressions (there were several) experienced destitution and distress on a level equaling the horrible Post WWI years in Germany, which drove that nation collectively insane - paving the way for the rise of Hitler. Most of the white people surrounding us in Jackson, even the rich ones, had "money issues" on top of money issues on top of neuroses. Life must have been HORRIBLE, for the effects of the Depression Era to have so profoundly affected even those born amid relative affluence and security, in the 1960s. Mississippi's white people (and some of the browns/offwhites, like me) are just plain sick, when it comes to money.
In contrast, my source's parents' "Greatest Generation" seemed much more preoccupied with conforming, "fitting-in", "being normal", buying airplanes, motor boats, fancy cars, furs, jewelry, going to Florida, going to Six Flags (the grandparents had never taken even one vacation), going to see "Ice Follies", joining all sorts of clubs, building lake houses, being football fans, playing football, being cheerleaders, being in hunting clubs, and a host of other downwardly-mobile wasters of time and money. This friend, like most people in Mississippi his age, remembers his grandparents as being heroes, and sees his parents' generation as being a bunch of "Spoiled brats and just-plain-fools." Only one, among his parents and their siblings bothered (eight, in total) to finish college, although both sets of grandparents had tried to send all of them. Two of the girls got knocked-up while at college. Two got knocked up before they could be sent off to college. And three of the boys just simply dropped-out of Ole Miss and State, and went to work. The Uncle who did finish (from the side of my friend's family not described here) was really too young to be considered 'Greatest Generation'. He harbored enormous resentment toward his hard-partying and extravagant older siblings.
If this sounds sort of like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to you, that's because Tennessee Williams rather accurately depicted those sorts of families, because he'd grown up around them. Sister Woman was like half the women in Mississippi, in the 60s: greedy, needy, loud-mouthed, not paying Social Security taxes for their maids, while doing all sorts of churchey things, and obsessively buying cheap diamond jewelry. Only the amount of wealth, and the house, are atypical.
Variants of my friend's story describe virtually all of Mississippi's prosperous families. The Depression and bank panics rocked early Twentieth Century America as a whole. But the Deep South had more panics, and had only begun rebuilding from near-total-devastation, following the Civil War. Too, there was the Boll Weevil, which devastated the region's primary cash crop.
And then there were the couples where the wife worked, too. Both as children, would have known times of near-starvation during the bad times. Some had gone barefoot, and been dressed in scratchy burlap fertilizer sacks, as children. The wife would have have known hard work since girlhood. She would have saved up egg money, money made picking up pecans, money made picking cotton, and would have paid her own way through 'normal school' (teaching) or nursing, or a secretarial course. Striving was all these people knew. In addition to their 'money jobs' they grew their own food, put up canned goods, filled up freezers every year, made most of their own clothes, saved cloth scraps and made those into quilts, landscaped their yards with passalong plants.
Booze was not allowed at all. Men smoked, but decent women did not. People saved to buy land. They saved to invest. Both worked really hard, from their teens, until the women retired from their jobs, and the men dropped-dead. Most of the menfolk dropped dead, instead of retiring. They left their children farms, thriving businesses, and big insurance policies. A great many of the big homes, all around Jackson, were paid for by "Mamaw's Life Insurance policy. She was the County Extension Lady back home, you know..."
If this sounds like Iowa and Nebraska, that's because, for the most part, It was like Iowa and Nebraska.
My impression is that the Greatest Generation, while hard workers, did an awful lot of partying and spending. They had dramatic lives, mimicking behavior and lifestyles they'd grown up seeing in movies. And, most importantly, they frequently walked into jobs/industries/wealth/advantages created by the industrious and thrifty generations preceding them. I've seen enough to believe that the Greatest Generation tended to view their parents as embarrassments and misfits. Mocking Mama seems to have been a rather commonplace activity for Greatest Generation women.
My 'Boomer' friends seem to have been desperate to work, as teens. "But Mama and Daddy were more worried about whether we were going to play football or be debutantes and cheerleaders, than whether we finished college or had summer jobs. And they saw good grades as being irrelevant, and teachers as being pitiful little leftover women who didn't have lives. They were much more worried about nice Easter dresses and church programs and school programs, than about what our majors were going to be in college. They were full of advice, like "Go ta Ole Miss, 'cause you'll be a Sigma Nu legacy" or "Welly, you GOTTA go ta state. Your Daddy went ta State! This was their reasoning. These were their priorities. They didn't give a flip about whether we had work experience - and couldn't imagine why we'd want work experience. Not once did Mama or Daddy or any of my aunts or uncles find me a summer or after-school job, no matter how desperately I begged. They did not want to be bothered. They'd always had their own mamas and daddies providing opportunities for them, and didn't realize that opportunities did not just materialize out of thin air. They'd never had to think about it. They thought we were weird for thinking about it.
" And they obsessed, nonstop, about whether we were "popular", and going to parties, and "being included" and having enough dates. I went up to Jackson just before graduation, and got my first job, all on my own. Moved up there the day after graduation, and have been working like crazy ever since. Mama and Daddy act like the biggest victims in the world, because they don't have absolutely EVERYTHING in the world. They had a big motorhome, and drove all over creation. They played golf. They drove HUGE luxury cars. They were big in church. They think we're scum, for not doing all that mess. They have no idea how hard it is, these days."
As it is, the Greatest Generation has, only now, pretty much finished handing over control of America to the 'Baby Boomers'. They held on to control for a very long time.
So, it is quite conceivable that the generation preceding them, those born around 1900, would have been quite actively still "building America", well into the 1960s. And the 'Boomers' generally began working as teens - beginning around '57. So, it is absurd for so many to assert that America's enormous boom, following WWII, was due primarily to the efforts and talents of the 'Greatest Generation'.
I don't actually come from much of a 'family'. But my Mississippi friends who actually did come from decent families, remember that 'Pre-Greatest' generation as being the ones who established their family fortunes.
These people reached adulthood at a time when the Boll Weevil and various 'panics' had bankrupted a huge number of Mississippi farmers. I believe that on one day during the worst of it, one third of all the land in the state went onto the auction block. Bank and tax foreclosures, I presume... So, most of that generation began with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Someone half-a generation older than me read me his grandfather's scribbled memoirs. That grandfather had found himself young and destitute - walking down the road, hungry, tired, and SCARED, in search of a job - any job. Finally, someone took pity on him, and gave him a little job. This grandfather worked 'from can't-see to can't-see, for decades, as a farmer. It was heartbreaking, because times were so bad, no matter how hard he slaved, the farms did not turn a profit. Then came the Panic of '25, which wiped-out a fair amount of savings and land equity he'd managed to amass during a cotton boom. GONE. OVERNIGHT. Finally, he got a break or two, and managed to start a lumber mill, as well as paying-off some land. He had had the sense to marry a big, responsible Viking-type girl, who worked as hard as he did. They saved every penny. My friend's grandmother said, "We went without so much as a Coca Cola, for years and years." They did not have money for clothes good enough to wear to church. So, they did not go to church. They did not entertain - EVER. But at the end of their lives, they owned plantations, a housing development, a lumber company, and had more cash-on-hand (in various accounts) than did Nelson Rockefeller, who died at roughly the same time. That heroic grandfather's 'Greatest Generation' children are just now dying, and have only recently handed control of family corporations to their 'Boomer' children. The boomers have returned profitability to the corporations, where their "Greatest Generation" parents had the corporations doing little more than paying salaries big enough to keep them in Cadillacs and vacations. Many of the assets were in shambles, due to the 'Greatest Generation's disinterested management. That 'Pre-Greatest' grandfather and his advisors had diligently and devotedly structured transition of assets from one generation to the next: laying aside monies for paying inheritance taxes, setting up trusts, etc.
One time, my source's grandmother, born in 1900 (and, by then, worth millions) looked at him and said, "Being broke is HELL." "There was so much sadness and horror in her voice, it still hurts me to think about it." I think that MOST of Mississippi, during the era of the Depressions (there were several) experienced destitution and distress on a level equaling the horrible Post WWI years in Germany, which drove that nation collectively insane - paving the way for the rise of Hitler. Most of the white people surrounding us in Jackson, even the rich ones, had "money issues" on top of money issues on top of neuroses. Life must have been HORRIBLE, for the effects of the Depression Era to have so profoundly affected even those born amid relative affluence and security, in the 1960s. Mississippi's white people (and some of the browns/offwhites, like me) are just plain sick, when it comes to money.
In contrast, my source's parents' "Greatest Generation" seemed much more preoccupied with conforming, "fitting-in", "being normal", buying airplanes, motor boats, fancy cars, furs, jewelry, going to Florida, going to Six Flags (the grandparents had never taken even one vacation), going to see "Ice Follies", joining all sorts of clubs, building lake houses, being football fans, playing football, being cheerleaders, being in hunting clubs, and a host of other downwardly-mobile wasters of time and money. This friend, like most people in Mississippi his age, remembers his grandparents as being heroes, and sees his parents' generation as being a bunch of "Spoiled brats and just-plain-fools." Only one, among his parents and their siblings bothered (eight, in total) to finish college, although both sets of grandparents had tried to send all of them. Two of the girls got knocked-up while at college. Two got knocked up before they could be sent off to college. And three of the boys just simply dropped-out of Ole Miss and State, and went to work. The Uncle who did finish (from the side of my friend's family not described here) was really too young to be considered 'Greatest Generation'. He harbored enormous resentment toward his hard-partying and extravagant older siblings.
If this sounds sort of like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to you, that's because Tennessee Williams rather accurately depicted those sorts of families, because he'd grown up around them. Sister Woman was like half the women in Mississippi, in the 60s: greedy, needy, loud-mouthed, not paying Social Security taxes for their maids, while doing all sorts of churchey things, and obsessively buying cheap diamond jewelry. Only the amount of wealth, and the house, are atypical.
Variants of my friend's story describe virtually all of Mississippi's prosperous families. The Depression and bank panics rocked early Twentieth Century America as a whole. But the Deep South had more panics, and had only begun rebuilding from near-total-devastation, following the Civil War. Too, there was the Boll Weevil, which devastated the region's primary cash crop.
And then there were the couples where the wife worked, too. Both as children, would have known times of near-starvation during the bad times. Some had gone barefoot, and been dressed in scratchy burlap fertilizer sacks, as children. The wife would have have known hard work since girlhood. She would have saved up egg money, money made picking up pecans, money made picking cotton, and would have paid her own way through 'normal school' (teaching) or nursing, or a secretarial course. Striving was all these people knew. In addition to their 'money jobs' they grew their own food, put up canned goods, filled up freezers every year, made most of their own clothes, saved cloth scraps and made those into quilts, landscaped their yards with passalong plants.
Booze was not allowed at all. Men smoked, but decent women did not. People saved to buy land. They saved to invest. Both worked really hard, from their teens, until the women retired from their jobs, and the men dropped-dead. Most of the menfolk dropped dead, instead of retiring. They left their children farms, thriving businesses, and big insurance policies. A great many of the big homes, all around Jackson, were paid for by "Mamaw's Life Insurance policy. She was the County Extension Lady back home, you know..."
If this sounds like Iowa and Nebraska, that's because, for the most part, It was like Iowa and Nebraska.
My impression is that the Greatest Generation, while hard workers, did an awful lot of partying and spending. They had dramatic lives, mimicking behavior and lifestyles they'd grown up seeing in movies. And, most importantly, they frequently walked into jobs/industries/wealth/advantages created by the industrious and thrifty generations preceding them. I've seen enough to believe that the Greatest Generation tended to view their parents as embarrassments and misfits. Mocking Mama seems to have been a rather commonplace activity for Greatest Generation women.
My 'Boomer' friends seem to have been desperate to work, as teens. "But Mama and Daddy were more worried about whether we were going to play football or be debutantes and cheerleaders, than whether we finished college or had summer jobs. And they saw good grades as being irrelevant, and teachers as being pitiful little leftover women who didn't have lives. They were much more worried about nice Easter dresses and church programs and school programs, than about what our majors were going to be in college. They were full of advice, like "Go ta Ole Miss, 'cause you'll be a Sigma Nu legacy" or "Welly, you GOTTA go ta state. Your Daddy went ta State! This was their reasoning. These were their priorities. They didn't give a flip about whether we got work experience while in high school or college - and couldn't imagine why we'd want work experience. Not once did Mama or Daddy or any of my aunts or uncles find me a summer or after-school job, no matter how desperately I begged. They did not want to be bothered. They'd always had their own mamas and daddies providing opportunities for them, and didn't realize that opportunities did not just materialize out of thin air. They'd never had to think about it. They thought we were weird for thinking about it.
" And they obsessed, nonstop, about whether we were "popular", and going to parties, and "being included" and having enough dates. I went up to Jackson just before graduation, and got my first job, all on my own. Moved up there the day after graduation, and have been working like crazy ever since. Mama and Daddy act like the biggest victims in the world, because they don't have absolutely EVERYTHING in the world. They had a big motorhome, and drove all over creation. They played golf. They drove HUGE luxury cars. They were big in church. They think we're scum, for not doing all that mess. They have no idea how hard it is, these days."
Unbelievable post ! Thank you ! Great detail about the parents of the "Greatest Generation"
As it is, the Greatest Generation has, only now, pretty much finished handing over control of America to the 'Baby Boomers'. They held on to control for a very long time.
So, it is quite conceivable that the generation preceding them, those born around 1900, would have been quite actively still "building America", well into the 1960s. And the 'Boomers' generally began working as teens - beginning around '57. So, it is absurd for so many to assert that America's enormous boom, following WWII, was due primarily to the efforts and talents of the 'Greatest Generation'.
I don't actually come from much of a 'family'. But my Mississippi friends who actually did come from decent families, remember that 'Pre-Greatest' generation as being the ones who established their family fortunes.
These people reached adulthood at a time when the Boll Weevil and various 'panics' had bankrupted a huge number of Mississippi farmers. I believe that on one day during the worst of it, one third of all the land in the state went onto the auction block. Bank and tax foreclosures, I presume... So, most of that generation began with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Someone half-a generation older than me read me his grandfather's scribbled memoirs. That grandfather had found himself young and destitute - walking down the road, hungry, tired, and SCARED, in search of a job - any job. Finally, someone took pity on him, and gave him a little job. This grandfather worked 'from can't-see to can't-see, for decades, as a farmer. It was heartbreaking, because times were so bad, no matter how hard he slaved, the farms did not turn a profit. Then came the Panic of '25, which wiped-out a fair amount of savings and land equity he'd managed to amass during a cotton boom. GONE. OVERNIGHT. Finally, he got a break or two, and managed to start a lumber mill, as well as paying-off some land. He had had the sense to marry a big, responsible Viking-type girl, who worked as hard as he did. They saved every penny. My friend's grandmother said, "We went without so much as a Coca Cola, for years and years." They did not have money for clothes good enough to wear to church. So, they did not go to church. They did not entertain - EVER. But at the end of their lives, they owned plantations, a housing development, a lumber company, and had more cash-on-hand (in various accounts) than did Nelson Rockefeller, who died at roughly the same time. That heroic grandfather's 'Greatest Generation' children are just now dying, and have only recently handed control of family corporations to their 'Boomer' children. The boomers have returned profitability to the corporations, where their "Greatest Generation" parents had the corporations doing little more than paying salaries big enough to keep them in Cadillacs and vacations. Many of the assets were in shambles, due to the 'Greatest Generation's disinterested management. That 'Pre-Greatest' grandfather and his advisors had diligently and devotedly structured transition of assets from one generation to the next: laying aside monies for paying inheritance taxes, setting up trusts, etc.
One time, my source's grandmother, born in 1900 (and, by then, worth millions) looked at him and said, "Being broke is HELL." "There was so much sadness and horror in her voice, it still hurts me to think about it." I think that MOST of Mississippi, during the era of the Depressions (there were several) experienced destitution and distress on a level equaling the horrible Post WWI years in Germany, which drove that nation collectively insane - paving the way for the rise of Hitler. Most of the white people surrounding us in Jackson, even the rich ones, had "money issues" on top of money issues on top of neuroses. Life must have been HORRIBLE, for the effects of the Depression Era to have so profoundly affected even those born amid relative affluence and security, in the 1960s. Mississippi's white people (and some of the browns/offwhites, like me) are just plain sick, when it comes to money.
In contrast, my source's parents' "Greatest Generation" seemed much more preoccupied with conforming, "fitting-in", "being normal", buying airplanes, motor boats, fancy cars, furs, jewelry, going to Florida, going to Six Flags (the grandparents had never taken even one vacation), going to see "Ice Follies", joining all sorts of clubs, building lake houses, being football fans, playing football, being cheerleaders, being in hunting clubs, and a host of other downwardly-mobile wasters of time and money. This friend, like most people in Mississippi his age, remembers his grandparents as being heroes, and sees his parents' generation as being a bunch of "Spoiled brats and just-plain-fools." Only one, among his parents and their siblings bothered (eight, in total) to finish college, although both sets of grandparents had tried to send all of them. Two of the girls got knocked-up while at college. Two got knocked up before they could be sent off to college. And three of the boys just simply dropped-out of Ole Miss and State, and went to work. The Uncle who did finish (from the side of my friend's family not described here) was really too young to be considered 'Greatest Generation'. He harbored enormous resentment toward his hard-partying and extravagant older siblings.
If this sounds sort of like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to you, that's because Tennessee Williams rather accurately depicted those sorts of families, because he'd grown up around them. Sister Woman was like half the women in Mississippi, in the 60s: greedy, needy, loud-mouthed, not paying Social Security taxes for their maids, while doing all sorts of churchey things, and obsessively buying cheap diamond jewelry. Only the amount of wealth, and the house, are atypical.
Variants of my friend's story describe virtually all of Mississippi's prosperous families. The Depression and bank panics rocked early Twentieth Century America as a whole. But the Deep South had more panics, and had only begun rebuilding from near-total-devastation, following the Civil War. Too, there was the Boll Weevil, which devastated the region's primary cash crop.
And then there were the couples where the wife worked, too. Both as children, would have known times of near-starvation during the bad times. Some had gone barefoot, and been dressed in scratchy burlap fertilizer sacks, as children. The wife would have have known hard work since girlhood. She would have saved up egg money, money made picking up pecans, money made picking cotton, and would have paid her own way through 'normal school' (teaching) or nursing, or a secretarial course. Striving was all these people knew. In addition to their 'money jobs' they grew their own food, put up canned goods, filled up freezers every year, made most of their own clothes, saved cloth scraps and made those into quilts, landscaped their yards with passalong plants.
Booze was not allowed at all. Men smoked, but decent women did not. People saved to buy land. They saved to invest. Both worked really hard, from their teens, until the women retired from their jobs, and the men dropped-dead. Most of the menfolk dropped dead, instead of retiring. They left their children farms, thriving businesses, and big insurance policies. A great many of the big homes, all around Jackson, were paid for by "Mamaw's Life Insurance policy. She was the County Extension Lady back home, you know..."
If this sounds like Iowa and Nebraska, that's because, for the most part, It was like Iowa and Nebraska.
My impression is that the Greatest Generation, while hard workers, did an awful lot of partying and spending. They had dramatic lives, mimicking behavior and lifestyles they'd grown up seeing in movies. And, most importantly, they frequently walked into jobs/industries/wealth/advantages created by the industrious and thrifty generations preceding them. I've seen enough to believe that the Greatest Generation tended to view their parents as embarrassments and misfits. Mocking Mama seems to have been a rather commonplace activity for Greatest Generation women.
My 'Boomer' friends seem to have been desperate to work, as teens. "But Mama and Daddy were more worried about whether we were going to play football or be debutantes and cheerleaders, than whether we finished college or had summer jobs. And they saw good grades as being irrelevant, and teachers as being pitiful little leftover women who didn't have lives. They were much more worried about nice Easter dresses and church programs and school programs, than about what our majors were going to be in college. They were full of advice, like "Go ta Ole Miss, 'cause you'll be a Sigma Nu legacy" or "Welly, you GOTTA go ta state. Your Daddy went ta State! This was their reasoning. These were their priorities. They didn't give a flip about whether we had work experience - and couldn't imagine why we'd want work experience. Not once did Mama or Daddy or any of my aunts or uncles find me a summer or after-school job, no matter how desperately I begged. They did not want to be bothered. They'd always had their own mamas and daddies providing opportunities for them, and didn't realize that opportunities did not just materialize out of thin air. They'd never had to think about it. They thought we were weird for thinking about it.
" And they obsessed, nonstop, about whether we were "popular", and going to parties, and "being included" and having enough dates. I went up to Jackson just before graduation, and got my first job, all on my own. Moved up there the day after graduation, and have been working like crazy ever since. Mama and Daddy act like the biggest victims in the world, because they don't have absolutely EVERYTHING in the world. They had a big motorhome, and drove all over creation. They played golf. They drove HUGE luxury cars. They were big in church. They think we're scum, for not doing all that mess. They have no idea how hard it is, these days."
Thank you! tremendous detail about how hard the Depression was and how the parents of the "Greatest Generation" held things together.
This is something I posted in an earlier thread about why I believe the pre World War 2 Generation was just as important and maybe more than the "Greatest Generation " that they raised.
Those people (born roughly around 1900) raised the children that fought WW2 and seem to have done a good job.And to raise those children men (maybe your father too) often worked very hard and dangerous jobs(coal mining,sharecropping, dam builders, dock workers ect) while there wives took care of the children at home , many times alone and waiting for the return of their husbands from a job that could sometimes be far off.These people got the nation through one of its worst times and kept the country together and along the way they raised the kids who would go off to "save the world".If that's not something important I don't know what is. Some of those people raised both my mother and my father ( My fathers' father was from Southern Italy and arrived at Ellis Island in 1920) and by doing that I know my life was made better. And far from being an "everyman for himself" experience the Depression made people realize how important extended family was and I believe it was a time that bonded people together through shared experience.My own mother and father from outward appearances would not seem to have much in common (my mother is Scotch-Irish from the hills of SC and my father is Italian from NY ) but they both lived through the Depression and the War as well.
My dad was born in 1900 and mother in 1903, so they came from that generation. They both grew up in mountain areas of Arkansas, but didn't know each other until their twenties. Both grew up poor, but mother had a way of putting a spin on a story that didn't include anything about being poor. My dad was a scholar and went to college in Russellville during a time it was a 4 year school. Mother taught school after finishing the tenth grade. They met just before dad graduated. After they married, they moved to Oklahoma where dad had a teaching job.
Apparently, they fared well during the depression, but also helped those who didn't. They really didn't talk much about those years. I knew my dad was too young for WWI and too old for WWII. I had an older brother who served in the Korean War. Both parents were tough as nails. My dad was a workaholic and didn't stop until it was dark. By then he was employed by the USDA and that lasted until he retired in l965. They lived in town, but owned a farm in the country where they kept cattle and that kept him busy after retiring. Mother would help with branding.
They were both very religious and contributed greatly to the growth of the Assembly of God church in the area where I grew up. They started the church there and brought in a pastor and wife. I was not proud of any of this as the kids at school teased me unmercifully, but the frame building they bought later became classrooms for Sunday School when a new stone structure was built for the main church. I have no idea how much of my dad's income supported the beginnings of this church plus many later years.
He lived to age 97 with no high blood pressure or high cholesterol. His disability was slight senility. Not noticeable in everyday life, but known by me because he once asked me when AM began and PM started. Mother refused to recognize anything was wrong and attributed all of it to stubbornness. She also lived to age 97. Had she lived 7 more days their life spans would have been identical as they both died at 7pm.
This is going to sound very negative but I do not consider the WW2 generation, the "Greatest Generation".
To begin with, it ignores other generations like the Revolutionary War and Civil War generations. But it is more then that.
Maybe its something about them listening to the news on the radio at night, with British cities being bombed nightly, and then doing nothing. It was perhaps fortunate that the Axis Powers were foolish enough to attack us, otherwise the greatest generation would have spent the period more concerned about who was going to win the World Series then who was going to win WW2.
Having said all that, once Pearl Harbor finally woke the greatest generation up, they more then proved their mettle.
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The parents of the 'Greatest' were GREAT HEROES, themselves.
