ONLY Read this if your were born in the 40's 50's or 60's

Born in 1946 Holland

The earliest memory I have is fields of broken bricks and the detritus of WWII strewn about the countryside.

Death, and all that entails, was known to me at a very early age. Death lingered in the air, in our hearts, minds and discussed over evening dinners and intimated in those quiet times before bed. The scent of powdered brick, iron and blood lay over the countyside like a blanket in the seven years which followed, culminating in a huge flood which cleansed the land late in 1953.

In 1954, my family emigrated to Canada and an entirely new and fresh world lay before me, unsullied by the ravages of war unless you looked into the eyes of those men who had returned from that conflict. There, I could recognize the same silent suffering as in the Dutch who had faced such unrelenting savagery that they have been forever changed by it. These Canadian men I now see were the same ones who had liberated Holland and left behind them the thousands who gave their lives to that noble cause.

As I grew into a teenager, I became more aware of these veterans, learned of their personal sacrifices and the lost brothers, uncles and cousins who would never come home. The gratitude I feel for them never has, nor ever will diminish, even though they now have become so fragile in their advanced age. Every November, they gather by the cenotaph to commemorate those who they had left behind... some in wheelchairs, some supporting themselves with canes, but many still standing straight at attention during the moment of silence. I look into their watery eyes and see once again that coarse blanket of death and destruction I so vividly remember from my earliest childhood years.

Are we the lucky ones, the Canadian generation which followed... too young for Korea, not involved in Viet Nam and too old for tours in Afghanistan? Is anyone looking into the eyes of those Canadian soldiers who have come back after repeated tours in that dry woe-begone land? No doubt they also considered death to be their daily companion, but, compared to the veterans of WWII, they are but a small number of heroes who have left behind them hundreds instead of the many thousands. But they are heroes still, these few. Who comforts them as they sit in silence?

War has shaped my life, chiselled first by my father, then my unlucky step-father, later by my father-in-law, friends, relatives and a hundred other acquantances. Their lives made me who I am today... not the soda shops and sock hops of the crazy 50's, nor the psychedelic colours of the 60's or the forgettable decades which followed. Yes, I was able to survive whole milk, gob stoppers, fist fights and lard-laced apple pies. I agree that we are ridiculously cocooning children today, robbing them of valuable life experience.

But I also wonder if cushioning today's youth from life's hard realities is not giving them a false sense of security, one step removed as they sit with their X-boxes playing war games and perhaps aspiring to be one those warriors guiding drones and death half a world away. Afterwards, everyone sits down to dinner with family and discuss the latest political news or Family Guy episode, the carnage of the previous hours easily forgotten.

As a Canadian, I can look immediately south of the border and salute American soldiers, much maligned by the world, and say to them that they too are heroes. They do not provide war, it is not these young men and women who decide to be sent off to witness and deal in death, continuing the all too well known cycle of broken minds and bodies. It is a cycle I'd really like to see broken someday, but I doubt very much that it will be anytime soon as the greedy warmongers continue to deal from the bottom of the deck.

Originally posted by WeRpeons
How about those memorable TV shows...

-Gilligan's Island
-The Beverly Hillbillies
-Mayberry R.F.D. (Barney, Floyd the Barber, Goober, Earnest TB)

-Bonanza
-The Wild Wild West
-Star Trek
-Alford Hitchcock
-The Twilight Zone
-Mash
-The Brady Bunch (Corny but we liked it)

-Happy Days (You're such a Potsy!, the Fonz)

-Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
-The Carol Burnett Show
-The Mary Tyler Moore Show
-Johnny Carson
-Candid Camera
-The Six Million Dollar Man
-Charlies Angels

edit on 2-2-2012 by WeRpeons because: (no reason given)

my earliest tv memories are uhf
Mr.Ed
My Father The Car...i think
My Living Doll..short lived
Bewitched
I Dream of Jennie
the Smothers Brothers
Dean Martin hour
of course the Ed Sullivan show(classic anyone that was anyone was on)
Flipper
The Munsters
The Adams Family
The Wonderful World of Dinsney(Sunday nights)
Jerry Lewis(I watch all of his movies)I think he had a show as well
Any John Wayne movie,
and my all time favorites were,on uhf if the antenna worked,

The Little Rascals
the Three Stooges


Alfred Hitchcock,started my fascination into the scary,and paranormal world

Ah, thats a nice thread
Do you remember buying chocolate? Not a whole one, piece for piece. Or grandmas soda. hated it
Ah times were you could walk as a 10year old with a 5" knife on your belt into the woods. Do that today as a 10 year old, your pretty ##

Or stealing strawberries and then flee, with the strawberries in your pants, falling on your nose, ruining your new jeans, after that, get some ass-spanks that will remind you the whole week what you did.

This was a great post! I feel sad these are things my daughters will never get to experience. The closest thing they have ever got to a camp out was when their mom was late and they had to stand outside the mall after it was closed. I hope to see more stuff like this in the future!

I was born in 1950. One very big difference I see today, is that back then, we had no sense of entitlement.

If I wanted something that my parents didn't provide, and only if I had my parents approval, I had to work to earn the money to buy it. I didn't automatically get something, just because other people had it.

A lot today's kids seem to be raised with parents who, give them everything. Where is the feeling of accomplishment in earning something, when it's all expected as a right. And God forbid if kids don't have the latest and greatest....

Today is a prevalent attitude of I want it....and I want it now.

I feel sad for a majority of today's youth.....If I could turn back time for them I would.

reply to post by SalvationIsWaiting


Often, I think about that and it makes me sad. I´m not against change but todays children care more about what the wear then what they could experience in nature.

I was born in 86 and most of this applies to me as well!

Born in 50 I think we used up all the fun - and the cheap gas - I know my step kids aren't having as much fun as I did. I wasn't rich but I had my own airplane at the old age of 29.

Well...all of it is true and certainly I can relate to it as I was born in the 60s.

I think TV, MSM and Internet is driving a global culture that pretty much most of the new genX is following.

However I still do give kudos to the military members whom many of them are 18 and below 21.

Oh yes, everything was so much better in those years gone past. What you fail to note is the direction and destruction of this nation rest on the shoulders of those born of that very era. The superficial wholesomeness of memory does not cloak the fact that the men, attitudes, and action of these bygone years have lead us down the path to oblivion.

It is with intent and direction that the world as you know it and despise it has come to be, born of your own generation, a virulent cancer on the face of humanity. Get over yourselves and your falsely perceived moral or ethical ways of life when you walked us down the very path we tread.

reply to post by SpaceJockey1

I might add:

Lego Toys
Erector Sets
Blocks
Lincoln Logs
Jacks
Tiddly Winks
Marbles
Skates
Tricycles
little red wagons
Sting Rays
Pop guns
caps
squirt guns
water balloon fights
drinking from the hose
Hide an' seek
Red light Green light
Crack the whip

Awww, sweet memory lane. Thanks for disturbing my childhood neurons!

I understand that the message here,"times have changed since then". I do take some offence to this because even though i was born in 1980 i was bought up in this way. I was born in Michigan. My dad would told us to play outside all day. We ate home made foods. The town it's self would close down early. My dad taught me how to hunt. We grew and ate our own food, we ate the deer that he would shoot. We had lots of animal's to take care of. We would call soda just "pop". There was a large forest and a big lake on the land where we lived, so i fished a lot and spent all day in the "wood's". We could not afford video games "atarey", I know i spelled that wrong! There were no computer's like there is today! My mom did not have to work because my dad was a logger and made enough money to take care of us. We would have family get together's all year round," because family was most important" is what was taught to us growing up!

Now i agree that some of the things that happened back then were good, like having stricter teacher's who "cared" and did not just pass a kid on to the next grade with out learning what they needed to to get to the next grade. Now day's there are like 30 or more kid's in a class and kid's get to go to the next grade even if they did not learn a thing! I agree that now a day's people have to keep up with the jones's we have to be better than everyone else. God forbid that we don't have the next great thing, or the coolest car or gadget. I agree with how people get ahead now not by merit but in who you know and what's in it for the other guy.These's are different time's we live in. Now day's i find it more and more that parent's fear there kid's going out side.

I'm just saying that i was brought up with the same value's as the people back then, maybe just in a different way. I'm not saying that they are one in the same because my generation is different. But to say we are some what valueless or our morals are not the same is wrong. Deep down we hold the same values and morels but we are a product of our environment. That is the result of the people who came before us. My generation is doing the best we can with the tool's we are given.

reply to post by intrptr


Wow to think you are the only generation to have and do those thing's.

Originally posted by JOBEone
reply to post by intrptr

 

Wow to think you are the only generation to have and do those thing's.

All kids do those things I hope. (Tag, you're it)

reply to post by intrptr


You are right, I'm sorry. I guess i'm reading to much into this thread.

reply to post by dadank
you are so right we the 60's 70's gen decide to spoil you the now gen by not putting fear in you of us it was yea what ever, hay teacher leave them kids alone, we ,made "gaming" what it is today bunch of burned out dim light, Video gaming, iPod, droid, texting could care less , know nothing of the real world twits.

As a child of the 70s and early 80s in a sort of small farmtown in mass, my childhood life was pretty much the same as the ops list. almost word for word
We did have however the first console systems coming out (Atari 2600 was like the resurrection of christ to a kid)...but not everyone had one...it was that one neighborhood kid first, so we would all go to his house and hang out/play the game for a few hours..but for the most part we were playing war in the backyard and such.


I look at my childhood and am satisfied with it.

I look at todays kids and..well, honestly, I am envious of what they got. I won't lie. I would have loved to have had a WII or PS3 as a kid. So long as my parents are attentive, I wouldn't have had much sweets, and kids want to go do stuff anyhow besides sit in front of anything for too many hours on end.

Anyhow, I don't see any issues with how things progressed. You mention in the ops that you stayed out and played until the streetlights came out. You had easter eggs at easter, etc etc...but you pretend its some sort of happy medieval childhood. I imagine your grandparents remember fondly the days pre-electricity, when they went home at sundown, or ate fancy bugs..they had no shoes, but rather tied newspapers around their feet and were happy for it, etc etc etc...

People scorn advancements given to kids out of envy. I hope to never begrudge the kids today and what they have because of what former generations worked for. Thats sort of the point in making things: Better/cooler/easier/faster in the first place...so kids can have what you went without.

But nice thread anyhow. Its always good to remember that you dont need all this stuff to be happy...a kid only needs a stick and a friend and they can play endlessly

reply to post by mnmcandiez


My thought's exactly!!!

Originally posted by TWILITE22

 

How about those memorable TV shows...

-Gilligan's Island
-The Beverly Hillbillies
-Mayberry R.F.D. (Barney, Floyd the Barber, Goober, Earnest TB)

-Bonanza
-The Wild Wild West
-Star Trek
-Alford Hitchcock
-The Twilight Zone
-Mash
-The Brady Bunch (Corny but we liked it)

-Happy Days (You're such a Potsy!, the Fonz)

-Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
-The Carol Burnett Show
-The Mary Tyler Moore Show
-Johnny Carson
-Candid Camera
-The Six Million Dollar Man
-Charlies Angels

edit on 2-2-2012 by WeRpeons because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by WeRpeons

 

my earliest tv memories are uhf
Mr.Ed
My Father The Car...i think
My Living Doll..short lived
Bewitched
I Dream of Jennie
the Smothers Brothers
Dean Martin hour
of course the Ed Sullivan show(classic anyone that was anyone was on)
Flipper
The Munsters
The Adams Family
The Wonderful World of Dinsney(Sunday nights)
Jerry Lewis(I watch all of his movies)I think he had a show as well
Any John Wayne movie,
and my all time favorites were,on uhf if the antenna worked,

The Little Rascals
the Three Stooges


Alfred Hitchcock,started my fascination into the scary,and paranormal world

edit on 3-2-2012 by TWILITE22 because: (no reason given)

Lets not forget:
Bugs Bunny cartoons Saturday mornings (the best)
Romper Room with Miss Judy
Captain Kangaroo with Mr. Green Jeans
Captain Satellite
F Troop
Leave it to Beaver
Mr. Magoo
Under Dog
Super Man
Bat Man
Bewitched
That Girl
The Odd Couple
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Fire Ball Forward (?)
Dennis the Menace
Wild Wild West
The Green Hornet with Kado
Outer Limits
Laurel and Hardy
Charlie Chaplin
Keystone Cops
Green Acres
Father Knows Best (yuck)
1 Adam Twelve (?)
The Midnight Special
Soul Train
Dialing For Dollars

Spank, did i really watch that much crap?
I'm about to bust a gasket so I am going to stop.

Originally posted by verschickter
reply to post by SalvationIsWaiting

 

Often, I think about that and it makes me sad. I´m not against change but todays children care more about what the wear then what they could experience in nature.

that is not any different, don't even pretend.
Back in my elementry school, you had Levi's. This was the thing to wear..if you weren't wearing levi's jeans or cords, then you were basically a worthless idiot with poor parents.

I literally got in fights because people would humiliate me and my toughskins trousers.

The xmas where I got 6 pairs of various levi's was the best christmas ever..the first time I got clothes for christmas that I really appreciated..it meant I would stop being bullied by the (fashion?) bullys.

This was the late 70s / early 80s

Yes, you were judged even back then, in elementry school.

My father tells me about how he also was bullied in his school because his family couldn't afford "real" clothes..so they sewed together shirts and stuff from flower bags and the like.
My dad spent his whole youth in fights over it.
That was the 40s-50s

Lets not pretend people were somehow different then. The only difference between then and now is we have more manufacturing products for easier access..but human nature has not changed.