Paul Simon sang — “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it’s a wonder I can think at all. And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none I can read the writing on the wall.”
I’m not exaggerating when I say my high school years were the worst four years of my life. Most everything I needed to learn I learned in kindergarten, picked up a thing or two as late as 8th grade, but I didn’t learn Jack Shit in grades 9 through 12. I had few friends. It was so bad, as you will see in the pictures below, not even Da Gooberment tried to protect me!
What they tried to teach me was mostly a Big Pile Of Bullshit. Here, let Pete Seeger ‘splain it to you in under two minutes.
It’s not that I wanted a lot of government protection. Eddie Billian (actual name), a wannabe jockfuk, picked on me almost every single day. I used to daydream about cutting off his hands in shop class. I would have been happy if they let me get away with just that, a Justifiable Amputation. Even after all these years … Eddie, if you’re reading this just know that if I ever run into you, I’m going to kick you in the fuck.
Unfortunately, we now have laws governing ………. everything. Laws we couldn’t even have imagined back in my day. Somewhere along the line we gave up our right to choose even simple things, and allowed the government to impose their standards upon us. As you read this, just ask yourself one question: —–“When will we tell the government we would rather die, than continue to be their mindless slaves?”
WHEN did we say, “To hell with this?”
OK, let’s get started.
That was the extent of the warning my mom gave me. Back in my day, there were well over 200 activities that could put your eye out! But, virtually none that could kill you. How much fun can a game be if there isn’t at least a small chance of death?
So, the kids on our block played an interesting version; each of us would get one jart and at the same we’d throw it straight up in the air as high as we could, and then we’d dodge the incoming hail of plastic and steel … the idea being to wait to dodge the missile until the very last possible second. One time a jart buried itself into Angelo Falcone’s foot, and he started to cry when blood oozed through his white Converse sneakers …. not because it hurt, but because his father was gonna kill him for messing up his sneakers!
It’s been shown that the business end of a jart can land with a force of several thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. Seriously. We Boomers may have ruined America, but we surely weren’t pussies.
By my own estimate, I believe jarts were thrown about 138.4 Billion times by 1987. In April 1987, seven-year-old Michelle Snow was killed by a lawn dart thrown by one of her brothers’ playmates in the backyard of their home in Riverside, California. She should have ducked. Previously, only two other children died. So, 138.4 Billion throws … 3 dead … do the math. Mr. Snow went on a crusade and by 1989 Congress banned jarts, again, but this time forever.
In one respect, I suppose it’s nice that in America one person can still make a difference. On the other hand, one person gets their way almost always at the expense of thousands of others. Isn’t this tyranny by the few?
In the news today the town of Westminster, MA (pop: 7,000) banned the sale of any and all tobacco products ….. a decision made by a THREE MEMBER Board Of Health. Three people who don’t give a damn that the overwhelming majority of the town does not support this action. Why …. that’s almost as bad as 317 million Americans being ruled by 535 criminals in Congress.
Back in my day, it seemed like everyone smoked. Watch an old episode of Perry Mason; Perry and Paul Drake smoked constantly … murderers smoked while murdering. Doctors smoked while delivering babies. You could smoke in a supermarket, in an airplane, or any restaurant. Teachers smoked. Students smoked in the bathroom. Doctors smoked Lucky Strikes. Even Father Joseph at my Catholic school, St Peter’s, smoked while greeting Sunday parishioners.
Asking “Mind if I light up?” was a mere formality. No one dared say, “No!” for fear of being labeled a pussy. Smokers smoked and there was zero lack of concern for those who didn’t smoke. Smokers weren’t forced outside …. non-smokers were! Those were the good old days of ‘IN YOUR FACE!’. It was a world full of adults who didn’t have anxiety attacks over a thousand different “safety” issues.
Whether riding a bike, or roller skating, or skateboarding …. NO ONE wore a helmet. If you did, your social life would have been over, kaput, finito … an outcast, destined for humiliation and abuse … especially in gym class. There were only two groups that wore helmets; football players and the mentally retarded. (Our own poster, bb, wore a helmet … and he wasn’t a football player.)
My dad’s first two cars didn’t have seat-belts. My first car, a 1958 Pontiac Chieftain, didn’t have seat-belts. When we did get cars with seat-belts, we didn’t wear them. They were a pain in the ass. Belts were made to hold up your pants, not bind you up in a seat. Child seats? Never heard of them. When we brought my new baby sister home from the hospital, my mom just threw her in the back seat … with me. I did put a Teddy Bear on the edge of the seat to keep her from falling off.
Sure, I’ll agree that seat-belts save lives. But, that’s not the point. It should be a PERSONAL decision … not one forced upon you. Besides, the gooberment doesn’t give a rats ass about your life …. otherwise they wouldn’t have sent 100,000+ young men to their deaths in various adventurous wars since WWII. Nosiree. “Click-it or ticket” is all about extracting more money from your wallet into theirs.
In case you didn’t read the ad … you must;
“Tanfastic lets the sunshine in. It’s not loaded up with sunburn protection like old folks and kids want. Tanfastic’s for you 15-to-25 year olds who can take the sun. Especially if you want to get superdark. Superfast.”
Got that? Back in my day we did NOT try to BLOCK the sun. Oh, no!! The goal was to AMPLIFY the sun’s rays. Get dark, baby .. real, real dark!! Screw that sun-screen shit. The only people who went the sunscreen route were those with medical conditions … like, albinos. My sister (I swear!) used to smear herself with butter. Other women (like, Nancy Pelosi) used Crisco. I swear that’s true. Back then few ever asked, “What could go wrong?” If it feels good, do it, and being a Darkie felt reeeeal good.
Sadly, that’s the world we live in today. I’ve seen parents hook up their children with what looks like a dog leash. A few weeks ago we went out to eat with Ms. Freud’s son and family. It was a nice day, so we ate outside in the patio area. As it so happened her grandson, Andrew, wandered off …. a few feet behind another table … when his mommie started freaking the fuck out … “WHERE’S ANDREW!! WHERE’S ANDREW!!!!!!”. It was so goddamn embarrassing, you have no idea.
During summer vacation from school, somewhere around 9AM I would proudly announce, “I’m going out to play!” Mom’s only response, “You better be home by dinner!” …. which was 6PM. Yeah, nine hours of unsupervised activity. Oh, you should know … I lived in Newark, NJ. I would wander literally MILES from home … either to Weequahic Park (a two mile walk), or to my best friend’s house in Irvington (a five mile bike ride … no helmet). Sometimes my dad would take me shopping to the lumber yard, hardware store, etc., and if I was a pain in the ass, meaning, I’d pester him to buy me shit, well … he would just leave me in the car once we arrived at the destination. Sometimes that happened during 100 degree weather. BOTH my parents would have been arrested, dozens of times, in today’s environment. I think it was Pogo who said, “We have met the enemy, and it’s us.”
That’s what my dad said when he was teaching me to ride a bicycle, and I was doing just fine, and then the sumvabitch let go, and then I freaked out, and then I fell, and then I scraped my elbow and hand badly enough to draw blood, and then I cried, and then yeah he said “Quit being a baby!”, and then mom came running and spit (yes, spit) in a hanky and then tied it around my arm with her kerchief (yes, kerchief), and then I got my (then) skinny ass back on the bike and then learned to ride it THAT very day. Our “first aid” kit consisted of Band-Aids and a bottle of iodine.
See the kid in the picture? He’s about to have his nuts rammed by a goat. See the adults? They think that’s funny as shit. We were tough back then.
Do you know the nutritional value of white bread? I’ll tell you. Less than zero. In other words, eating it actually extracts needed minerals and vitamins from your body. Wilson’s Mor was originally named Wilson’s Moron … cuz you gotta be a retard to eat it; pig’s head, snout, cheek meat, and even tongue. Their motto is “everything but the squeal” Yummy!!
As a child, I did not know one single adult, ever, who was concerned about getting this or that vitamin, or this or that mineral … except in commercials. We ate some of the crappiest “food” ever invented. Yet, we survived, and even thrived.
Compare yesteryear to Moochelle’s Mandated gooberment lunch. Below is a picture taken earlier this week by Darrel Bunch, a senior at Haskell High School in Oklahoma. WTF???
And Lastly …
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was better that way. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Good Lord! Some of you were quite destructive.
I’m looking at you, llpoh.
And, you, jaycee. Making it so your sis falls out a 2nd story apartment. Jeeeebusss!!!!
We need to do a segment on how to handle bullies. Being a poor, Indian, smart kid I had a fair bit of experience with bullies. What I found was that bullies are universally cowards. And their cronies almost never come to their aid.
I remember an olde kid bullying me when I was around 12. While he was accosting me verbally, his crony knelt behind me and the bully pushed me backwards so I fell over him.
When. Got up, I used my general technique for bullies who were bigger and older than me – I bull rushed him, grabbed hold of him, and bit him hard as I could. Then I got him down and pounded ever loving shit out of him while he wailed like a little pussy from the bite. I blacked his eyes and split his lip. He was probably fourteen or fifteen.
Later that day there was a knock at the door – bully and his father. My father answered the door. Father of bully was screaming – look what your son did to my kid! Where is he, etc etc. my dad said he is here , and called me to the door.
The bully’s father took one look at me, asked his son if I was the kid, and when the kid said, sniff sniff, yes, the father began slapping shit out of the kid screaming “you let that little kid beat you up! You sissy! Etc etc” and slunk off. (Btw, the bully’s father was lucky to have left – my dad was absolute hell on wheels – if that man had moved toward me, he would have been very fortunate to have survived the encounter, and I shit you not).
Rule number one – if the bully is bigger and or older, lay the ivory to their sorry asses, then pound them to pulp while they wail. This technique NEVER failed. Who wants an ass kicking from a big bully? Not me. Far better to give than receive an ass kicking. Bigger kids used to point me out and tell others to leave me alone “because he bites”. Damn straight I did. Fuck ’em.
Stuck – I was a poor, redskinned country boy, offspring of a depression era redskinned dustbowl Okie. My dad kept me on what he considered a short leash – it is all relative. Compared to the shit he pulled as a kid, me and my brothers were saints. Those dustbowl oakies were tough as old leather, and would do damn near anything. When THEY fought, they used weapons, and no holds barred.
But but but Stuck…… she knocked my fucking teeth out! I looked like shit for two years. She tells me I still do! But I still love her as no other. She is my sis.
I cut the tip of one of my fingers off with a lawn mower when I was 10. When I came walking up to the house holding my bloody hand my mom told my dad “You take care of this one”. No one was panicking.
Somewhere around 12 years old I taught myself how to shoot a shotgun and a 22 rifle after having a BB gun for many years. I just grabbed one of my dads out of the closet, grabbed a box of shells and walk out the door across the neighbors yards off to the woods. We had common sense, if you shoot something it will most likely die. Don’t recall ever hearing of anyone accidentally getting shot.
My mom gave us 30 minutes of TV a day and most of the time we never even used it. Rarely watch TV today.
Had so many motorcycles, from 50cc up to 305cc before I got my drivers license. Learned to repair them by myself. No one ever said anything if you didn’t have a helmet on, common sense told you to put one on after you watched your friend bounce his head on the ground and roll around whining.
My bicycle I had when in the third grade was bad ass. Had a banana seat, 5′ tall sissy bar, tall handle bars and when I put a speedometer on it I learned how to ride real fast without running into anything while staring at it.
Glad I got to grow up in the 60’s and 70′. Kids were outside most off the time. I loved chasing all the neighborhood girls and when the sun was just going down steal a kiss and head home feeling good. No electronic bullshit to stare at, just the stars and listening to the noises around you.
Stucky says: Our “first aid” kit consisted of Band-Aids and a bottle of iodine.
Same at my house. Dad would poured iodine in an open wound. I would scream with pain and he would say ” that pain you feel is the healing process now shut up”
Mom would pour castor oil down our throat for nothing more than a foul disposition. She figured if you were cranky, you must need to shit, so here she would come with a bottle.
Oh the good ole days, thanks a lot Stuck, super great post.
Dad’s bottle of iodine
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Moms bottle of Castor Oil
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@ Llpoh,
Good stories… had me laughing. 😀
I know you won’t believe this, but when I was stationed out at Fort Lewis in the late 80’s, we built – I shit you not – a funnelator. We even called it that…
Same exact thing. Big funnel. Raided our Medic for a shitload of surgical tubing. 4 holes at the cardinal points on the funnel and tied off four huge pieces of surgical tubing… shot it out the 3rd floor window of the barracks….
We put “X’s” on the floor in electrical tape. Each “X” representing a different target. You stretched the funnel to the X and chances are you would hit fairly close. We launched water balloons and quart sized milk cartons filled with water out the window…
One “X” was the nearest intersection, two blocks away. One of us would stand by the window and watch the intersection, the other would be holding the funnelator on the “X”… on his signal, we released. Your spotter had to be good because of the flight time vs. how long the vehicle would stop at the Stop sign….
The MP’s never did figure out how we were bombing the crap out of that intersection. The water balloons came in at such a high angle, nobody ever knew exactly where they were coming from…
Haven’t thought about that in years… thanks.
Billy – those things would shoot miles! We used to lob balloons over high buildings into crowds. Never knew what hit them.
Stucky, damn you old. I was BORN in 1970.
Llpoh, I sure do enjoy your posts. Stay safe, traveller.
Okay.. I got one.
Our next door neighbors when I was a kid were Mr. and Mrs. F…
The husband was cool but his wife was a stone bitch. She went out of her way to crab at my Mom about all sorts of shit, and she outright hated our German Shepard Rebel… tried to have the cops take him from us because he went “woof” when she came around… once.
Anyways, Old Lady F. had this old mostly-a-bulldog. One day I decided to get a little payback after she crabbed at Mamma about some dumb shit and upset her for the millionth time… her and my Mamma were at war more often than not… Old Man F. had passed away and his widow only got worse as time went on…
So anyways, the next morning I waited till the crabby old bitch left. Went outside and fed that almost-a-bulldog a huge can of Hormel Chili with Beans.
Old Lady F. comes back about a half hour later and takes the dog inside… At some point, that chili worked its way through the dog, because I can hear her bitching up a storm at the top of her lungs. The poor dog gets tossed outside… later on in the evening, there’s a Stanley Steamer carpet cleaning truck in her driveway… 🙂
Dogs love Hormel Chili with Beans… just don’t be around when he’s gotta do his business.
And Llpoh, I had no idea you were an Indian (feather, I assume, not dot).
My aunt did the blood test and found that if you keep going back on my mother’s side, I come from the people who first inhabited this continent (North America).
That was hundreds of years ago, though. Those Indian women probably wooed their men with their ability to kill a rabbit with a slingshot and were in turn wooed by men who had wine. As it turns out now, most of my background is German, French, and other miscellaneous European.
You bring the rabbit stew, baby, and I’ll bring the wine and cheese.
For Llpoh,
Upon a dusty road one day
As sunlight slipped from sight,
A traveller came face to face
With nature’s greatest fright.
For a creature blocked the crossroads:
Most terrible, most odd!
He’d never seen the like of it,
Where’ere his feet had trod.
Yet now the creature trembled.
It slowly raised its hand.
“I pray Sir, please don’t eat me,
I’m charged to guard this land.”
“I’ll join you!” cried the dragon,
And before the night was through,
Both man and mighty dragon
Discovered Friendship true.
I held my comments about the blonde in pink shorts because I thought that was your mom. She was hot,
I’m thinking it was the winter of 77/78 when I experienced my first real blizzard. My little hick town had a main drag that had a grassy boulevard with two lanes in each direction but during significant snow falls only the center was plowed.
School was out for over a week and a few of us went into town one evening – all of 6 blocks down the main drag – to both the one open bar and one hellacious party above a store front. This was when the drinking age was still 18 for everything and girls got served regardless.
After the bar closed at 2:00 am I “attempted” to drive my mom’s 1970 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon back home. The acid made it a lot of fun. Or maybe it was all the alcohol. Or the pot.
Anyways, with a joint in one hand, a cigarette in the other, a beer between my legs and a car full of similarly disposed 17 year old females, I bounced that car off of one snow bank to the other snow bank and back again for the entire 6 blocks and we laughed the entire way.
How do you share a story like that with your kids?
Llpoh
“People who smoke in public should be shot” Should people who drive cars be shot also? Do you think what you breath in from that on a daily basis is any better than smokes?
Do you think our country is a better place now, than fifty years ago because we crucify anyone who smokes? Better to kiss your transgender boyfriend while smoking a blunt after eating a Moochelle approved lunch?
Sounds like you drank the Kool-Aid my friend. You really think smoking is the only thing that gives you lung cancer? I hope your not that stupid. I would hope no one would ever smoke around you, this way when you get cancer, you can wonder how that second hand smoke coulda creeped up on you.
If it did not serve the powers that be, they would have you believing that if you smoke you will live till your 100. It serves their purpose to vilify smoking. Point is, don’t worry about what they tell you that kills you. Worry about what they don’t. How does that cell phone across the brain pan feel?
Surely, that’s no cancer risk. I guess keep beating up smokers. WTF it is an easy target…
Winston – feel free to blow me. Smoking is not a required activity. Getting place to place is. And even then I expect cars to be maintained to minimize damage to others.
Amazing anyone would try to defend that there is a right to blow smoke around other people. Trying to equate cars to cigarettes is shear buffoonery. Sure, tons of things can cause lung cancer – cigarette smoke is near top of the list. Those things that are avoidable should be avoided. And inflicting carcinogenic cigarette smoke on others is damn easily avoided. Engine exhaust is another kettle of fish entirely. I gotta say, I remember when smog was much worse – thank goodness limits were put in place. Shanghai smog is not something anyone wants or needs to be around.
I do not care if folks smoke – none of my business. So long as they do not inflict it on me. Same goes for just about anything else.
Thanks PJ. I prefer venison to rabbit – hope that will do!
How do you share a story like that with your kids? -Olga
when they turn 40
(feather, I assume, not dot). -PJ
[taking popcorn to microwave] -KB
Hi Olga
Silence is Golden.
That is a story to keep to yourself.
You have matured so much since way back when.
Haven’t we all?
I hate you guys, you had a fun childhood. Assholes.
@ llpoh –
What Oregon river, if you do not mind me asking?
Stucky
Thanks for the entertaining post. All the responses are fascinating too, although I think Llpoh’s strawberry story is the funniest. I recall a slightly less engineered pastime at age four, throwing mud pies with the neighbor boy at passing cars until one gentleman stopped and gave us a verbal thrashing.
Yes, Boomer children lived lives full of danger and intrigue. In first, second and third grades I walked a mile to school, the most normal thing, acquiring amiable companions along the way. During that time I was given money and the responsibility of going to the corner store two blocks away to make purchases of needed items like a quart of milk. Middle class parents today would be terrified to let their kids out of sight for that long lest a pervert snatch them along the way, and besides the kids would rather watch tv than go on an independent shopping excursion.
I roll my eyes when I see the nice mom across the street give her 7th grade boy a ride to and from school every day – a block and a half journey through a quiet safe neighborhood!! At that age I was riding horses bareback through acres of fields and miles of roads, often galloping freely while National Velvet played in my head.
We built self-confidence, perhaps courage, because we were allowed to. We weren’t that many generations removed from a time when manual labor was the rule of the day. The culture was more protective of children in a moral sense, less so in the domain of the practical, and kids benefitted from both.
Brave New World? Hardly.
There are still some dangerous things that are legal. You can for instance still stuff your face at Golden Corral from the All You Can Eat Buffet.
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and Nutso Nik Wallenda is still walking wires between tall buildings and over canyons and waterfalls
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not to mention you are still ENCOURAGED to join the FSoA Military and take a tour or three of the global hotspots 😀
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I’ll cross post on the Diner tonight.
RE
What a great read!! Thanks, Stucky. This triggers so many memories.
Zelmer, do you and I perhaps know each other? Did we maybe go to the same high school in the 60s? In St Louis, by chance?
Because a couple of boys in my school made off with a tray of cherry crunch from the cafeteria, which was found half- eaten in a back hallway.
At age 12, I rode all over the south end of the city on my bike. A year later, I had a student bus pass, so I rode buses all over the city just to see where they went. Ended up in some awfully dicey neighborhoods, but, with the exception of the occasional perv exposing himself or making an obscene proposition, no one offered me any trouble.
The public pools were great- huge, beautifully maintained pools, privately owned, that offered cheap admissions on weekday afternoons. I also spent many summer afternoons at the library.
My elementary school had no cafeteria, so we 7th and 8th graders were permitted to go out to nearby places for lunch if we didn’t bring lunches, and I was allowed 2 lunches out a month, on Friday’s, at Velvet Freeze or Woolworth’s lunch counter.
When I was eleven or twelve, I’d dress up in my “big girl” clothes, with nylon stockings and kitten-heeled shoes, and go downtown just to cruise the dept stores, then buy some minty chocolate drops from Woolworths, and mosey over to the big Katz drugstore to eat them while reading all the lurid “adult” magazines that my mother told me were filthy trash unfit for my innocent eyes- rags like True Confessions and True Detective and Crime.
This thread is turning into an episode from the Wonder Years.
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RE
Dilli – 40 years on and damn if I can remember. It was not one of the big two. May have been in Washington instead of Oregon. Nice size river probably a couple hundred yards across by memory, but nothing like the Columbia or Willamette. The guy was across the river and probably 100 yards down stream. Had to be 250 to 300 yards away. The rock was in the air a long time. One in a million to come anywhere near him much less hit him. Lucky we did not hit him in the head. I suspect the launchers had a muzzle velocity of a couple hundred feet a second or so. Not bow and arrow speed, but given the mass they could move they were impressively powerful. I suspect the rock was in the air the best part of ten seconds.
Jarts can be made at home now 😉
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52984
What a great read! Read all the comments too which I just got lost in…… just laughed!
Hit with sticks, covered in cowshit by my friend who fired his shotgun at a pile of it I was standing by, out on my bike till after dark, set fire to piles of leaves, played ‘rock war’ (although we didn’t call it that), rode my motorcycle (50cc) across a frozen pond (to the sound of ice cracking), climbed every tree I could (fell out of many), shot arrows straight up in the air and tried to dodge them at the last minute…..
Most of what I got up to would now get me a ‘record’. Instead I am a dad, a business owner, I have been a teacher……..
It has made me realise what kids today have lost. And that makes me sad.
Llpoh – I have a similar story on a S. Oregon river.
Some friends and I staked out the ‘good’ spot across the river from where the trail came down. Older kid comes down with his girlfriend and starts yelling at us how that is his spot and we got to leave. He then starts chucking rocks across the river at us.
Well, we did not have a funnelator, but my friend had a sling (david and goliath style) and he could whip a baseball size rock with amazing accuracy. After the 5th or 6th rock came down in the sand nearby. He said, ok, that is it. Picked up a large, smooth, round rock and let it fly. You could see right off that the trajectory was dead on. The target was bent over picking up more rocks and did not even see it coming. He looked up at the last possible second and moved his head just enough that it sailed barely an inch past his face.
He left.
To this day, I have no doubt, it would of killed him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRen3jDqViI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F9vRVyV914
We used to have alley wars.
Metal garbage can lids were our Roman shields, rocks, sticks, whatever we could find were our weapons. I remember one kid getting hit in the head with a thrown auto door handle.
We always got in trouble but we sure had fun.
RE
That is some nice nostalgic music. Quite fitting. (Not sure why it’s getting thumbs down.)
Really enjoy the harmony by Chad and Jeremy.
Mary Hopkins … everyone knows that song … and nothing else by her. One hit wonder? Not really. She just released a new album in 2013, “Painting By Numbers”. She still looks good (especially for being 64) and still sounds the same.
The farm with a hay barn. My brother and I jumping out of the rafters into the loose hay or making hay tunnels through the bailed hay. Dad and grandfather hanging a butchered hog for cleaning and skinning. Dad cutting off the heads of chickens and watching them run around the yard with their heads cut off. To this day one of my favorite retorts is “No one here but us chickens and we’re running around with our heads cut off.”
This is a wonderful read. I am late for everything. Question…Is it possible that this generation (Stucky’s) will cycle back, considering the fourth turning et al? My son is 18. It think he will raise his kids with the same kind of freedom. I just wonder…
“Is it possible that this generation (Stucky’s) will cycle back …” ——— Darknlovely
Can you capture lightning in a bottle? Not without great difficulty.
Those days were a unique time in history ignited by unique circumstances. I don’t see how it can be recaptured. And frankly, most people today wouldn’t want to see a resurgence. We thought they’d never end …. but, they did.
Those damn Silents ruined it for everyone..damn em’ all to Chucky Cheese!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-13/most-destructive-generation-ever
in 1951. They did not ‘not issue manifestos, make speeches or carry posters’ then. But they did in the 1960s, when they were in their late teens and up. It’s curious to see that those who did protest and wave banners and all, from Washington to Paris and beyond, concerned as they were with human rights, corruption and the environment, later became the wealthiest and most destructive people the world has ever witnessed, as a group, as a generation.
From 1962 through 1991, when mid-wave Silent Generation members were in their prime working years, gross domestic product grew an average of 3.5% a year. Since then, GDP has expanded 2.6% a year. The homes and financial assets they acquired as they aged saw outsized price gains over the decades. [..] Meanwhile the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s home price gauge has risen 472% since 1975.
…Raw milk in five gallon cans that were kept cold in water set in the ground. Riding then driving my dads John Deere and Ford tractors when bringing in the hay or corn.
…My brother and I carrying my dads .22 over to friends farm and shooting into the trees from their back yard. Making gunpowder with stuff I bought at the local drug store.
…Walking 2, 3, 4 miles or more to the elementary school, to the grocery store or drug store just to buy a .05 candy bar and a .10 comic book.
…Picking blackberries at a local field with mom and then making jams and jellies and pies and cobblers.
…Delivering newspapers on foot on a route that stretched at least five miles. Sundays and Wednesdays were a bitch, but Saturdays were a snap because of how thick and heavy they were. The money I earned went to buying maple bars in the morning and at lunch in the soda shop across the street from the high school. Heck, even the school cafeteria sold the maple bars for a long time.
@Richard – We had a Jersey that we milked. Bossy was her name. My brother and I each drank at least a gallon of whole milk a day.
And I do mean WHOLE. Half the time we didn’t even bother scraping cream, a glass of that milk was like a damned meal.
For a millennial I sure did have a strange upbringing.
…Earning money by collecting beer and pop bottles from the fields and ditches. .01, .02 for the small bottles and .03 for the large beer bottles.
…Earning money shoveling chicken shit at local farmers chicken ranch. Racing my brother to see which of us could fill our wheel barrows faster and run to the dump point to dump the barrows into an old dump truck (without tipping forward too far and going head first into the pile of shit). The two of us driving that old dump truck down into his valley and dumping the load. Today there is a housing development on top of the valley. The grass is sure green.
…Finally getting strong enough to ride, without stopping, up a couple of local uphill roads that were about a 7% grade and 1 1/2 to 2 miles long.
…It was the accomplishments, the doing physical things, driving yourself to succeed, working yourself harder every day.
…And I had a hell of a lot of fun in the doing.
@ThePessimisticChemist
…I can only remember making butter once on the farm, but I remember in later years mom buying whole milk and drinking it that way or skimming the top to make whipped cream.
…I have vague recollections of an outhouse on that farm and hand pumped water in the kitchen. I do remember a hand pump out by the barn.
…Lightening striking the barn one year and me worrying about a German Shepherd that we had. That lightening put a big hole in the roof of that barn. We were probably lucky that it didn’t burn down.
…It’s a shame that the milk industry copyrighted the word “milk”. Now a farmer that sells raw milk can’t legally sell “milk”.
…There are so many things that have gotten ridiculous and out of hand.
We used to monitor the graffiti on the local water tower, so we could be the 100th person to paint it up…….
Great post. Slapped me back to reality – I might even skip my vitamins today, and buy a pack of smokes (not kidding)!
My parents had a place in Connecticut near Groton – a couple acre rocky lot with a two story and a VW Bus and a Buick in the garage. The neighborhood was a big circle drive with about 20 rocky lots, each an acre or two, many lots had been cleared of pines and Laural bushes. The cleared laurels were all cut off at an angle at the base leaving a field of spikes for use to run through. Falling on these resulted in at least two separate trips to the emergency room for stitches – me and a friend.
We use to chase the neighbors bull dog until he would bite someone and break skin. He did several times on different friends. He was a great dog. Today he would be put down.
I must have got emergency room stitches from paying at least 5 times as a kid. I wonder what the statistics are on this over time and if there is any correlation to social and geopolitical issues.
About 6 years old, I flipped a bike over and smashed my face on pavement, splitting my lip and I broke out one of my front teeth. I survived – No helmet.
As a 12 year old we took 22LR rifles and 12 gauge shotguns out onto private property and shoot out anything that resembled glass or plastic on abandoned cars. Mind you, it was a 3-4 mile walk from our townhouse development in Gaithersburg Maryland (then, a RURAL suburb of D.C.). We would walk past the front security gate of the U.S. NIKE Missile Base (an anti-ballistic nuclear missile base was literally across a gravel road from us), and so we walked along this busy road, past the base, carrying our loaded guns openly. Imagine the Youtube video documenting how that would play out today.