Old folks come in and give me your input, please!

[Pliablemoose]

No air conditioning.

Forgot about that😀

 

[Thump553]

I grew up in New England but spent many teenage summers on an Ohio farm, so I saw both worlds (distinctly remember painting a barn when Woodstock was going on). Some additional observations:

-cultural events spread much slower then. What was happening in Haight-Ashbury in '67 would hit the East Coast the next year, the heartland (in a much modified fashion) in the early 70s.

-earlier comments about old vets/new vets, and the general disaffection with LBJ, Nixon, etc. were right on. Remember we had the draft back then, something that would be unheard of now. But the rich and privileged (ala our current President) always were able to find a way to weasel out of Vietnam. National Guard service was literally weekend warriors back then, with no real risk of going anywhere near war or leaving home. The Coast Guard was a popular dodge. I know more than one person who went to Canada rather than get drafted and be sent to Vietnam. Fortunately I was about one year too young to faace any serious risk of Vietnam-they drafted my year (birthday lottery) but only the first 40 numbers or so.

-I personally don't think racism was worse then, except maybe in the Southern states where it was part of the formal social fabric. The South has improved an awful lot. The rest of us, sadly, have changed little in practice-we are just less blatant. Remember we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education this year.

-little things were different. TV was black and white for all until about 1963 or 1964-my family never got a color TV until the tailend of the sixties. There were no microwaves or VCRs-if you got sent to bed early, chances are you would never see the TV shows you missed.

-After about 1967 or so, inflation began to rear its ugly head. Prices were always going up, and wages (esp. for kids) did not.

-Cars were worse, but anyone half-way mechanically competent could fix a heck of lot more things on them. This was especially true if you had a VW-I had friends who could replace an entire VW van engine in a half hour-without hoists or anything fancy in the way of tools.

-Its hard to express clearly, but the general attitude was different and more optimistic. The USA, science, social cultural were changing and growing constantly-we were in the space race, the 1964 World's Fair, the hippie thing, most of society was prospering financially (at least compared to the past). While we didn't have computers (or even calculators), home audio systems, etc., other creature comforts like boats, cottages, etc. were frequently owned by common people. Nearly everyone felt their kids would have a better life, financially at least, than they did.

 

[rudder]

The diapers circa the very late sixties gave me some mean rash. Thats all I can offer you.