...and "Officer Joe Bolton's Three Stooges Fun House" on WPIX 11:
We didn't have much money, but life was good. Did I mention my dad worked three jobs and my mom stayed home?
Posted on 07/28/2012 3:55:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1962, America was a far different place from what it is today. President John Kennedy was presiding over Camelot, and despite fouling up the invasion of Cuba, his approval rating hovered at around 80 percent. Unemployment was 5.2 percent with the average family income at $6,000 a year.
Most Americans did not have much money but made do. Millions bought Elvis Presley's record "Return to Sender" and went to see "Lawrence of Arabia" in movie theaters. At home, "Wagon Train" was the top TV show.
Years later, the film "American Graffiti" featured the ad campaign "Where were you in '62?" Well, I was on Long Island, hanging around. During the day, we swam at the Levittown pool and played stickball in the street, and in August, my father took us to a lake in Vermont. Also, we went to Jones Beach and baked in the sun without block while secondhand cigarette smoke engulfed us on the blanket.
My folks had little disposable income, certainly not enough for air conditioning or a color television set. But again, there was little whining in my working-class neighborhood. We had fun with what was available. Most everybody worked. Nobody was on welfare.
In fact, just 6 percent of Americans received welfare payments in 1962. Now that number is 35 percent. More than 100 million of us are getting money from the government, and that does not count Social Security and Medicare, programs workers pay into. This is a profound change in the American tradition.
Also, we now have close to nine million workers collecting federal disability checks. In 2001, that number was about five million. Here's my question: Is the workplace that much more hazardous than it was 11 years ago? Is our health that much worse?
The answer is no. What we are seeing is the rise of the Nanny State.
Self-reliance and ambition made the United States the most powerful nation on Earth. But that ethic is now eroding fast. Instead, many Americans are looking to game the system, and the philosophy of "where's mine" has taken deep root. About half of American workers pay no federal income tax, leaving the burden to be shouldered by the achievers. As The Edward Winter Group once sang: "Come on and take a free ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
Presiding over and joyously encouraging this societal shift is the purveyor of social justice President Barack Obama. His entire campaign is now built around making the rich "pay their fair share." And where will that money go? To those in need, of course. And those legions are growing larger every single day.
Fair-minded people do not begrudge a safety net for Americans who, through no fault of their own, need help. A compassionate society provides for those battered by life. But what is happening in this country is far beyond a helping hand. We are creating a dual society. In one corner: Americans who work hard to succeed. In the other corner: folks who want what you have.
And the second corner is the growth industry.
“Do you remember 1962 as the beginning year of John F Kennedy’s 50 mile walk program — to prove that Young America was still as physically fit as ever?
What are the chances we’d ever see such a thing again today?”
Hell, kids today do that, and MUCH MORE. They are braver than anyone in the 1960s ever dreamed of, have accomplished more, are more socially aware. It’s not even close.
Of course that all applies to their video games...
...and "Officer Joe Bolton's Three Stooges Fun House" on WPIX 11:
We didn't have much money, but life was good. Did I mention my dad worked three jobs and my mom stayed home?
The thing I miss from 1962 is how little we thought about, or talked about the government, now they are almost as big a part of our every waking moment and conversation and thoughts and worries throughout the day as our families and personal lives used to be.
It would be wonderful to go a week without having to think about the government at all, except for maybe a speeding ticket.
Today a small momentary lapse in government situational awareness can result in an infinite variety of violations and costly, life changing mistakes, at work, in recreation, driving, even conversation and humor.
You had me going there... ;-)
Kennedy's 50 mile walk was nothing-much historically.
In 1831 young Abraham Lincoln took a flat-boat to New Orleans, then walked the 800 miles back to Springfield, Illinois.
In 1865, at the end of the war, one of my great-grandfathers also walked home from New Orleans to Illinois.
And how many thousands of pioneers walked thousands of miles carrying their stuff, to California, Oregon & Washington?
So my point is: even Kennedy's 50 mile march program wasn't much of a big deal by historical standards, but how many young people are doing such things today?
“So my point is: even Kennedy’s 50 mile march program wasn’t much of a big deal by historical standards, but how many young people are doing such things today? “
I got my oldest kid up and down the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail. It was a one-day hike - but considered quite challenging. But he had the right attitude (I told him that I’d stop calling him a wimp if he made it without complaining). We got up at 0500, hit the trail at 0545, and were back by mid-afternoon.
He’s as much of a video-game superhero as the hypothetical kids that I mentioned here, but he made that hike. And now treat him with some respect.
It just goes to show that, even today, people can do a lot - but not if they’re PAMPERED.
1962 summer between freshman and sophmore years.
Spent busy, busy, summer school, clean up new homes during construction, Pony league baseball and surfing.
I forgot to mention that in the summer of 1962 I had never heard the words Muslim, Islam, Sharia, or Jihad.
“In 1962 if I wanted to buy a computer it would cost me millions of dollars.”
_________________________________________________
What on earth would you have done with a computer in 1962?
They were little more then punch card tabulators back then.
They ran on vacuum tubes...hundreds, even thousands.
Even today, what purpose is a home computer without internet?
Many things were cheaper then.
20 thousand bucks was a good salary.
I paid 7200 bucks for my first airplane, a Cessna 172, which I flew from coast to coast, and into Mexico.
If that very same plane is still flying, it would cost
20+ thousand today.
My last two planes were Beach Bonanzas. They were not expensive in the late 70s. Those same planes today would be very far out of reach for me.
Compare the cost of a new car then and now.
You may have missed some of the real fun days. My first one was a 1941 Culver Cadet, mostly wood with 85 hp and retractable gear, for which I paid $1200 in 1959. This airplane was formerly owned by a Chance Vought test pilot! But, I swear, I had earlier seen a Taylorcraft, licensed and flying, sold for $450. Lord, bring back the fifties.
“. . . we were told that Joe McCarthy was a right wing radical for saying what we now know was an understatement of the communist subversion of the government.”
GOOD CALL! How did I forget that? But that was prior to ‘62. My mom never missed televised Yankee games until the HUAC, Senate FRC subcommittee, and Army/McCarthy hearings were televised. Both parents, and eventually all we kids, became ardent McCarthy-supporters—my father perhaps a bit too ardent: NYC lawyer and gentle soul that he was, he KO’d two Democrats who argued on behalf of everything Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Mike Wallace were spewing about JRM. We kids had problems, too. All our nuns were Irish, meaning Democrat, and they didn’t much like our defense of even a Catholic Republican on the playground.
Thanks—all great points but one:
“I don’t see how we did a good job of it — one genuinely conservative President (Ronald Reagan) in 50 years is not so much to brag about.”
Can’t agree there. Thanks to Free Republic and a certain unmentionable group, we kept a known traitor from becoming President. Now, if we could just manage to repeat that miracle . . .
Much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k
"Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."
That would be Landslide Lyndon Johnson, the fourth worst president, after the incumbent, Wilson, and the first President Johnson. (Well, OK, maybe Jimmy and the Idiot on the Dime fit in there somewhere. We've had some very bad presidents!)
Nice thing about relays is at least you could get an idea whether things were working from the sound.
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