Posted on 04/11/2016 2:17:44 PM PDT by HomerBohn
“My mother was born in 1938, now deceased. Those ‘children’ came of age in the 1950’s and subsequently became the hippy generation..”
My wife and I were born about the same time as your mother, and so were 18 of my cousins and 50 cousins for my wife.
None of us became hippies, and we represent the opposite in the political scale. About 50% of the men have college degrees which helped us to get jobs or a good solid tech/trade training. Half of the men volunteered for military service. Most of the women had careers after their children got into middle school. All of our adult children have good jobs or own their own business. The nearest thing to a hippie is a good hearted niece/soul, who is in the Peace Corp. She is also, the only liberal in this sizeable group.
I have often wondered if genetics decided if one became a hippy or a so called average/good American.
Ike was busy in the ETO when FDR sent first OSS “advisors” (precursor of CIA ) to the dolomite caves of N. Vietnam.
That would depend on if you were French or Vietnamese at the time. Many names have been applied to this region.
My great Aunt once told me that the first time she traveled from Southern Indiana to Detroit she did it on a stage coach and it took her the better part of two weeks. On that day she was flying from Detroit to Southern Indiana and she would be home in two hours. What a lifetime!
In addition to Ho’s culinary skills, he was also a short-order cook on the Left Bank in Paris.
“They were born in the 1800s and got around by horse and buggy or even ox carts. Before they died, they had seen jet airliners, atomic bombs, men on the moon, television and it just goes on and on.”
My Dad was born in the late 1890’s. He saw the main transportation go from horse and buggy to cars/trucks/buses.
Then air travel came in, and decades later he saw us land men on the moon.
He was disabled in WWI. He lost a brother and his SIL from the Spanish Flu. He survived the depression, watched WWII envelope the world, the A bombs end that war. He saw the first of our no win wars in Korea.
He watched the Cuban Missile crisis come near to ending our world.
One of his worst moments came after our first son was born. Being a Granddad was great. It was what was happening to his country due to the Nam war protests and the hippies protesting.
My parents visited for a few weeks to help my wife and I after our son was born. At that time, the VietNam riots were going on full scale. I couldn’t wear my uniform to go to my reserve meetings or for my two week active duty sessions.
My wife’s younger brother finished a tour in Nam and was spit on in the Seattle Airport and had to have his brother bring civilian clothes to the plane. So he would be able to get off the plane, when it landed in the midwest.
Later, when MLK was killed, the riots across the country was another low time for my Dad.
My Dad said those years were the worse years of his life, watching his country in turmoil, wondering what would happen to his immediate family and grandkids.
Later, he felt that he had been born and lived in some great times for America and exciting times for him.
this generation really had it the best...they came of age in boom times, positive times, great times....
it was optimism thru and thru....
the "last ones" is true....the last generation that had absolutely no worries for the most part...they escaped the Great depression and the Great War..
..they benefitted from everything including getting it good from SS..
and by and large, they voted in more benefits for themselves, even knowing that all generations subsequent would be paying and paying and paying....
I'm in my low 60's and I can absolutely say that I never voted for anything nor anyone that would screw other generations....
lets face it...they escaped it all and grew up to enjoy the greatest boom times in America....
Oh, and see #23 above.
My Grandmother wrote a story about her first trip to Geneva, Alabama for the local paper. I guess she wrote it around 1970 or so. I still have a copy of it.
She and her Sister were allowed to go with their Father to pick up their older Sister who was coming home from college. They got to the train station only to get a telegram from the college president that he was keeping her for another day due to storms.
They had a lot of adventures. Their Father had a friend who had rooms in the hotel so they stayed there for the night.
The next day they came home but a hurricane had blown down trees all over the road. Their father kept an axe and lantern on the wagon and cleared the trees as they went.
She was actually a very good story teller.
The 1930’s babies were ‘The Silent Generation’
My Great-Grandfather was born in 1868.
Custer raided the Indians on the Washita that year. Indians were on the warpath from Mexico to Canada.
The Santa Fe Trail was closed due to Indian raids.
The first cattle drives from Texas were headed North.
Bison still covered the plains.
Billy the Kid was just a kid.
Tombstone had not been founded yet. The OK Corral shootout was in the far future.
He lived long enough to see TV and the B-52 Bomber go into service. He is buried on the high plains where he would have been scalped in his early years.
My Grandfather McDufie was born in 1865.
His Father and 3 Uncles all joined the 18th Alabama in Elba, Alabama even tho they lived in Florida. They were in most of the larger battles and in a couple they suffered 20% casualties.
They were all captured but exchanged. They all survived the war.
On my Father’s side, they went to Pensacola and joined the First and Sixth Florida. Again they were in most major battles.
It would have been interesting to be able to talk to them.
My dad never talked about his kin. We did not know till a few years ago his Great-grandfather joined the Alabama cavalry, was taken prisoner and released. Always suffered from his injuries till his death.
My parents were born in the early thirtys. My dad was born in 1932, the youngest of 3 surviving children. He lived in Darlington SC and has some great stories about the Darlington Raceway. My favorite is when he and a friend were invited to ride around the track with Herb Thomas. They climbed in the car behind Thomas and hung on to the roll bar while Thomas went a few laps around the track full speed. They didn’t have a seat or seatbelts and they were flung around in the back of the car while Thomas laughed at them trying to hold on.
My mom was born in 1934 in the back country of South Carolina and lived in a four room house without electricity or running water. She was the oldest of three sisters that survived. She tells of waking up early before school to feed and water the mule, cow and chickens, then riding the mule to the one room school house. By the time I came around the grandparents had electrified the house but still had no running water. I remember spending summers there, using the outhouse and taking baths in a galvanized tub on the back porch. I was glad when they boarded up the porch and turned it into a bathroom. My mom didn’t get her driver’s license until she was about 30.
Your parents and I are contemporaries.
I remember the days of no running water, hence no flush toilets and not thinking that remarkable as everyone I knew was in the same situation. I remember with thanks the gathering of eggs and the milking of one cow.
Now we own two residences, two cars, too many bathrooms with running water and flush toilets. our children have grown up to be Conservatives and our grandchildren are following in their footsteps. For that we are thankful.
We watch the net worth we worked hard to accumulate dwindle due to an onerous central socialist greedy government, and with fear of depredation look forward to the beginning of some reversal.
At the current rate of decline our children and grandchildren’s times may rival our younger lives due to our continual election and re-election of careerist politicians and their bureaucratic toadies.
We should all hope and pray for a happy outcome, but with the evil Hillary slouching about there is going to have to be an epiphany or a revelation happening to an increasingly clueless electorate.
You’re absolutely correct in pointing out the blinders that honest men wore while their nation and Republic was being eroded by careerists and their supporters.
It may have been genetics, the ‘luck of the draw’ so to speak, or it may be that each person’s brain gets wired differently during gestation and subsequent birth thru about five years old.
I’ve had friends who were raised in the same household by the same parents and some became flaming liberals and others in the same group became staunch conservatives, so who knows?.............................
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