View Full Version : Life 50 years ago.. for better or worse
Some people feel life was simpler back then (my DH for instance).
Others might feel we've come a long way (baby).
Some of you here are going to remember well life back then when you see this slideshow:
http://www.countryliving.com/life/g5115/how-was-life-50-years-ago/?src=arb_fb_d
Others, the "young'uns" here, will simply have to imagine what it was like (hint--only landlines, no computers, no seat belts, no civil rights to speak of).
I was married 53 years ago so a lot of the images are actual memories for me. Most had little impact on my life living in Canada.
I believe 1963 was the first year that student loans were available and mine was $500. I repaid it in 6 months from my first job after graduation.
My DH could borrow money without my knowledge or consent and I was liable for that debt. I could not borrow money without his knowledge or consent.
I love, love my life today! So much has improved for me, my children and the world. We seem to take it all for granted but I know how things used to be and never cease to be grateful.
Hah! Thanks for posting. When I compare quality of life in 1968 to quality of life now, I find it to be a mixed bag. Some things, like advances in rights for women and minorities and advances in medical technology are unqualified goods. Some modern conveniences, like ATMs and cell phones, are useful.
Other "advances" in technology, not so much. Cable TV has simply taken the vast wasteland and made it vaster. Always-on connectivity is mainly useful for corporations to keep their workers on a tighter leash. Advances in computer technology have made possible tremendous increases in worker productivity, but those benefits have been very unevenly shared.
One thing that always strikes me when I think about our household in 1968 versus the households I see today is how much simpler everything was. My family, and virtually all of our neighbors, had one phone, one TV, one record player, one camera, one or two radios, and minimal appliances--maybe a toaster and blender for the kitchen. Most consumer goods were a lot more expensive, which some might see as a disadvantage, but it made us more thoughtful about what we bought.
I personally like the one (#18) that talks about how "rotary phones remained popular for household use until well into the '70s."
We moved to our current home in 1985, and it still had a rotary wall phone. A couple of years later, one of my son's friends asked if he could use the phone to call his mother. I said, sure.
I didn't hear any sounds coming from the kitchen, but he emerged a few minutes later. I asked him, "Chris, did you get your mother on the phone?" He said, "No, I couldn't figure out how to use it."
I can't remember when we finally gave up the rotary phone, but it probably wasn't until the 90s.
BikingLady
1-12-18, 5:25pm
I was almost 7. Life was so good, fun, home was loving with great neighborhood. Can't add much more than that for my own life 50 years ago.
50 years ago I was in third grade, and starting to read the encyclopedia for fun (we had no childrens books at my house). Little could I have imagined, that I could have every encyclopedia every made ***in my pocket***!! Even just 40 years ago, I had a guidance counselor tell me that girls can't be engineers, and why didn't I be an English teacher instead. Its an amazing world indeed. We still have some intractable problems, for sure, but so much progress in so many arenas!
iris lilies
1-12-18, 5:43pm
Really, I have to challange the “no civil rights to speak of” generalization. I cant let that go.
This country’s entire founding story is the ultimate exercise in civil rights.
But carry on.
iris lilies
1-12-18, 5:46pm
I personally like the one (#18) that talks about how "rotary phones remained popular for household use until well into the '70s."
We moved to our current home in 1985, and it still had a rotary wall phone. A couple of years later, one of my son's friends asked if he could use the phone to call his mother. I said, sure.
I didn't hear any sounds coming from the kitchen, but he emerged a few minutes later. I asked him, "Chris, did you get your mother on the phone?" He said, "No, I couldn't figure out how to use it."
I can't remember when we finally gave up the rotary phone, but it probably wasn't until the 90s.
Dont know why you would give up a perfectly good phone! Our rotary phone still works and we have it up on our third floor in DH’s tv room.
Meanwhile, the cute retro style phone I purchased one year ago has already gone kaput, the cheap
Chinese piece of junk that it is. It was made to look loke a rotary phone from the outside.
In the 50's we had one of those windup phone that were wooden boxes about 18" tall and 6" wide and deep. Not sure when they bit the dust. I really liked the rotary phone by comparison.
In the mid-70's we were on a rural party line. You could hear the nosy folks listening in by their breathing.
One time, the police from another province were trying to get hold of us for some info but we were on holiday. It drove the various neighbours on our party line totally nuts because they would keep asking us if any thing happened on our holiday and we answered no. Turned out someone had finally answered our ring and told the police that we were away so they speculated all kinds of adventures. The police had told them who was calling and a contact number. We never did tell the neighbours the answer to the mystery. Chuckling just thinking about it. Nowadays with cellphones, the entire world hears what you are saying.
I could probably argue a case that life is simpler now with all the electronic devices and media. I can remember a time as a kid when we did not have a dishwasher, garbage disposal, or garage door opener. We trimmed the lawn edges with hand clippers. Cars were always breaking down and since Dad always bought retreads you needed tires every 10,000 miles or so. The houses in my block had an alley and next to the alley everyone had a concrete or brick ash pit in their backyard where they would burn trash, which seems pretty wild these days. And we were pretty middle class..
It all seems to have freed up a lot of time for people to use cell phones, play computer games, and watch cable TV (joking, but there were some better things about the old days).
I loved my big heavy solid rotary phone that always worked. Got rid of the landline. Sometimes I wish it was all I had. Was also a good protective device. I could really hurt someone if I hurled it at them and hit them. Its ring would cause me to jump right out of bed at attention because it was so loud.
Ultralight
1-12-18, 6:53pm
I imagine life being better from about 1974 to 1981. Why? No Vietnam and no AIDS!
rosarugosa
1-12-18, 7:19pm
I checked my records and we retired our rotary dial phone in 2003. We had painted the kitchen and the once-white phone was so discolored from smoking that it was too hideous to hang on the wall again (and wouldn't come clean). We too had an incident where a young (and drunk) person could not figure out how to use the phone.
We don't have a dishwasher or a garbage disposal or a garage (let alone an automatic opener).
iris lilies
1-12-18, 7:30pm
I imagine life being better from about 1974 to 1981. Why? No Vietnam and no AIDS!
That was a sweet time, I agree. Well past 1981 into 1985 I would say.
Ultralight
1-12-18, 7:43pm
That was a sweet time, I agree. Well past 1981 into 1985 I would say.
1985? For straights... But that would have applied to me.
dado potato
1-12-18, 7:46pm
Some sweetness from 1968, "C'mon Baby Light My Fire", Jose Feliciano version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RtTWDv-yWM
frugal-one
1-12-18, 8:00pm
When I got married it was the husband who was considered the head of the household and most everything was put in his name. I put credit cards and all kinds of credit in my name fearing that if my husband divorced me, I would not be able to get any credit. Years later, when we started a business, my husband actually had trouble because of this. There was very little credit history on him. Now, this is a marital property state and his credit is my credit. It actually was scary marrying at that time because of this.
ETA: At the time, I worked as a supervisor for a credit company and made decisions on who got credit.
I was born in 1969, but a lot of the technology was had was of the simpler sort. However, we always had a push button phone. We had several independent TV stations in the Detroit area, besides ABC, CBS, NBC, and we had the CBC from Windsor, Ontario, just across the Detroit River. No dishwasher. The record player we had was one of those heavy, expensive wood cabinet models that had a radio/record player built into it. Everyone in the family had their own radio. I got to talk on the phone in relative privacy in high school since the phone in my parents room, right next to mine, was on a very long cord. I just took it into my room! We had one bathroom for four people. Oh, the horror! ;)
No VCR until I left home and got my own. The 12" TV I took away to college with me in 1987 was a black & white model! All through college (graduated in 1991), I typed my papers on a typewriter, although I did get an electronic typewriter my junior year. I remember very well what life was like before the internet. I didn't have my own computer at home until 2000. Your sources for news were TV, radio, the big city newspaper, and your local suburban paper.
I think the biggest change since the time I grew up in is a certain lack of civility. Of course, those who are of color or otherwise "different" would say that things are much better now. The thing I always wonder about is what exactly did we do with all that time when before the computer became an integral part of our lives. I kind of miss rotary phones. I can still hear the sound of that dial going round and round. Taylor 6-2165. I grew up in a weird time for women - caught between someday your prince will come and women's liberation.
BikingLady
1-13-18, 7:14am
I could probably argue a case that life is simpler now with all the electronic devices and media. I can remember a time as a kid when we did not have a dishwasher, garbage disposal, or garage door opener. We trimmed the lawn edges with hand clippers. Cars were always breaking down and since Dad always bought retreads you needed tires every 10,000 miles or so. The houses in my block had an alley and next to the alley everyone had a concrete or brick ash pit in their backyard where they would burn trash, which seems pretty wild these days. And we were pretty middle class..
It all seems to have freed up a lot of time for people to use cell phones, play computer games, and watch cable TV (joking, but there were some better things about the old days).
Oh My I remember hand clippers!!Imagine that today.
Williamsmith
1-13-18, 8:27am
Hot Wheels were on the shelf on the small toy store where my dad got his supplies for building scale balsa wood airplanes. I never got a new one but years later my cousin sent a box of used ones with bent wheels and faded paint. I still have some that my granddaughter played with.
Laugh In with Rowen and Martin .....I used to watch a little with dad. Mom was disgusted with the girls and their painted bodies, dancing.
I don’t know if Dan Rather was hosting CBS news yet but I remember the body count and thinking, I’m not going over there. No way. I also remember watching the Wide, Wide World of Sports and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
My dad was paying attention to something called the My Lai Massacre and the war in Vietnam was starting to get him down....I learned a few years later that over there innocent kids much like me were running naked away from fire from the sky called napalm. And that my country dropped that shit from the sky on their heads.
A black preacher by the name of Martin Luther King was causing quite a stir. My dad called him a trouble maker and a rebel rouser. Also said he cheated on his wife and was a hypocrite. Then somebody shot him dead with a rifle and all that name calling stopped.
Throughout those years of the late 60s I went to my grandmas house on Sunday evening and once a year watched, “The Wizard of Oz”. I learned that my favorite song was and always will be Somewhere over the Rainbow. I never liked bicycles with baskets.
I began my infatuation with Beatles music and John Lennon. With my round glasses, I kind of looked like him later in life. Most people would describe me as a cross between John Lennon and an ESPN sportscaster named Kenny Mayne.
The Indianapolis 500 races were really interesting. My brother would go see one in person. I never did, but I thought Al Unser was pretty cool in his jump suit.
Bobby Kennedy got shot to death right before every ones eyes just like his brother and our President did a few years earlier. There was a lot a killing and hatred and I didn’t know why. Still don’t.
I didn’t know it yet but abortion and birth control would be a hot hot religious and political topic. My catholic friends would seem to struggle more with it. I never understood the reason the Pope existed and how he was infallible. I was taught to talk straight to Jesus. So that’s what I did. Usually when I wanted something or didn’t want something.
My dad liked to watch Hawaii Five O. He raves about the theme song to me and I can still see him imitating the drum beat with his mouth. And 60 minutes was showing also. I never missed the last five minutes of Andy Rooney. That guy always made sense in a sarcastic way. “Did you ever notice.....?”
Richard Nixon began his rise to fame as President and a few years later my dad had delivered to the house a stack of blue bound books that looked really important. It was the tape transcripts of the watergate debacle. I read through some of it and learned that (expletive deleted) meant my President was talking like an asshat. Not only that, he was acting like one too.
The Women’s Liberation movement was becoming a thing. It wasn’t a good thing according to lots of folks. Later in life, I had to get used to the idea of a woman being my superior. I got used it.
Some astronauts orbit the moon and read from the Bible, passages from Genesis. I remember being moved by it.
On Saturday mornings...I watched cartoons and ate sugary cereal. Life was good.
Found this very interesting but some of it is a greater time span but has good info in general.
Source:http://morganhousel.tumblr.com/post/150323919538/what-a-time-to-be-alive
John D. Rockefeller was the richest man the world had ever seen.
But for most of his adult life he didn’t have electric lights, air conditioning, or sunglasses. And he never had penicillin, sunscreen, or Advil. This is not ancient history: One in twenty Americans were born before Rockefeller died.
The majority of Americans think the next generation of adults will be worse off than their parents.
I think of two things when I hear this.
One, the pessimists are probably wrong, extrapolating a bad decade into infinity. Two, progress is like compound interest – you don’t even notice it in the short run, but it’s mindblowing when you zoom out and see what can be accomplished over long periods.
There are so many things still wrong with the world, and the future will always be hard. But when confronted with pessimism, Warren Buffett reminds us that normal Americans “live better than John D. Rockefeller did.”
Here are some examples of how right he is.
Life expectancy in America has increased from 47 years in 1900 to 78 years in 2011. That’s great. Here’s what’s better: The majority of that gain has come from declines in infant and childhood mortality. One in 15 babies born in 1900 didn’t see their first birthday; a fifth didn’t make it to age five. In America! Today fewer than seven in a thousand die before age five. The decline means 700,000 fewer kids die each year who would have died 115 years ago. That’s like adding a city the size of Seattle every year.
To put that stat a different way: Being born in America in 1900 gave you a 79% chance of living for five years. Today, the five-year survival rate for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is 82%. So just being a kid 1900 was riskier than having lymphoma is today.
Penicillin has saved between 80 and 200 million lives since first used in 1942, depending on whose estimates you use. Put that in context of deaths from World War I (~17 million) and World War II (~60 million), and it’s possible that Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery saved more lives than both world wars took.
Microsoft sold a computer mouse in 1985 for $179, or $401 adjusted for inflation. Today $401 can buy you a Chromebook, a Kindle tablet, and an iPhone 5, with enough money left over for lunch.
The percentage of American adults who smoke daily declined from 45% in 1965 to 18% in 2012,according to OECD.
Median household income during the boom year of 1929 was about $16,000 adjusted for inflation, according to Census Bureau data. It’s more than $53,000 today.
According to the World Health Organization, “Measles vaccination has saved an estimated 17.1 million lives since 2000.”
“In the late 1940s to the early 1950s … polio crippled an average of more than 35,000 people in the United States each year,” writes the CDC. Today it’s wiped out.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,there were 1.75 million children age 10-15 working in America in 1900. Today, employment under age 16 is effectively banned.
Nationwide murders declined from 23,326 in 1994 to 14,196 in 2014, according to the FBI. (more if you adjust for population growth). Similarly, robbery declined from 618,949 incidents in 1994 to 345,031 in 2014, a drop of 44%. Aggravated assault fell 35%.
A December 2015 flight from Miami to Los Angeles was delayed and took 20 hours, which one passenger told CNN was “a nightmare that you can’t believe.” As recently as 1929 that 20-hour travel time would have been a world record.
The percentage of women with bachelor’s degrees at age 18-33 nearly doubled from the Baby Boom to the Millennial generation, from 14% to 27%.
“Hip fractures have been dropping by 15-20 per cent a decade for 30 years,” writes the Financial Times. One theory: We’re better at providing daily mobility assistance for those who need it.
Rates of dementia for Americans over age 60 have declined by more than a third in the last 30 years. Some think better control of blood pressure led to a decline in ministrokes, which then reduced the prevalence of dementia.
The DailyMail writes, “In 1900 a typical male was 5ft 6in tall, but by 2000 that had gone up to 5ft 10in … Researchers put the growth spurt mostly down to pregnant mothers eating better food which meant their babies grew up to be stronger and healthier.”
In 1933 there were 37 workplace fatalities per 100,000 workers, according to OSHA. In 2009 there were 3.6 per 100,000. With 144 million U.S. workers, the decline means 48,100 fewer workers die each year who would have 80 years ago. Every 14 months we avoid as many workplace deaths compared to 1933 as U.S. soldiers died in the Vietnam War.
Historian Deirdre McCloskey recently wrote , “A billion or so people on the planet drag along on the equivalent of $3 a day or less. But as recently as 1800, almost everybody did.” (Adjusted for inflation).
The global fertility rate has declined from 5.1 babies per women in 1964 to 2.5 today, according to the Census Bureau International Database. This is wonderful: Fertility declines as countries become richer and infant mortality falls. In the 18th century Adam Smith wrote, “It is not uncommon in the highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne 20 children not to have 2 alive.”
The percentage of the world living on less than $2 a day (adjusted for inflation) has been cut in half over the last 40 years, according to the World Bank.
Americans over age 100 are the fastest growing age group, by far. In 1980 there were about 15,000 Americans over age 100. Today there are 78,000. By 2030, an estimated 138,000, according to the Census Bureau. That means the centenarian share of the population will more than quintuple, from 0.0007% in 1980 to 0.04% by 2030.
In 1930 Americans spent more than 8% of their disposable income on energy, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. During the 1980s oil spike it peaked at more than 9%. Today it’s less than 4%, an all-time low.
A BMW plant in South Carolina gets part of its power from methane siphoned off a nearby landfill. People don’t think of this kind of stuff when making peak-energy forecasts.
Twenty people have received face transplants since 2005, according to Johns Hopkins Hospital. This was unfathomable 30 years ago.
The percentage of an average household’s budget devoted to food fell from 46.4% in 1901 to 13% in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If that percentage had not declined the average household today would spend more than $2,100 a month on food.
Real median wages have been stagnant for a while. But real median compensation – which includes things like health insurance subsidies and 401(k) matches – is up more than 40% since 1980. People are getting a raise, it’s just coming in the form of subsidies on ever-rising insurance premiums.
We have a retirement funding crisis, which would sound like the most peculiar thing in the world to people 100 years ago, most of whom had no concept of retirement and worked until they died. In 1900 65.4% of men over age 65 were still working, according to the Census Bureau. And nearly all jobs were physically demanding. By the 1990s it was down to 17%.
In 1900 the median age at death was 59. Today it’s 80, according to the Social Security Administration.
In 1900 it took four days to travel from New York to Los Angeles. Today it takes 19 hours to travel from New York to Singapore.
The age-adjusted death rate per capita from heart disease has declined more than 70% since 1965, according to the National Institute of Health. The New York Times says this was “spurred by better control of cholesterol and blood pressure, reduced smoking rates, improved medical treatments — and faster care of people in the throes of a heart attack.”
Health insurance prices are rising fast. But consider that anything resembling modern medical insurance didn’t even exist until the 1920s, when a group of Texas teachers began prepaying for hospital expenses. Health insurance wasn’t needed before the 1930s because medical care wasn’t that expensive, and it wasn’t that expensive because we didn’t know that much about medicine and couldn’t do a whole lot for sick people.
People uploaded 657 billion pictures in 2014,according to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report.
A 1996 computer catalog has an average list price of $3,412, or more than $5,200 adjusted for inflation. A Chromebook today can be purchased for $101 and is, on every level, an order of magnitude or greater more advanced.
Bank failures in the early 1930s wiped out deposits equal to 2.2% of GDP, according to the FDIC. That’s the equivalent of $396 billion today. With FDIC insurance, no one with less than $250,000 in the bank has anything to worry about anymore.
“The United States uses less than half as much energy for every unit of GDP as it did in the 1970s,” w
“A new car in the 1970s might have averaged 13.5 miles to every gallon. Today, on a fleet average basis, a new car is required to get 30.2 miles per gallon,” writes Yergin.
The high-school graduation rate was 6.4% in 1900, 50.8% in 1940, 77.1% in 1970, a record-high 80% in 2012,
Fatal airlines accidents have declined from more than 40 per year in 1970s to fewer than 10 per year in the last decade.
I can remember a time as a kid when we did not have a dishwasher, garbage disposal, or garage door opener. We trimmed the lawn edges with hand clippers. Cars were always breaking down and since Dad always bought retreads you needed tires every 10,000 miles or so.
I don't have an ATM card, dishwasher, garbage disposal, garage door opener, or garage. But my tires last longer.
Razz - I love your long list.
I don't have an ATM card, dishwasher, garbage disposal, garage door opener, or garage. But my tires last longer.
I was well into my 50's before I got a place with a dishwasher, washing machine, and a garage. I still prefer to dry clothes on the clothesline, but not having to go to the laundromat is a definite time saver. I have to say that a garage with a door opener is very nice in the winter. Microwaves have also made life a little easier.
ToomuchStuff
1-13-18, 4:48pm
I think in my sub big 5 lifetime....
Two room schoolhouse, party lines, no a/c, cars that needed tune ups every 12K miles, oil changes at 1500 miles at most, no Adam/Amber alerts back from when I was abducted, etc. etc. etc.
Then I think about the things I have read about my grandfathers life, or my neighbor that lived three centuries...
Children that were lucky to make it to adulthood, more agricultural based life, Early escape from that as a "mechanic" which was a new carriageless horse thing (less children died as cars didn't kick to the head), first flight to the man on the moon, modern washers and dryers, etc. etc. etc.
With the music thread, combine the two and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
Teacher Terry
1-14-18, 3:54pm
I was 13 back then. Housework was a f.t. job. We had no dryer so hung clothes in basement in Wi in the winter. It took my Mom an entire day to iron. You had to iron the sheets because the material was so wrinkled it would be uncomfortable to sleep on it. I remember when my mom went back to work and we got a dryer and then a dishwasher. You took really good care of things because you couldn't afford to replace because the cost was so high.
You took really good care of things because you couldn't afford to replace because the cost was so high.
Great point. My role model for that was my MIL who took extremely good care of everything she owned and it lasted forever. My BIL wound up ruining a deck umbrella that my MIL had owned since the 70s. It had teal and aqua flowers on the inside and fringe around it. In spite of the fact that she used it every day and it was in the elements rain or shine (of course, she religiously would put the cover over it when rain threatened), it lasted all these years. Until she died and my BIL wasn't as diligent, and during a windstorm it was open and it blew into the yard and spokes were broken. What a shame.
She also covered her cars with muslin. (Of course she would NEVER PAY for an expensive car cover). AND she kept her car in the garage. Even so, every day we had a routine--someone stood on one side of the car and someone else on the other and we carefully draped three big pieces of thick muslin over the car.
She never threw out Christmas lights that went out. She'd sit in front of the TV all night playing with the lights until she found the one(s) that needed to be replaced.
Even her poinsettias lasted forever.
Teacher Terry, my MIL also hung up her clothes in the basement after fluffing them for a few minutes to get wrinkles out--her reasoning was that all that lint you get from the lint-catcher--that's your clothes. So it made sense to her that her clothes would last a LOT longer if she kept the dryer from eating them up. I've actually adopted her clothes drying system and I love it. The clothes don't need a bit of ironing and they retain their body as opposed to looking like they've been beaten silly.
All in all, I'm happy we have made (mostly) so much progress over the years.
All in all, I'm happy we have made (mostly) so much progress over the years.
Me too. The Internet alone makes me thrilled I wasn't born 20 years earlier.
frugal-one
1-15-18, 12:17pm
I was 13 back then. Housework was a f.t. job. We had no dryer so hung clothes in basement in Wi in the winter. It took my Mom an entire day to iron. You had to iron the sheets because the material was so wrinkled it would be uncomfortable to sleep on it. I remember when my mom went back to work and we got a dryer and then a dishwasher. You took really good care of things because you couldn't afford to replace because the cost was so high.
If you live in the north.... as we do... you still put your clothes in the basement to dry! We don't dry clothes many clothes all the way and then hang the rest to dry.
I used to hang clothes in the basement to dry but I gave in and use my dryer. I see the point, but still it hurts to go up and down the stairs and it would take multiple trips to do the wash, so I just use the dryer, which is out in the garage.
I miss some things and not others. I know my life as a child and teen was a whole lot simpler and less stressful (in different ways) than it is for today's kids. In the hood I grew up in, I was the only kid with a single parent. Moms were home. We walked to school (about six blocks) which just doesn't happen much now. There was a lot more creative play since we didn't have gadgets. I recall spending hours with Barbie dolls - inventing clothes with scraps of fabrics. Or hours spent drawing. Roaming outside with neighborhood friends. Everyone was about the same economic class except for the Mexicans who had their own hoods nearby. Looking back, I got caught between the time of scripted roles (someday my prince will come) and liberation movements of the 60s. I guess there is much more awareness of bigotry and injustices now but somehow our culture seems to be growing more coarse and violent as time goes by.
Teacher Terry
1-15-18, 8:09pm
I have a small drying rack for the few things that do not go in the dryer. No way would I give up using my clothes dryer. Once my Mom go one she never looked back:))
Imagine going back to 1968 and saying something like “Do you think the #MeToo movement jumped the shark with the Aziz Ansari kerfuffle?”
ToomuchStuff
1-16-18, 2:58pm
Imagine going back to 1968 and saying something like “Do you think the #MeToo movement jumped the shark with the Aziz Ansari kerfuffle?”
You would get a :confused: look and possibly be escorted off for a mental evaluation. No idea what hash tags are, or any clue about a Happy days reference, and wonder what countries news you were talking about with that name.
Imagine going back to 1968 and saying something like “Do you think the #MeToo movement jumped the shark with the Aziz Ansari kerfuffle?”
I only just heard about this absurd business, after stumbling across an article (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-humiliation-of-aziz-ansari/550541/) about it.
Flanagan gets it about right. If you're interested in reading a bunch of philosophical claptrap about the same incident (and from the same magazine), try this (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/aziz-ansari-and-the-paradox-of-no/550556/).
A cheap con man is in the White House, and a celebrity is being pilloried for assuming he'd have sex with a groupie who voluntarily took off her clothes in his apartment. We truly live in bizzaro world.
50 years ago there were only around 2.5 billion people in the world - I guess from this point it must have been a bit better. Everyone who has visited major European capitals in summer will know what I mean, when I say way too many people in the world now!
Teacher Terry
3-1-18, 1:18pm
We always go to Europe in the off season for that reason:))
Nice, life was much simple back then, and much nicer too as I recall.
Nice, life was much simple back then, and much nicer too as I recall.
Apart from the riots, the war and the burning cities 1968 was OK.
Apart from the riots, the war and the burning cities 1968 was OK.
Don't bogart my memories man, 68 was groovy!
I don't remember 1968. Or was that 1967? '69 was the Mets; that was real! ;)
I don't remember 1968. Or was that 1967? '69 was the Mets; that was real! ;)
The Miracle Mets! A much more important event than the lunar landing.
The Miracle Mets! A much more important event than the lunar landing.
RIP Marvelous Marv Throneberry. That was the gold old days.
BikingLady
3-24-18, 4:54am
Revisiting post:
1968 Tigers. I am not baseball fan, but that summer being 7 years old is forever in my memory with happy thoughts:) Dad and neighbor Al sitting outside in the summer evenings listening to the radio with the Tiger game on. My best friend Juile (Al's daughter) and I playing in the cut grass. If there is one memory that sticks out in my mind from childhood it is that!
tennesseeborder
4-6-18, 9:45am
50 years ago I was in Upstate New York and the Yankees had won their second world series. Talk about miracles they made an amazing comeback after being 14 games back in July of 1978.
tennesseeborder
4-6-18, 9:47am
Oops my math is wrong, in 1968 I was in North Jersey it was one year before the amazing Mets. I was in elementary school, and I remember we used to take trips to Shea stadium to see the Mets and the New York Jets football team.
gimmethesimplelife
4-6-18, 10:14am
I find this topic very interesting. !968? I was two years old so I don't remember it. But what a time it must have been for someone like me - so much activism, so much protesting, easy access to a new life in Canada if you wanted such.....on the one hand, no computer software to track your work performance - on the other hand, no social media to aid lower income individuals in flattening injustice and exposing the truths of a given citizenship to the world.
No Internet, no smartphones, no apps - coupled with a slower pace of life and more acceptance of those for whom conforming to society doesn't work - almost an expectation of activism if you were of a certain age. Health care not a nightmare to access for most people and less of a need to flee the country to afford to see a dentist. Did databases that relentlessly store information about you even exist then?
Honestly? I'd go back to that time if I could - though I realize I'd have to give a few things I cherish up, such as the amazing progress since then in LGBT rights - that one would be very hard to let go of. I do cherish the fact that everyone at work knows that I'm gay and that no one could care less - it's a non-issue in my workplace as it should be. In 1968 I wouldn't have that.
What I would have is access to a new life in Canada and should I have stayed, I would (I'm guessing) have fit in better in terms of calling out society for what it is (much more acceptable at that time vs. now) and I would have appreciated access to healthcare not being a nightmare. Some give and take here, though as I said, I'd have issues with the lack of LGBT rights in that era. That time did have it's problematic points, too. Rob
I remember being a little kid during the Cuban Missile Crisis and going and standing outside and thinking, well, if the world is ending, I want to be here to see it before it goes. I remember a feeling a surreal terror but also a feeling that I wanted to say goodbye to the earth, the trees, everything I thought was so beautiful.
I was six.
Life wasn't all maltshops and roller skates, I guess.
I remember being a little kid during the Cuban Missile Crisis and going and standing outside and thinking, well, if the world is ending, I want to be here to see it before it goes. I remember a feeling a surreal terror but also a feeling that I wanted to say goodbye to the earth, the trees, everything I thought was so beautiful.
I was six.
Life wasn't all maltshops and roller skates, I guess.
I do remember those feelings. I remember walking to school in the morning, and every time I heard a plane above, I'd wonder if it was packing a bomb that was going to drop on my head.
Rob, a lot of the things you mentioned in your post were true--it was simpler in many ways without today's technology, but when my DH pulls out the nostalgia he has for those times, I remind him while life was good for the quintessential Normal Rockwell family, choices were very limited for large swaths of the population; namely women and minorities. Even though we still have inequality, we're a far cry from where we were back then. My mother had to remarry to be able to feed me and my brothers; my MIL had to live with her parents for the same reason after her husband died at a young age. Both my MIL and mother had little hope of rising above a low minimum wage job.
Teacher Terry
4-6-18, 1:41pm
Yes discrimination as rampant during those times. My Dad worked at a automobile plant and a black man that he was friends with had a law degree, passed the bar and no one would hire him so he worked at the plant. This was not in the South but in the Midwest. The guy was bitter of course.
gimmethesimplelife
4-6-18, 11:20pm
I do remember those feelings. I remember walking to school in the morning, and every time I heard a plane above, I'd wonder if it was packing a bomb that was going to drop on my head.
Rob, a lot of the things you mentioned in your post were true--it was simpler in many ways without today's technology, but when my DH pulls out the nostalgia he has for those times, I remind him while life was good for the quintessential Normal Rockwell family, choices were very limited for large swaths of the population; namely women and minorities. Even though we still have inequality, we're a far cry from where we were back then. My mother had to remarry to be able to feed me and my brothers; my MIL had to live with her parents for the same reason after her husband died at a young age. Both my MIL and mother had little hope of rising above a low minimum wage job.Catherine, hi!
I believe you very much have a point here. In the 60's women faced a very different reality than they do today with fewer options. Good paying jobs were the province of men in those days and women who worked as you stated did not make much for the most part. I'm sure there were exceptions to this scattered here and there but good paying work? That was reserved for men mostly. Meaning that marriage (talking of male/female marriage here, which is all that existed in those days) was a different set up than it is today. With fewer options, marriage was more important in that day for a woman's economic survival/status/success. I don't know that this scenario made for happy marriages any more than today's does to be honest.
Talking about this era brings to mind the AMC series Mad Men for me. Two scenes in the series really stood out for me. The first involves the gay character Sal and the double life he had to live as at that time there truly was no other option. And for women and what they endured in this era - the very first episode where Joan Holloway is orientating new hire Peggy to her new secretarial job. Joan is showing Peggy the typewriter she will be using and ACTUALLY SAYS THE FOLLOWING: Don't be intimidated by this typewriter. The men who designed it made it easy to understand for female minds. Seriously, her character actually says this. Could you imagine the outcry if someone said this to a new female administrative assistant hire today??? And what gets me is that this line was lateral from a woman to another woman - really shows that era for how women were viewed.
As I've stated here before I do have some issues with third wave feminism but I'd rather have things as they are today than have women endure such treatment as this in the 1960's. Rob
ApatheticNoMore
4-7-18, 11:48am
I don't know that may have been true at one time but not a mere 50 years ago ... in the 60s my mom was studying and became an engineer. Some of this stuff seems much more stereotype than reality. So blah blah blah but I don't believe it! Many women may not have been raised to take opportunities it is true, but I come from a long line of progressive politics so my mom wouldn't have been raised to be that conventional.
It isn't that prejudice in the workplace against women in a man's world didn't exist. It did. And yes it's annoying and unfair if you have a boss who trusts the men more than you, but ... prejudice against women just wasn't the absolute barrier some present it as. And my mom always out-earned my dad until she became a stay-at-home mom in her 40s. Nor did my mom marry till her early 30s.
The problem with such women is you have to live up to them! And it's pretty daunting ...
Now my grandmother was a more conventionally female role, had a law degree but didn't work for awhile and then just did part-time teaching of ESL. Because she was a caretaker not just of two kids but at one point of at least two elderly people AT THE SAME time as well. Cry for my grandmother if you want, but for caring for her old folks her and my grandfather lived in and inherited a free house of the sort that two good incomes earned via full time labor will not buy nowadays. And even so there is still no fairy godmother who does caretaking when women don't do it.
Life nowdays I guess is good for well-paid two income couples and their families, which is the modern Normal Rockwell ideal I guess. And well more difficult economically for those who don't fit that ideal. A woman may need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, but women who don't marry are still quite likely to be poorer than both single men and married women both in their old age and before then.
50 years ago today, I was probably playing at my friend Judy's home with Barbie's, well maybe a Ken. It was a good day I bet. Today would have been Judy's 57 bday. Just thinking of the calendar and what today meant when I was young 50 years ago.
I mentioned this before but when first married (in the 70s) I put everything in my name to get credit. At that time, if married, everything belonged to the man. I felt, therefore, that if the marriage didn't work or my husband died, I would at least have credit in my own name. It actually was frightening (to me at least) that I could be left destitute.
ETA ... also in the 70s... FIL died and the law at that time was MIL got half and her child/children got half. My DH signed everything over to her. He felt that was ridiculous. She and her husband worked for years to accumulate everything and she was supposed to just hand half of it over.
I would not want to go back to those times.
Frugal one, your story reminds me of the mother of one of my high school friends. She had divorced in the early 80’s and wanted to buy a modest house to raise her two teenage daughters in. The loan officer at the bank didnt want to give a divirced woman a loan but she qualified. So he said, but you’ll probably retire in twenty years and it’s a 30 year mortgage. So she asked him to calculate whether she qualified for a 15 year mortgage. She did and befridhingly he gave her the loan. Fifteen years later when she retired in a paid off house she was grateful for his sexism...
In the 60s my mother was a newly divorced single woman with a pharmacy degree. As a working mom pharmacist, she was a pariah in a sea of SAHM's and thus so were her children. All the other moms played tennis at the club and had maids to do the housework, but mine went to work everyday working long shifts and came home exhausted. She is long gone but now I know she was well ahead of her time.
HappyHiker
4-11-18, 8:44pm
What strikes me now is how crowded every where seems. Roads, parks, vacation spots. Cities.
World population in 1968 was 3,551,880,700.
World population now is around 7,632,819,325.
So population has more than doubled. No wonder the world seems crowded. It IS.
Wonder where we're headed?
What strikes me now is how crowded every where seems. Roads, parks, vacation spots. Cities.
World population in 1968 was 3,551,880,700.
World population now is around 7,632,819,325.
So population has more than doubled. No wonder the world seems crowded. It IS.
Wonder where we're headed?
Supposedly world population is going to level off at around 10 billion by 2050. Who knows if the predictors are correct about that, but from what I've read most of the developed world's population would be shrinking were it not for immigration, so perhaps they are right.
It wouldn't be the first time Doomsday needed to be rescheduled.
heatmiser
8-20-18, 10:40pm
Very nice. Thanks for helping to put things in perspective!
happystuff
8-21-18, 7:30am
1968 - I was 10 years old, a kid. I was enjoying all the things kids did - played outside with friends, road bikes way further from home than my kids were allowed at that age, walking down the "back road" to the creek for fishing and a swim, etc. All the innocence of youth and none of the responsibilities of adulthood, so - yes - I think it was better back then! LOL. But that's just for me personally and at THAT specific time in my life. Was the world in general a better place back then? Maybe for some and not so much for others. Whatever the time and place - change will occur. :)
1968 I was in college, clueless about the world, 6 day war was in '67, I paid attention, Vietnam....pretty insulated, Bobby Kennedy and MLK- shocked and became more aware of injustice...moon walk- didn't care at all thought it was a huge waste of money, Democratic Convention- sort of paid attention, couldn't vote. Was the world better...I was naive and became less so. I'm still insulated and angry that the rest of the world cannot be in a peaceful place.
mschrisgo2
8-21-18, 1:27pm
Summer 1968. I was about to start my senior year of high school, grumpy and resentful because, being a girl, I was NOT allowed to take the mechanical drawing class. (Later I discovered that omission blocked me from pursuing architecture classes in college, and then I was really angry) Shortly before, my mother had inherited $10,200 from her grandmother, and my parents paid cash for a big 2200 sq ft house in the suburbs east of San Francisco. Having been a city kid for the previous 10 years, and allowed free rein, the suburban life was pure torture- there literally was Nowhere to go and Nothing to do!! Not even a public library to go to!
The school year was full of anxiety and concern for the future. The Vietnam war raged on, and protests were many. Most of the boys either went into the military or fled to Canada, the girls went to college. There were not a lot of deep friendships built because we all knew we would soon be separated. There was very little of that getting married right after high school that had been the norm in the adjacent community where the high school was located. Interestingly, most of my graduating class has never married, and of few that did, almost all divorced.
The next 4 years- College was still affordable in California: tuition at the state colleges was $120 a YEAR.
Minimum wage went from $1.35 to $1.65 in 1970, and a gallon of gas held steady at 27 cents. Then the war ended, the men who survived came home, there were not enough jobs, prices started to rise, and -- the rest is history, as they say.
I would say that 1968 was a pivotal point in the history of the US.
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