Lance and Tilt do not remember the days. They cannot.

Hey Youngsters - can you remember when the world was just Communist or Free.

One or the other. But Free was anything not Communist. Including similar dictators.

Bet y'can't. So how could you comprehend the world of the fifties. Watch Mad Men! Shaking the blanket after the picnic in the park to litter park grounds, maple paneling in at least one room of the house, the new Cadillac a symbol of success. The latest episodes represent the sixties when "things" started breaking down. Like suddenly, I remember friends' parents separating and getting divorced and how kids denied it until inevitable. In the fifties you had no knowledge of the psychiatric or alcoholic within a home as taxed the spouse. Then suddenly they could separate and get divorced.

And teachers could teach! And not rely on parental involvement except for disciplinary problems. Like not turning in home work. Once a year there was a "Parents Teachers Night" at the school.

Teachers taught and bad kids were not allowed to disrupt. (Irvine 11)

You cannot remember it so -

Go ahead. Imagine, Whirled Peas if it is on the web, pablumized!

Moi

Born in '48.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Gorbie had issues after Chernobyl and was forced to acknowledge the fact that there had been a disaster. I remember the long gas lines that those self same Cadillacs need so much of because of oil crunches. I remember the Iranian hostage situation. I remember Challenger exploding. I remember a lot. And I did have teachers that taught - lots of them. The 1950's were also a time of open rampant racism in the South. Also a time when women had limited job options. The 1950's were NOT some golden age where everything was perfect. It was a time when McCarthy used witch hunt tactics to further his ambitions and people saw Communism behind every door. Same people still use scare tactics to try to control people.

So no thanks, I'd rather live in this age as imperfect as it may be because it is better than it used to be.

lance1972 (imported) wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:10 pm The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Gorbie had issues after Chernobyl and was forced to acknowledge the fact that there had been a disaster. I remember the long gas lines that those self same Cadillacs need so much of because of oil crunches. I remember the Iranian hostage situation. I remember Challenger exploding. I remember a lot. And I did have teachers that taught - lots of them. The 1950's were also a time of open rampant racism in the South. Also a time when women had limited job options. The 1950's were NOT some golden age where everything was perfect. It was a time when McCarthy used witch hunt tactics to further his ambitions and people saw Communism behind every door. Same people still use scare tactics to try to control people.

So no thanks, I'd rather live in this age as imperfect as it may be because it is better than it used to be.

I'll bet you don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis.

People were hoarding for the end of the world and

my friend the ex-alter boy remember there was never a line to the confessional

and suddenly there was a line out the door and down the side walk.

So you only know what you read. Or see on TV. Wait forty years and you to can have a

"Those were the Days".

No Moi, I don't miss the good old days of rotary phones, duck and cover, 3 speed bikes, no PC's, manual typewriters, and the Peacock. Personal bomb shelters, I love Lucy, Bad movies, worse horror movies, the unlimited 6 shooters, Jack Webb, Monday night Wrestling, Wednesday night Roller Derby, Jack Lane Ho Nelly. No, they are nice memories but I would never want to go back, ever. Yes they did have some good things, so really cool things, like the SR-71 or the XB-70, putting man on the moon, but we have moved beyond that, it is so much better today in so many ways, except maybe the economy but even it is self correcting over time.

I don't miss the days where a long distance call could be across the street, where you knew your next door neighbor but had no clue who lived in the next town, were as today we talk to people from all over the world daily. The information that we have today at our fingertips and you would like to go back to the Yellow Pages? Where you had to buy maps of everything or go to AAA just to get across town without getting lost, and if you wanted to know the best place to buy or the price of, you had to go to that store to find out, you would give up the power of the internet to go back?

No I would never go back,

River

moi621 (imported) wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:01 pm Lance and Tilt do not remember the days. They cannot.

In the fifties you had no knowledge of the psychiatric or alcoholic within a home as taxed the spouse. Then suddenly they could separate and get divorced.

And teachers could teach! And not rely on parental involvement except for disciplinary problems. Like not turning in home work. Once a year there was a "Parents Teachers Night" at the school.

Teachers taught and bad kids were not allowed to disrupt. (Irvine 11)

Moi

Born in '48.

Moi, as usual, you are full of shit.

I went to the school in the 50s and it was nothing like that:

We set off cherry bombs in the boy's restroom, we skipped school, and I had two report cards, one my parents saw and one I turned back into the school.

I had good teachers and teachers that couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag.

We had morning prayers to a Christian god, and it didn't matter if you didn't believe in that god.

Seventh grade students in Jr. High were hazed, and kids were bullied, and there was nothing a teacher would do about it.

We raised hell, talked back to teachers, and were sent to the Principal's office.

If we got paddled by a teacher, we bragged about it. I would often antagonize a particular teacher just so he would haul me to the front of the class and give me some swats.

Out of all my high school teachers, I can only think of one, other than the head coach, we respected. We actually drove one from the school. She didn't come back for a second semester, and I don't really regret we did it: she was a terrible teacher.

We had fights just for the fun of it.

We blew up rural mailboxes with cherry bombs and M80s or played mailbox baseball like in Stand by Me.

14 and 15 year-old girls got pregnant and got kicked out of school.

Schools were segregated and Blacks weren't allowed to use the same restrooms or water fountains we were. There were two movie theaters in my home town, and Blacks could only go to one of them, which had a balcony in which they sat.

My first grade teacher, well respected by parents, was an ogre. No telling how many kids she ruined. She changed me from an outgoing, happy, kid to a frightened, shy, one. She hit me on the hand with a ruler because I didn't recognize a word. I peed all over the floor once because I was too afraid to ask to go to the bathroom.

We didn't have a TV until I was 13. I was eleven or so before I even saw a TV, which had maybe a 5" screen on which I could only see snow.

We had no air conditioning, and in the summer, when I lived in Kansas, my family sometimes slept on the front porch because it was too hot to sleep in the house.

In Kansas, I was bullied and beat up often by an older kid, who had a gang, and for some reason didn't like me. He once said he was going to make me suck his cock - I was fourteen - and when I wouldn't, he hit me instead. I managed to run into a neighboring house to escape a worse beating. If you'd called cops in those day about being bullied, they would have laughed at you.

Also, in Kansas, a kid entertained a crowd of us with dirty jokes during lunch every day and never told the same joke twice.

Parents weren't any better in the 50s:

My parents and their friends idea of a good time was to get together and drink. We often spent summer outings at a lake where a relative had a cabin. All the adults would spend the week or two drinking while all us kids played pretty much on our own. It was fun for us, but they weren't setting much of an example for us, were they? Then, there wasn't much for adults to do but drink. At least, with computers and shit, we have other options.

My parents didn't divorce, but that didn't stop my dad from regularly cheating on my mom. I have a half sister somewhere I've never met. One of my aunts was married multiple times however. Hell, my grandfather and grandmother never shared a bed during most of my life because he had cheated on her.

I remember the cold war, and I remember when people build bomb shelters because they were afraid. During the Cuban Missile Crises, they sold prefab bomb shelters in vacant lots by busy street corners.

There were some good things:

I spent a lot of time outside playing.

I learned to love reading and regularly walked to the town library for books.

Wasn't so many people in the world. I remember when the population of the USA was only 150,000,000.

Although things were cheaper, I remember seeing one of my dad's checks where he brought home about $60 for the week and there were five of us in the family. I had an after school job for .50/hr. When I first went in the Army, I made about $80/month.

Anyone that says the 50s were so fucking great doesn't remember the 50s. Like any other time, there was good things and bad things about the 50s.

Living alone as I do, I imagine I would be rather miserable without my TV and without my computers and the Internet. I have the world at my fingertips. I can even talk to idiots that believe the 50s were so great, if I wish. I can have friends that I've never met from all over the world. I can, at a glance, connect with friends and relatives and learn how they're doing. Anytime I want to know something, all I need do is search for it.

You can have the 50s, Moi. We're living in an exciting world, now. Doesn't mean we won't fuck it up, but we came close to fucking it up back in the 50s, too. We came awfully close to nuclear war even.

Yes, your memory of the 50's was much the same as mine,

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2011 6:40 pm I would never want to go back

to that time, for one thing it would be boring as hell.

River

The world has not been the same since JFK's assassination. That is when we started our disbelief and it has only grown larger and larger since then.

So, yes, moi, AND yes River and slammr, NOT the best times, but neither was it the WORST of times, we lived, worked, fought and loved our way through it since then. I have NO regrets, but boys, If I knew then what I know now...

WATCH OUT!!!

fhunter.

...

moi621 (imported) wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2011 2:02 pm We also had independent Channel 5 KTLA the first to put a TV camera in a helicopter and covered the Griffith Park fire. They were threatening to shoot the animals they could not evacuate at the Griffith Park zoo, the old one was best - remember River, and on live TV was the DC-3's extinguishing the fire.

We also had four other independent channels for a total of 2, 4 , & 7 - the networks and

5, 9, 11 and 13 the independents. All from Hollywood or beautiful down town Burbank, the Gem of the Not LA cities.

...

Those were the days.



Don't forget UHF Channel 52 KMTW and Channel 22 KIIX and Channel 34 KMEX. You remember, just like TV except the picture was always snowy, even with that funny UHF antenna.

Elizabeth

I only remember a very salt & pepper channel 28. Guess I could not receive the other UHF's.

And,

Remember when the "boys of Summer" were pretty much finished with their World Series

before Autumn?

Moi

Those were the days -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIIwqafrO4

Look at the scenery too.

We never tuned in to UHF, it was a point on the dial that we wondered who would use such a thing, then we herd that people that did not get VHF had to use UHF and we felt sorry for them.

NO we never watched Cooking with Julia but I have sense made up for it, even in reruns on PBS.

River