Born 1930 – 1946 FACTS!

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Richmond Texas USA
Born 1930 – 1946 FACTS!

Special Group / Born Between 1930 - 1946. Today, they range in ages
75 to 90. Are you or do you know someone "still here"?
Interesting Facts:
You are the smallest group of children, born since the early 1900s.
You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.
You saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.
You saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" on the porch.
You are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.
You saw the 'boys' home from the war, build their little houses.
You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you imagined what you heard on the radio.
With no TV until the '50s, you spent your childhood "playing outside".
There was no little league.
There was no city playground for kids.
The lack of television in your early years meant, that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.
On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave you newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.
Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines) and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).
Computers were called calculators; they were hand cranked.
Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage and changing the ribbon..
INTERNET' and 'GOOGLE' were words that did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening.
As you grew up, the country was exploding with growth.
The government gave returning Veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.
Loans fanned a housing boom.
Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans opened many factories for work.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility.
The Veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.
The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.
Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
You weren't neglected, but you weren't today's all-consuming family focus
They were glad you played by yourselves until the street lights came on.
They were busy discovering the post-war world.
You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves and felt secure in your future though depression poverty was deeply remembered.
Polio was still a crippler.
You came of age in the 50s and 60s.
You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
The second world war was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.
Only your generation can remember both a time of great war, and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.
You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better.
You are "The Last Ones." More than 99 % of you are either retired or deceased, and you feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!"

AMEN!
 
My mom and dad were born in 27 and 23 and I'm sitting in their house.
And here I was thinking they grew up in the smallest generation and I don't know why that was my belief, guess they got the last laugh by living so long.
 
And we could go to the hardware store and buy a box of 22's without anyone worrying if we were going to kill someone (or that my bike would be stolen while I was in the store).

J.
 
I had a mentally challenged nephew. I was his payee for his s.sec. check. I bought him a fine bicycle. First thing he did was park it in front of the used bike rack in front of the Goodwill store, when he came out it was gone! A sales girl had sold it----cheap!
 
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bogus bill said:
First test I ever scored a 100% on! Thanks!
What he said. I still have a ration book in my desk. As a kid I lived in what was then the country. A bus would show up on Saturday mornings, at Parks and Lamm store, and haul us into Annapolis and the gang of us went to the Republic movie house, got a box of Tootsie Rolls or Good and Plenty, and watched the western movie and the serial. Then across the street afterward for a fountain Coke at Reads Drug store then back on the bus and home. The entire dollar bill had been spent.
 
If I ever told my dad I was bored he would have handed a fork to clean the calf pen. Once I suggested we buy a power mower. He thumped me on the chest and said I have one. During the war mom ran a country general store.
There was a empty lot across the road. In summertime a crippled guy would set up a screen and projector friday night and pass the hat.
 
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Johnnu2 said:
And we could go to the hardware store and buy a box of 22's without anyone worrying if we were going to kill someone (or that my bike would be stolen while I was in the store).

J.
Yep, and they didn’t ask your age, even though you were 8.
gramps
 
Fox Mike said:
bogus bill said:
First test I ever scored a 100% on! Thanks!
What he said. I still have a ration book in my desk. As a kid I lived in what was then the country. A bus would show up on Saturday mornings, at Parks and Lamm store, and haul us into Annapolis and the gang of us went to the Republic movie house, got a box of Tootsie Rolls or Good and Plenty, and watched the western movie and the serial. Then across the street afterward for a fountain Coke at Reads Drug store then back on the bus and home. The entire dollar bill had been spent.

I used to go into Parks and Lamm once in a while and remember the elderly woman. I guess the bus wasn't going then.

Too bad Lee did not make it back from Vietnam.
 
blackhawknj said:
Back then people didn't get their news from TV but from newspapers.
It could still be leftist leaning. The New York Slimes was all in for Stalin's Russia, and tried their best to cover up the Holocaust of WWII. :evil:
 
graygun said:
Fox Mike said:
bogus bill said:
First test I ever scored a 100% on! Thanks!
What he said. I still have a ration book in my desk. As a kid I lived in what was then the country. A bus would show up on Saturday mornings, at Parks and Lamm store, and haul us into Annapolis and the gang of us went to the Republic movie house, got a box of Tootsie Rolls or Good and Plenty, and watched the western movie and the serial. Then across the street afterward for a fountain Coke at Reads Drug store then back on the bus and home. The entire dollar bill had been spent.

I used to go into Parks and Lamm once in a while and remember the elderly woman. I guess the bus wasn't going then.

Too bad Lee did not make it back from Vietnam.
The 'elderly' lady was Mae Parks who was Willie Lamm's mother-in- law.
 
1948 model, yet most of the items on Jim's list were existant in my youth. Now, different parts of the US changed more rapidly than others.

I would add to Jim's list the following:
1. Grandmother hand-made all of my shirts, and I wasn't embarrassed to wear them.
2. Clothes washing machines were located outside, fed from a garden hose and had an old-fashioned wringer. Clothes were hung out to dry on a clothesline or wire fence or both.
3. No air conditioning at all. Want cool air. Sit in front of the window fan with a garden hose dripping onto the fan's filter.
4. Sleep with the windows open and the attic fan turned on.
5. Read all 300 of the local library's books.
6. Blue jeans with worn out knees were patched - sewn on or iron on.
7. Grandma used a pedal-powered Singer sewing machine, and my mom borrowed that sewing machine weekly.
8. I helped my grandfather install an indoor toilet in my great-grandmother's house.
9. Virtually all baseball bats were nailed back together, then wrapped with electrical tape to repair cracks. Acquisition of a brand new bat triggered a neighborhood celebration.
10. All athletic fields were football fields, and all of them were generously populated with goats-heads (cockleburs for Northerners). A baseball field was a football field with a temporary backstop rigged by the dads. Those backstops were only allowed for two month - before and after only football was to be played on those fields.
11. Picking vegetables out of the garden was an annual event for grandma, us grandkids and moms/aunts (if they weren't working). Timing was everything. You were a wasteful person if you waited too long to harvest your vegetables.
12. Making and canning pickled beets, relish, chow-chow, black-eyed peas, peaches, pears, blackberries, dewberries, etc. was an annual family event - grandma, mom, aunts all joined in. All empty Mason jars were boiled, then carefully put away in a special cupboard after they were used. Entertainment during these canning events consisted of listening to the Light Crust Doughboys on the radio. Bob Wills, Hank Williams and, occasionally Sons of the Pioneers music was breakfast time's musical entree.
13. My only pet was a horny toad captured in the outdoor garden - I tied thread around his neck and walked him around the house, like a puppy dog. Grandma made me release him back to the garden after an hour or so (so he could catch and eat insects) and catch a replacement if I still wanted entertainment. Seems grandma appreciated that horny toads ate the pesky insects that otherwise invaded her house.
14. Baseball batting practice consisted of hitting chinaberries with a broom stick and throwing horse apples at a target painted on a wall on grandpa's tool shed.
15. Great sport was sitting on grandpa's shoulders, burning torch in hand to burn yellowjacket nests. That stopped when I got too heavy for grandpa to run fast.
16. The only live baseball games were radio broadcasts from St. Louis (the Cardinals) and Chicago (the Cubs) - those two clubs tended to have Texas players on their rosters, and thus provided a local rooting interest.

I'm sure there are lots of others, but the above popped into my mind on short notice.
 
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I'm from '47. But I remember most of those things first hand, and all from being shared with Mom and Dad.
Anybody remember catching and playing with sand lions? (antlions or doodlebugs!) Sometimes you played with whatever was available.
 
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I'm from '47. But I remember most of those things first hand, and all from being shared with Mom and Dad.
Anybody remember catching and playing with sand lions? (antlions or doodlebugs!) Sometimes you played with whatever was available.
Yep, in the fifth grade playground. It was either that or tether ball.
 
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