Could you survive?

[subject101]

If I was plopped back into 1937 my last worry would be survive. I would be like a child in Disneyland, with new toys everywhere; golden era cars, those old yellow cabs and silver buses, swing music, pre war planes, beautiful women everywhere, brand new art deco buildings... I'd spend my time jumping into everything, entering every building and trying everything.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

If I were sent to 1937, it would be insanely different and would take a ton of adjusting, but there's no doubt in my mind I could survive. It just wouldn't be as 'convenient' as now.

I'd love much more about society, styles, morals, etc. I work in a factory, so I can imagine I could do that in 1937, too. It would be more primitive than it is now, but I could do it. Job-wise I think it would be easier for a guy like me. You didn't need a piece of paper to get as many jobs as you do nowadays. I think I'd fit in with the folks more then, too. Could also look forward to many of the years to come to be fashions and such that I enjoy, however being 20 in 1937, I would not be looking forward to the WWII draft. I doubt my bad back and flat feet would get me out of that draft!

 

[Miss Moonlight]

I was an executive assistant to a company president and a director of HR before I became a mom and chose to be a full time mama. But 1937 was a different world; I don't know shorthand and old typewriters kill my hands because the strength to press those keys fast enough is very different from a keyboard. I'd just be a "secretary" if I wanted to go into that at all, and the idea of being a secretary in that age is not appealing. I hated it in the modern world! I'd hate it more then.

I'm a survivor. Depending on where I'm landed in 1937, I'd find another route with whatever I had at my disposal to live, but spend the rest of the time enjoying everything and probably shocking people by saying things I probably shouldn't. I'm sure I'd be considered a Libertine, lol. And if I had today's knowledge of history, I'd put it to my advantage. And try not to change history. Prime Directive, you know.

 

[sheeplady]

Well, none of the careers I have significant training and experience in existed back then- Instructional Design and Communications were largely the product of WWII. IT wasn't a field until the 1960s and 1970s. I don't think Human Resources existed for the most part either.

I guess I could do farming or fall back on my undergrad degree (biology and psychology) and be a teacher, then be an instructional designer for the military when the war came. I've lived without electric or running water. I've cooked on a woodstove for long periods of time. I know basic farming. I've worked as a receptionist and as a factory worker, I could take those jobs if there were any around. Of course, as a woman, I'd be pretty limited in my job choices.

Of course, I wouldn't have been successfully birthed back in the teens (emergency c-section) so I'd probably be dead along with my mother. I really don't like to be hungry and cold, and I don't particularly care for war and everything that comes with it. So while I think I could practically survive, emotionally it would be tough.

 

[David Conwill]

I guess I could...fall back on my undergrad degree...

Is your undergraduate degree dated from some time in the early thirties? Because I doubt my 2010-2011 bar card would permit me to practice law in any jurisdiction in 1937.

I guess my best hope would be to try and talk my way into a job in a law office and eventually take the (radically different) bar exam in that era. Secondly, its possible I have enough mechanical inclination to wrangle a job in a garage, although I suspect I’d be woefully behind most fellows my age in that era.

Chronologically, I’d be older than my grandparents. I wonder if I’d dare look them up.

-Dave

 

[JimWagner]

No problems. Before I became a computer programmer I was an electronics technician and I could just go back to repairing tube radios. Repairing 1930's era appliances - can do. Guess I'd just open up that radio and appliance repair shop I always wanted.

 

[Atticus Finch]

Truthfully, I think I might have some problems living in 1937. To begin with, I like to shower. In the summer, I sometimes shower three times a day. Such a practice might have seemed excessive in 1937. Also, I don't like to be ill. When I'm sick, I go to the doctor and genuinely expect her to do something about whatever is wrong with me. That may have not always been a reasonable expectation in 1937. And I like clean clothes. If I wear a shirt for even only ten minutes...into the dirty laundry it goes. Probably not an option in the days before automatic washers and driers.

And I'm not sure about my ability to make a living in 1937. I'm a lawyer. I can see myself standing before some 1937 court arguing, "Yes, Your Honor, such is the state of the law today, but don't get comfortable with it because it won't be for long. Though you don't know it, five years from now, the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the case relied upon by my opponent...and two years after that, in the 1944 short session, the North Carolina Legislature will repeal the statute here at issue."

AF

 

[subject101]

With just a few notions of history you could make money pretty fast. With some knowledge about sports history you could gamble. With some knowledge about economy history you could go to Wall Street. You already know what brands and products will be successful in the market. You know that a war is coming. :eusa_doh:

 

[Edward]

The answer to this question would depend an awful lot on ones' own situation, and what one thinks of the people around one. Geography, too. For instance, I wouldn't face the prejudices to which some would be exposed, being white, Christian, male and middle class, though in some parts of the world being Irish would have been difficult (and likely to get moreso were I to live into the late 1960s and beyond....). I would also find it extremely uncomfortable to see the treatment meted out to those of other ethnicities based on their skin colour and other such differences, whether purely a matter of social prejudice or, worse, state policy. In general, even though I sometimes feel the cult of individualism has gone too far in our modern society, I am also glad that I live in an age where I can be myself and hold my own opinions - socially, politically, and what have you - without social stigma to any significant degree. As someone who has a mental health condition (I was diagnosed as clinically depressive in 2007, though have clearly had the condition for many more years), I would miss not only contemporary medicine's understanding of mental health issues, but also the decline in general prejudice regarding mental illness, something which even now is still an ongoing process. Even if my medication and cognitive behavioural therapy were available back then, I am not confident whether I could have afforded them absent the National Health Service, which wasn't around until 1948. I would also hate to go through the experience of a World War, rationing, and such like. I am extremely interested in the past, especially the mid twentieth-century period, but there is no way I would ever want to live there, even if like most people I'm sure I could find some way of surviving. I'd very much like to visit, of course - wouldn't we all? - maybe even for an extended period, such as a few months, but no, not permanently.

As to gainful employment, well... in some ways I can see me fitting better into the academic climate of the 1930s, before the obsession with publication overtook any concern for teaching in the sector (a true tragedy, IMO). I would naturally have to completely re-educate myself as so much of my legal knowledge is very much twenty-first century. My specialist area is media law: much of that would translate still to the print era, and of course cinema content was still around, and the British Board of Film Censorship (as then still was). I might focus more on jurisprudence at that point in time, in which case with my own views tending towards the 'natural law' tradition, I would fall rather outside the then-prevailing positivist movement. I'd be something ahead of my time then, of course, natural law coming back into fashion in a big way with the rejection of the "only obeying orders" defence at Nuremberg. My qualifications might be another matter, though I'm sure before one made the jump, if time travel were possible, surely we could make the much smaller technological step of wholly convincing forgeries of contemporary qualifications. Close enough to my own of today (how we'd translate an LLM in Computers & Law, I'm not sure!), I would have enough knowledge that it shouldn't be queried. Alternatively, I would go into the entertainment world as an actor. I could probably get work in character roles, playing various hardmen, gangsters, and the likes. I'd most likely be turned down by the BBC for radio announcer jobs on the basis of accent: back then it was RP or nothing. There would be the temptation at least to make my fortune by betting on various things the outcome of which I would already know, assuming I could convince myself that I was not in the process morally defrauding those who bet against me in good faith. However I made my money, I would dream of heading to Saville Row and hitting up the top tailors. The entertainment scene would also be something - again assuming I could afford it.

 

[sheeplady]

Is your undergraduate degree dated from some time in the early thirties? Because I doubt my 2010-2011 bar card would permit me to practice law in any jurisdiction in 1937.

In some states (including my own) if I could pass the teaching exams that were offered in that time, I would be certified as a teacher, irregardless of a degree. At first, they offered current teachers to be grandfathered in, then about for 10 years they offered exams or you could go for a college degree- up until the 40s and 50s in some places- for certification. In 1937, you could do a degree, exams, or be grandfathered in (particularly in rural areas) in my state.

The training I received in that degree I would assume would be useful in passing the exam, minus everything about DNA and such.

I want to say that this was similar for medicine and law at one time (one could actually sit for the exams and if they passed could practice) but I don't know if this was true in 1937.

 

[Pompidou]

I could probably open a coffee house in any era and do well enough. In my case, I'd just have to change the theme. With my savings and the value of a dollar back in 37, I could probably be even more successful.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Never thought of that. I'm pretty good with vintage appliances myself.

No problems. Before I became a computer programmer I was an electronics technician and I could just go back to repairing tube radios. Repairing 1930's era appliances - can do. Guess I'd just open up that radio and appliance repair shop I always wanted.

 

[Bernie Zack]

I would move to Southern California. I don't think I could stand Vegas in the summer in 1937. I'm too accustomed to technology (constant air conditioning, etc) to "tough it out." However, I would stay in the same profession.

 

[Puzzicato]

With just a few notions of history you could make money pretty fast. With some knowledge about sports history you could gamble. With some knowledge about economy history you could go to Wall Street. You already know what brands and products will be successful in the market. You know that a war is coming. :eusa_doh:

Didn't work in Peggy Sue Got Married!

I wouldn't cope. My 50 WPM on a computer keyboard wouldn't get me into the typing pool, and I am very fond of modern appliances, cosmetics, feminine hygiene and anti-discrimination laws.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Feminine hygiene is a big one for me. No thanks -- I'll do without those rubber protective aprons and panties you wore under your skirt. Just seems degrading to me...lol That stuff can STAY vintage.

 

[subject101]

Didn't work in Peggy Sue Got Married!

It did work in Back to the future II, when Biff finds Marty's sports almanac [huh]

 

[scottyrocks]

Put me in the needle-sharpening club.

I can look at this two ways. One is with diabetes and one without.

Without, I would be fine. I'm a teacher, although I believe teachers in 1937 were predominantly women, except perhaps on the university level. I'm very handy. I could always make a living working with my hands, most likely in the construction industry.

I contracted diabetes when I was six years old. That was right around the time that urine testing went from tablets in test tubes to plastic strips, and disposable needles had become the norm.

In 1937, with diabetes., I dont think I'd have made it. I am very brittle. I check my bg 6 to 8 times a day on a digital blood glucose meter, and even with a pump, and today's synthetic insulins, my control is not where it should be. With what was available back then, I'd have been lucky to have reached adulthood. Both low bg reactions, and sustained high bgs can kill you, the former quicker than the latter.

 

[Edward]

I know living with diabetes has changed enormously even since the 70s. I can remember my paternal grandmother getting up a six every morning to boil my grandfather's needles and all sorts, I also remember how careful he had to be about diet, anything with sugar, and so on. Conversely, while it is still a chore compared to not having it, it is so much easier for a friend of mine a year or two younger than myself that you would almost think it wasn't the same condition.

It did work in Back to the future II, when Biff finds Marty's sports almanac [huh]

Well, it depends on how you define "worked"!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Feminine hygiene is a big one for me. No thanks -- I'll do without those rubber protective aprons and panties you wore under your skirt. Just seems degrading to me...lol That stuff can STAY vintage.

Ah, but don't forget -- Modern Internal Protection was first marketed in the US in 1936, and was an immediate success, even as makers of gum-rubber aprons wept and gnashed their teeth.

 

[Puzzicato]

Ah, but don't forget -- Modern Internal Protection was first marketed in the US in 1936, and was an immediate success, even as makers of gum-rubber aprons wept and gnashed their teeth.

But what was the uptake on them like? Belts etc seem to have remained common for a very long time after that!

I know nothing of the aprons, I think that is a piece of history of which I will remain ignorant.