Do you count 1945 through 1963 as part of the Golden Era?

[dh66]

Here's a pic of some houses in a "company town" west of Birmingham as they appear today. Some trees have grown in, but as you can see - not exactly sought after real estate. Odds are good that these are section 8 (govt. subsidized) housing now, and the residents are hard working and/or living people, scarcely better off than the "golden" era inhabitants. At least what little money they earn these days is legitimate tender, and they can shop anywhere they can afford to.



Sent from my SGH-T959V using Tapatalk 2

 

[Tomasso]

Already happened:



Of course as was mentioned in another posting, some folks don't consider stuff like this to be political. only things with which they do not agree are prohibited "political discussions".

Honestly, my initial intent was to post an image depicting Orwell's 'Big Brother' but when the search included one with the current prez I couldn't resist posting it. Nothing to do with party affiliation (I have none) just thought it humorous that Big Brother is actually (finally) a 'brother.'

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

Honestly, my initial intent was to post an image depicting Orwell's 'Big Brother' but when the search included one with the current prez I couldn't resist posting it. Nothing to do with party affiliation (I have none) just thought it humorous that Big Brother is actually (finally) a 'brother.'

I've been meaning to ask you, who is that man in you avatar? It seems like I have seen a picture of him somewhere recently.

 

[MikeKardec]

My comments to the effect of -- "No more Terra Incognita. No more blank space on the map. The end of anonymity, privacy, the limits of freedom." -- were more about the closing of a frontier of freedom, worldwide casualness, that existed in the era before WWII rather than truly something political. In microcosm there were HORRIFIC local abuses of freedom all over the world ... but the world was still open in way that is not today. The worst part, my true comment, was that it's our imagination of possibilities that is limited by knowing the world so well and acknowledging we are physically cut off from a frontier in space.

On the Flappers vs Hippies subject, a numbers of historians, most accessibly Strauss and Howe (I'm being somewhat liberal calling them historians but they write well) in their "Generations" series, discuss cycles of history. They document pretty well two intermeshed gears that seem to drive British and American history for the last 400 years. One is a self sustaining pattern of four repeating generational psychologies and the other, slightly off-set is the historical eras their psychology creates. It's not intended to predict events in the future but it is useful in identifying the repetitions of the past and the why of it all. A really good tool for writers if you don't take it too seriously.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My comments to the effect of -- "No more Terra Incognita. No more blank space on the map. The end of anonymity, privacy, the limits of freedom." -- were more about the closing of a frontier of freedom, worldwide casualness, that existed in the era before WWII rather than truly something political. In microcosm there were HORRIFIC local abuses of freedom all over the world ... but the world was still open in way that is not today. The worst part, my true comment, was that it's our imagination of possibilities that is limited by knowing the world so well and acknowledging we are physically cut off from a frontier in space.

I'd suggest, though, that that imagination of possibilities wasn't as commonplace as we might expect, even aside from things like corporate surveillance of workers. Most of the people I knew in my youth who were born between 1890 and 1925 or so were the kind of people who stayed right where they were born, and didn't really think or care much at all about the broader outside world. In reviewing the 1940 Census for my hometown a while back I was struck by just how many of those people were still living in exactly the same locations into the 1970s and 1980s. That generation of ordinary people -- not thinkers or philosophers or theoreticians -- tended to stay in one place unless something happened, like the Depression or the Dust Bowl or some other external circumstance, to force them to uproot. Roots and family and community and social continuity were the most important things in their lives.

I think the postwar generation, by contrast -- and I mean the people born from about 1925 forward, the people who were small children during the Depression and young adults at the end of the war -- were the ones who really wanted to be on the move, either physically or culturally, who really had that sense of wanderlust. Even if they never wandered any further than Levittown, the *illusion* of being on the move was exceedingly important to them. And that's another difference between prewar and postwar in my mind.

 

[dh66]

A.C. you're killin' me man

Sent from my SGH-T959V using Tapatalk 2

 

[Nobert]

I think the postwar generation, by contrast -- and I mean the people born from about 1925 forward, the people who were small children during the Depression and young adults at the end of the war -- were the ones who really wanted to be on the move, either physically or culturally, who really had that sense of wanderlust. Even if they never wandered any further than Levittown, the *illusion* of being on the move was exceedingly important to them. And that's another difference between prewar and postwar in my mind.

"How ya' gonna keep 'em down on the farm..."

 

[LizzieMaine]

"How ya' gonna keep 'em down on the farm..."

That's exactly right. Once they'd roamed around Europe, going back to the old neighborhood likely lost its charm pretty quick. By contrast, the generation that came of age between the wars did very little international travel -- going to Europe was for upper/upper middle class people and vaudeville actors.

It didn't have to be physical travel though. The postwar generation was the first to really obsess about upward social mobility -- hence the explosion of postwar marketing of consumer goods as signs the consumer had "arrived." There had been a little bit of this before the war -- "For just a little bit more *you* can have a Packard" -- but never on the scale that it hit after 1950 or so. By the late fifties, the Boys From Marketing were selling practically everything on the basis of an appeal to social climbing.

Yes indeed, you too can wear a Cassini dress while drinking Pepsi out of a champagne bucket. They'd never know you back in Canarsie.

 

[Stearmen]

I'd suggest, though, that that imagination of possibilities wasn't as commonplace as we might expect, even aside from things like corporate surveillance of workers. Most of the people I knew in my youth who were born between 1890 and 1925 or so were the kind of people who stayed right where they were born, and didn't really think or care much at all about the broader outside world. In reviewing the 1940 Census for my hometown a while back I was struck by just how many of those people were still living in exactly the same locations into the 1970s and 1980s. That generation of ordinary people -- not thinkers or philosophers or theoreticians -- tended to stay in one place unless something happened, like the Depression or the Dust Bowl or some other external circumstance, to force them to uproot. Roots and family and community and social continuity were the most important things in their lives.

I think the postwar generation, by contrast -- and I mean the people born from about 1925 forward, the people who were small children during the Depression and young adults at the end of the war -- were the ones who really wanted to be on the move, either physically or culturally, who really had that sense of wanderlust. Even if they never wandered any further than Levittown, the *illusion* of being on the move was exceedingly important to them. And that's another difference between prewar and postwar in my mind.

I think you are a little off on your 1925 date. My father was born in 1923 and all of his friends were born in 1923 and earlier, one was born in 1915, and they all moved hundreds of miles from their place of berth. I would say a better demarcation would be, those that went over seas in WWII were more likely to move then their parents. Although, all my grand parents moved, and they were born in the 1890s to the earlier 1900s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I did say "1925 *or so*" -- it's a general estimate. And there are exceptions in every group. But of the people I've known over the decades, the rule has been pretty closely followed -- those who were the youngest adults at the end of the war ,those who were little kids during the Depression as opposed to those who were young adults in the '30s, were those most likely to shake the dust off their feet when the war was over.

I think it's unfortunate that the idea has come into fashion of considering the "World War II/Greatest Generation" as a single homogenous unit, because the way in which people experienced that period, and the way it affected their lives differed depending on how old they were when they experienced it. Someone going to war as a thirty year old would have a very different mindset from someone going to war as a kid just out of school -- and that same thirty-year-old soldier would have experienced The Fifties on the verge of middle age, as opposed to the twenty-year-old soldier who would only just be hitting his thirties when the postwar boom was peaking. That gap in age was very broad by the standards of the period -- and yet modern historians tend to lump them all together. I think that distorts a lot of perceptions about that era and the era that followed it.

 

[sheeplady]

I think you are a little off on your 1925 date. My father was born in 1923 and all of his friends were born in 1923 and earlier, one was born in 1915, and they all moved hundreds of miles from their place of berth. I would say a better demarcation would be, those that went over seas in WWII were more likely to move then their parents. Although, all my grand parents moved, and they were born in the 1890s to the earlier 1900s.

I think this is more complicated than just serving overseas.

You simply didn't need your three boys to stay home and work on the farm once you had a tractor instead of a team. It also allowed farms to be consolidated, which mean fewer farmers living off the land. Farmers were 27% of the workforce in 1920 (that's people who listed themselves as farmers on the census, and doesn't count others who were spouses or children of farmers, orphans who were taken in to be farmhands but underage, etc.). By 1960, farmers were 8.3 % of the workforce. All those people had to go someplace, and it wasn't likely the little farming towns and villages could support them all. You also had former migrant workers (who moved around a lot previously due to the nature of their work) who suddenly had to settle as their livelihood disappeared due to mechanization.

You also have the phenomenon of pioneering in the U.S. The people who built my parents' home sometime around 1815 had six children in an area that was obviously the frontier at the time (the local village had only been founded in 1792.) One of their daughters moved west to Illinois in the 1840s (the frontier then) and one of her children moved further west, so on and so on until they ended up in Oregon a couple generations later. That kind of wanderlust existed for a long time in our history. After all, the Dakota's were still seen as "frontier" until the 1920s. Somebody had to move there.

The third thing that influenced movement was race. During the Great Migration, you had millions of African Americans moving to the northeast from the south, mainly into urban areas. This was also driven in part by the mechanization of farming.

We also constantly had a population of immigrants who moved wherever a better life could be afforded and where the work was. They often moved as a matter of circumstance or as a plan to build wealth. For example, my great-grandfather moved all around the northeast to make money to buy a farm- after he lost the farm they moved again to gain more money to buy another- in the same area they bought the first.

 

[rjb1]

"You simply didn't need your three boys to stay home and work on the farm once you had a tractor instead of a team."
Don't discount that even with a tractor, farming was (and is) really hard work. After the war, opportunity knocked elsewhere (mostly cities and bigger towns) and if people could make more money by working less-hard, most would take that route.
In our family there were 12 siblings on my father's side and 10 on my mothers. There is no way that they could all stay on the farm and in the final analysis all but one of the whole mob moved to the city and became teachers, accountants, manufacturing workers, housewives, etc., etc..
The one who stayed on the farm was the oldest brother (who was too old to serve in the War) and likely had a different attitude than the younger ones who were more of what we think of as The Greatest Generation. (as Lizzie described.)
Concerning the overseas-service aspect, the WWII vets who had been out in the world were the ones who led the way and left the farm first. The others gradually followed, but all were gone from the farm within 3 years after the War ended.

 

[MikeKardec]

I think it's unfortunate that the idea has come into fashion of considering the "World War II/Greatest Generation" as a single homogenous unit

Too right. Another great aspect of Strauss and Howe's book "Generations" is tracking the trajectory of attitude through an entire lifetime. Great reference even if a bit simplified.

On the travel side, however, there were a great number of young men who traveled the country following the harvests from one spot to the next. I'm sure many eventually settled down not far from home and many never left at all. But my grand dad came down from Canada traveling this way, that was in the 1890s. In 1923 the family was back on the road doing the same thing. Dad traveled both with them and separately, only settling down in Oklahoma in the early 1930s ... right when everyone else was leaving! On the other hand there was one side of the family that never left Nebraska and STILL hasn't!

It's amazing how the mid west spawned writers in those days, I grew up around a lot of those guys and there was something about that environment that was conducive to the imagination ... which was really what I was talking about a few posts back, the closing of a frontier of imagination.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's amazing how the mid west spawned writers in those days, I grew up around a lot of those guys and there was something about that environment that was conducive to the imagination ... which was really what I was talking about a few posts back, the closing of a frontier of imagination.

We never had any of that here. I remember standing on the shore with my grandfather one day looking out over the Atlantic Ocean and asking him what was on the other side. He thought about it for a minute, and then spat on the ground and said "Another damn fool kid standin' there wonderin' what's on *this* side."

 

[sheeplady]

"You simply didn't need your three boys to stay home and work on the farm once you had a tractor instead of a team."
Don't discount that even with a tractor, farming was (and is) really hard work. After the war, opportunity knocked elsewhere (mostly cities and bigger towns) and if people could make more money by working less-hard, most would take that route.

I moved from my parents farm the afternoon I graduated from high school. My bags were already packed in the car- so I know exactly what you mean by hard work.

It's amazing how the mid west spawned writers in those days, I grew up around a lot of those guys and there was something about that environment that was conducive to the imagination ... which was really what I was talking about a few posts back, the closing of a frontier of imagination.

Many years ago I worked on a sailing ship. Most of the students we had go through the program were from the midwest- a disproportionate amount of people. I once asked a couple of them why, and one said, "I grew up in a place that was landlocked. You could see forever to the edge of the earth because the land was so flat. And what did you see? More corn. You dream of seeing something on the horizon that isn't corn."

 

[Stearmen]

I moved from my parents farm the afternoon I graduated from high school. My bags were already packed in the car- so I know exactly what you mean by hard work.



Many years ago I worked on a sailing ship. Most of the students we had go through the program were from the midwest- a disproportionate amount of people. I once asked a couple of them why, and one said, "I grew up in a place that was landlocked. You could see forever to the edge of the earth because the land was so flat. And what did you see? More corn. You dream of seeing something on the horizon that isn't corn."

My dad always joked, the only thing to do on a Saturday in a small town in Iowa was, watch the corn grow and the chrome rust!

 

[The Reno Kid]

My father was born in a log cabin (I swear!) on a farm in rural Idaho in 1916 and came of age in the middle of the depression. His family was not rich but they always had plenty. When he was a young man, he was itching to get off the farm and he thought it would be romantic to try the hobo's life. So he boarded a "side-door Pullman" and set out to see the world. He said he enjoyed it thoroughly until the first time he had to go to someone's kitchen door to ask for a meal. He got on the next freight train headed toward home. I think his adventure lasted a couple of weeks or so...

 

[Stearmen]

For me, the Golden Age is from December 17, 1903 to July 20, 1969. Why those specific dates, the first is when Orville Wright first took to the air in a controlled heavier then air machine, the latter is when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Between those dates it was higher, faster and farther on an almost daily basses. After the moon landing, the good times went away and seemed to die, the record became farther and farther apart, the magic was gone!

 

[ConstantOne]

Stearmen's response stirred something primal and ebullient in me, rooted in an appreciation of the world in its optimal state. '03 to '69 is a very wide range of time but personally I like it. I might say '17 to '71, so who am I to complain? Those were incredible years, lacking the cynicism and pessimism (two different things) which are so prevalent today. As a younger man in his early 30's, I absolutely appreciate any older perspectives which considered a forward-thinking, onward-and-upward view of the world. I wish and hope we'll have that again! For the youth, technology has been a game changer.

As an aside, thank you to all of you allowing the younger generation to partake in and appreciate the greatest time in world history, when we recognized we knew a lot, but enough to know we knew a little. I'm glad to be part of The Fedora Lounge. I'm not certain how it would play out, but I hope we can return to a similar world.

 

[Fading Fast]

Stearmen's response stirred something primal and ebullient in me, rooted in an appreciation of the world in its optimal state. '03 to '69 is a very wide range of time but personally I like it. I might say '17 to '71, so who am I to complain? Those were incredible years, lacking the cynicism and pessimism (two different things) which are so prevalent today. As a younger man in his early 30's, I absolutely appreciate any older perspectives which considered a forward-thinking, onward-and-upward view of the world. I wish and hope we'll have that again! For the youth, technology has been a game changer.

As an aside, thank you to all of you allowing the younger generation to partake in and appreciate the greatest time in world history, when we recognized we knew a lot, but enough to know we knew a little. I'm glad to be part of The Fedora Lounge. I'm not certain how it would play out, but I hope we can return to a similar world.

Your post got me to think more about an idea that's been floating around in all the empty space in my head. Hypocrisy breeds cynicism. When things are presented one way (usually in an ideal way), but we learn that reality is less ideal, we become cynical about things. Conversely, for a country - its culture, its people, its outlook - to be positive, it seems necessary to project a favorable image of the institutions of government and general culture.

In the 40s and 50s (and earlier), we tried the positive approach - institutions of government and the general culture was presented as honest, decent and moral. Many less-than-honest, decent or moral things were swept under the rug - at least in public - to maintain the illusion. Part of what the 1960s rebellion was, was the young generation seeing this positive image not as an attempt of government and society to present itself in a positive way, but instead, it saw it as hypocrisy and became cynical about the government and culture.

There is a balance, we want to project a positive image and behave a certain way in public that represents the best, or at least a better, "we" than we are some of the time in private, but once the projection and reality become too far apart, cynicism sets in. Some of positives of the Golden Era - a general belief in the government, a general respect for each other (again in public at least) and the cultural off-shoots of that - people dressing up to show respect at events, tawdry movies and magazines relegated to the shadows - will be hard to return to unless "we" (society, all of us) are willing to do the hard work of holding our institutions and culture to higher standards in their public and private lives that reduces the gap between their public projection and reality.

That is going to be one hard thing to do.

And of course, all of the above is just an opinion and one that I am still thinking through - maybe there is less there than I think.