Man-on-the-Street, San Francisco, 1 Jan. 1951

[Haversack]

Came across this this morning. KPIX reporter at 5th and Market asking people if they knew about the new air raid siren drill that was being initiated that day. An interesting mix of people, clothes, and automobiles. I particularly liked the railroad engineer's opinion about the new diesel locomotives.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a snazzy RCA 88-A mic he's using -- I just used one of those today to record sound effects!

"Are you frightened of me?" Ah, the life of a street reporter is never easy.

 

[itsallgood]

His opening questions were painfully off-putting (is that a word?) The way to get someone on the street to open up to you is greet with a small-talk compliment, "Your hat has a great finish! Do you know where I can get one nearby?"

His one line left me with a chill. "If you hear it at another time, that means contact was made with the enemy." It was a different time, the cold war was just getting going.

Here's an observation and I'm left with no words. That young man that spoke at the end, within minutes I found on the internet his high school photo, his obit and his gravestone. I'm speechless.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Here's an observation and I'm left with no words. That young man that spoke at the end, within minutes I found on the internet his high school photo, his obit and his gravestone. I'm speechless.

Ouch. They are all dead by now, and we are next in the lineup. Sometimes the internet gives too much information. A few years back I attempted to find an old work colleague and found out that he had entered the list of the long term unemployed, his wife had left him and took the kids, and he had committed suicide. Too much information. I’m still not fully recovered from gaining that knowledge from what was, at the time, just a casual internet search.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The most unsettling aspect of getting old is that "the recent past" is no longer recent. 1950 is as removed from 2021 as the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes and the invention of the electric light bulb was from 1950. There were more than sixty surviving Civil War veterans in 1950.

An American reminiscing about 1950 in 2021 is an American in 1950 reminiscing about 1879.

 

[Harp]

Technological advance for all its innovative wonder still pierced personal privacy; also gained advance
over law, philosophy, and theology; leaving society flummoxed for better or worse.

Roe v Wade is considered settled law; however, fetal viability amidst gestation and legal recognition through
homicide verdict prior to quicken as somatic standard definition of life renders the reasoning behind the case
increasingly tenuous, despite whatever ideological hold its ruling yet retains.

 

[Fading Fast]

The most unsettling aspect of getting old is that "the recent past" is no longer recent. 1950 is as removed from 2021 as the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes and the invention of the electric light bulb was from 1950. There were more than sixty surviving Civil War veterans in 1950.

An American reminiscing about 1950 in 2021 is an American in 1950 reminiscing about 1879.

I think about this often too. The other day, I saw a clip of the Rolling Stones "Steel Wheels" tour from 1989, which I saw in person. At the time, the jokes about the "old rockers" were non stop as they had played their first live show in '62, so this was twenty-seven-years later.

Well, the group is still playing live (and will, they say, once Covid is over) and it's thirty-two years since '89 - how can that be, but it is. So effectively, the Stones playing live in 2021 is like a group from 1903 having played live in 1962 when the Stones started playing live - unbelievable.

 

[Harp]

There were more than sixty surviving Civil War veterans in 1950.

I once worked for the Veterans Administration Chicago regional counsel and recall an email memo-probably twenty
years ago remarking that the government was still paying pensions to widows of Civil War veterans.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Up until a few years ago there was still a War of 1812 pension being paid, which causes the mind not just to boggle, but to fall on the floor kicking its legs in the air.

 

[Fading Fast]

Nothing new here, but growing up in the '70s (use '75 when I was 11 as a reference year), movies from the '30s were 40 years old, but seemed almost from another world. Even moves from the '50s and early '60s, all of fifteen to twenty years old at the time seemed very dated and from a much older time than they were - at least to my 11-year-old self.

Today, a forty year old movie was made in '81, and to be fair, they feel pretty dated now, but a movie from 2001 is twenty years old and, to me anyway, can still feel pretty fresh (except for the technology).

One thing that had some impact on this was that the late '60s cultural and social changes made the mid '70s much different from even the mid '60s in a way that not every ten-year period changes things. But still, the movie comparison stuff - which we've talked about before at FL - is jarring.

 

[Harp]

Up until a few years ago there was still a War of 1812 pension being paid, which causes the mind not just to boggle, but to fall on the floor kicking its legs in the air.

I believe the last Civil War survivor passed in 1959, it is possible that a War of 1812 veteran married late in life
sometime in the last decade of the 19th Century to a young woman might have incurred a legacy date past the
Second World War or Korea. Apparently, the Civil War or earlier generation May-December weds were fairly common.

 

[Harp]

One thing that had some impact on this was that the late '60s cultural and social changes made the mid '70s much different from even the mid '60s in a way that not every ten-year period changes things. But still, the movie comparison stuff - which we've talked about before at FL - is jarring.

I wrote my baccalaureate thesis on Pearl Harbor as a historic moment and not surprisingly for the war
generation its attack date became a life marker, halving their pre and post 12/7/1941 lives.
As for myself April 30, 1975, an ending is the marker date. Time, as always, marches on.

 

[Tiki Tom]

 

[ChiTownScion]

For me, it was November 22, 1963. My childhood (age nine) ended that day- and that's no exaggeration. Any pretense at innocence was a charade from that point on.

 

[Harp]

For me, it was November 22, 1963. My childhood (age nine) ended that day- and that's no exaggeration. Any pretense at innocence was a charade from that point on.

I can still remember hearing the in-school public address system and the girl across the aisle telling me the president
had been shot. And the entire nation coming to a complete stop.

 

[tonyb]

The most unsettling aspect of getting old is that "the recent past" is no longer recent. 1950 is as removed from 2021 as the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes and the invention of the electric light bulb was from 1950. There were more than sixty surviving Civil War veterans in 1950.

An American reminiscing about 1950 in 2021 is an American in 1950 reminiscing about 1879.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I spent several weeks in 1968 in the same home as a man born in 1870. I wish I could say he regaled me with stories of his early life, but by the time I knew him his bag of marbles was mostly empty. I was told that he was still pretty sharp up until a couple-three years before then, still living on his own, still getting up and down the stairs, etc.

The JFK assassination? I can’t say it haunts me still, but it did mark an ending and an unhappy beginning. By the time his brother Bobby was shot dead, nearly five years later, it seemed, if not quite predictable, at least not so shocking.

The following year men walked on the moon and returned safely to Earth, as JFK had challenged the nation to do some eight-plus years earlier. It was a BFD, for sure. A friend’s mother served wine to us underage teens to toast the occasion. But going to the moon soon became almost blasé. The fascination, the sense of accomplishment, faded quickly. For most, it seemed no BD at all.

Maybe that goes some way toward explaining how we have had so little sense of a common, national purpose since then. You win the prize, and then what? Perhaps we’d have a different perspective on ourselves and one another if we knew real hardship and faced an existential crisis, and triumphed over it, as did folks of our parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I imagined a lot of things as I sat and watched Mr. Armstrong's first step on the lunar surface, but one thing I did not imagine at all was that fifty years later millions of people would believe that it never happened.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I wish I could say that surprises me.

 

[Harp]

I imagined a lot of things as I sat and watched Mr. Armstrong's first step on the lunar surface, but one thing I did not imagine at all was that fifty years later millions of people would believe that it never happened.

Sort of dovetailing Civil War widow pensions is a story about a nursing home patient in I think, Georgia, circa 1969:

A nursing attendant making his rounds encountered an elderly Negro gentleman, engaged in some perfunctory
small talk while taking vitals, television set on, a Jesse James episode feature. The attendant is a Western buff,
remarks about the outlaw, which prompts his elderly patient to voice his own opinion having known Jesse James
and ridden with him. This floors the attending nurse who learns that the elderly man was known as "the trigger kid."

And later, the elder voices doubt as to Armstrong's Moon landing.