The 80s, myth and reality?

[Bugguy]

In my world, the 80's were known for only one thing.... Super Bowl XX. The 1985 Chicago Bears destroyed the New England Patriots!
A Refrigerator has never been so popular, nor Sweetness or a Samurai or Da Coach; and there was only one dance!

...and our personal favorite:

"The one thing about Jim McMahon, which was his curse and also maybe the one thing that made him tolerable was, as obnoxious as he was, he was unrepentant. He knows he's a jerk and he doesn't care that you know he's a jerk and he's not going to say, 'Whoops, I made a mistake,' " says journalist Rick Telander on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series.

 

[Harp]

In my world, the 80's were known for only one thing.... Super Bowl XX. The 1985 Chicago Bears destroyed the New England Patriots!

Those were the days.
Well, Fox finally got the axe. Pace is a lame duck who boloed the last three seasons. Mitch may prove a busted flush.
And last but not least, Phillips and McCaskey.

 

[p51]

That was one good thing about The Eighties. It was the tail end of the period when good stuff from the Era was still plentiful on the secondary market, and had not yet been snagged by speculators.

Yes. Anyone who collects US WW2 stuff from way back will remember the time when you collected that stuff because you couldn't afford the German stuff (which is what everyone in the hobby considered collectible). I could pretty much find anything I want and in almost any size, other than really large sizes, footwear and flight jackets. Anything else was easy to get.
Now, everything old has been snatched up by people looking for a big payday later. For the collector, it's all on the tertiary market now.

it use to be safe to go for a walk along the river or walk your dog, now you have to fear homeless claiming the area and pitt bull attacks, a homeless guy even accused me of trespassing, he said to stay away from his camp.

A friend of mine had that happen on his own land in Texas. the homeless guy had a nasty dog tied up. Shotgun was pointed and no police were called. I guess that's how they handle that there. Here in the Pacific NW, you'd have a SWAT team coming for you even though it's your own land.

 

[Juanito]

Yes. Anyone who collects US WW2 stuff from way back will remember the time when you collected that stuff because you couldn't afford the German stuff (which is what everyone in the hobby considered collectible).

Isn't that the truth, and it brings up something I haven't thought about since probably the late 1970's. There was a full color mail order catalog back then filled with a mix of original and repro German WWII items--Unique Imports, if I recall? Anyway, I spent a good portion of my lawn mowing money on items from them. Anyone remember those guys? They sold a lot of repro daggers with the authentic helmets and 98 series bayonets.

Also, real army surplus store were everywhere and were still filled with Vietnam and Korean War era gear and earlier stuff as far back as pre WWII. There was one in a town near where I lived that would occasionally get some foreign gear. I distinctly remember the pullover smocks and gear from the Rhodesia war. They has a hard time selling that stuff for $20 an item-today the smocks sell for nearly $500. I still remember the smell of that stuff.

 

[ChrisB]

I used to get the Unique Imports catalog as well, but never bought anything. WW1 surplus was still available in the late 70s. It is hard to find genuine army surplus these days. There are still brick and mortar “Army/Navy” stores around, but they rarely have any real surplus items.

 

[HudsonHawk]

A friend of mine had that happen on his own land in Texas. the homeless guy had a nasty dog tied up. Shotgun was pointed and no police were called. I guess that's how they handle that there. Here in the Pacific NW, you'd have a SWAT team coming for you even though it's your own land.

Here in Texas, most things are settled with either a handshake or a shotgun.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I still sleep under the WW1 surplus wool blanket I bought for $5 at Goodwill in 1989. A few moth holes by now, but so wouldn't you have if you were 100 years old.

Back around 1985, I bought a long run of loose issues of the New York Daily and Sunday News from 1933-1938 at 25 cents a copy. Some of them were still in their original mailing wrappers. $35 and up now on Ebay, when you can find them.

 

[Fading Fast]

We have several WWII and 1950s era blankets - Swiss Army and US Navy. One came from my girlfriend's dad from his time in the Navy (he served on a destroyer during the Korean war) and the rest we've bought over the years from second hand shops / sites. While the prices have gone up a lot in recent years (I think the hipsters discovered them), you can still get a quality wool blanket this way significantly less than the price of a new one (of similar quality), plus you have the coolness of it having a small touch to history.

We also have an original Pullman train car blanket and a few repros (supposedly made in the same factory from the same pattern, blah, blah, blah). In fairness, the original and the repros seem very, very similar, but I still like the original better (and it cost less).

 

[ChiTownScion]

We have several WWII and 1950s era blankets - Swiss Army and US Navy. One came from my girlfriend's dad from his time in the Navy (he served on a destroyer during the Korean war) and the rest we've bought over the years from second hand shops / sites. While the prices have gone up a lot in recent years (I think the hipsters discovered them), you can still get a quality wool blanket this way significantly less than the price of a new one (of similar quality), plus you have the coolness of it having a small touch to history.

We also have an original Pullman train car blanket and a few repros (supposedly made in the same factory from the same pattern, blah, blah, blah). In fairness, the original and the repros seem very, very similar, but I still like the original better (and it cost less).

I unloaded most of my Civil War reenacting gear two years ago, and a few reproduction wool blankets were part of the deal I made with a fine fellow from North Carolina who I hope will put their authenticity to good use. When you consider what Uncle Sam paid for their prototypes under contract at the time of that war, versus what I paid for their reproduction incarnations, it might cause a few of those soldiers who actually had to sleep under the originals to spin in their graves. A good repro blanket went for about what a private was paid over five months.

Being authentic had a price tag, and looking back on those fun filled years in the Hobby, a good argument could be made that true authenticity was lacking from any individual who didn't have to face .57 caliber lead or canister shot in live fire. I finally got out of the hobby because I realized that the most unauthentic facet of reenacting that war can never be parleyed away at any price: age. For the most part, the armies who fought that war- North and South- were made up of boys in their late teens or early twenties. When you're older than either Lee or Grant were at war's end and you still want to carry a musket and "relive history," perhaps it's time to consider the reality that you're not honoring anyone's memory by pretending that you're less than half your real age. There are better ways to honor the fallen, I realized. The fight to preserve the historic battlefields continues, and I'm convinced that is a better venue of engagement for old pharts like myself.

 

[Bushman]

I remember there being an Army surplus store in what used to be a small grocery store down on the corner from my house when I was a kid. Sold a mixture of repro and origoriginal items, including a number of original patches and pins. I remember putting together an Army officer costume from everything in that store for one Halloween. Sadly, it only lasted a few years.

 

[HanauMan]

The 1980s was a great decade for popular culture; I lived through them as a teenager on the back of a whole series of Levi jeans TV ads.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I remember my dad had his old army blanket, and I couldn’t stand it. It was the scratchiest, itchiest thing I’ve ever felt.

 

[Just Jim]

WW1 surplus was still available in the late 70s. It is hard to find genuine army surplus these days. There are still brick and mortar “Army/Navy” stores around, but they rarely have any real surplus items.

Heck, in the late '70s, I still knew a couple of vets of the Spanish-American war! The '80s saw the death of the last of my friends who fought in WWI; my childhood neighbors included vets of the German and US armies. I miss those guys, they were good company.

I knew many veterans of WWII, but little from them beyond that. In the '80s, the stories started coming out. Part of that was probably their own age, part that I was becoming a peer. I was on the VFD with some of these guys, and learned a lot. My interest in the GE can probably be traced back to growing up with these guys.

 

[Edward]

I used to get the Unique Imports catalog as well, but never bought anything. WW1 surplus was still available in the late 70s. It is hard to find genuine army surplus these days. There are still brick and mortar “Army/Navy” stores around, but they rarely have any real surplus items.

All the ones I grew up around, and even those I patronised when I first moved to London in my 20s, all seem to have either disappeared or be selling increasingly naught but modern camping gear and lower-end repros of the likes of MA1s. If only I'd known then, et cetera... I particularly remember whole racks of M65s in either original green or overdyed black, for GBP10-15 a pop, and the rest.... Something I wish I could buy again in the size I am now are the 1960s West German navy peacoats, lined in the same hefty blanket wool from which the shells were made. Better than any equivalent I've ever been able to find anywhere else. My first was £20; my second, a few years later, £50. Now you just don't see them.

Being authentic had a price tag, and looking back on those fun filled years in the Hobby, a good argument could be made that true authenticity was lacking from any individual who didn't have to face .57 caliber lead or canister shot in live fire. I finally got out of the hobby because I realized that the most unauthentic facet of reenacting that war can never be parleyed away at any price: age. For the most part, the armies who fought that war- North and South- were made up of boys in their late teens or early twenties. When you're older than either Lee or Grant were at war's end and you still want to carry a musket and "relive history," perhaps it's time to consider the reality that you're not honoring anyone's memory by pretending that you're less than half your real age. There are better ways to honor the fallen, I realized. The fight to preserve the historic battlefields continues, and I'm convinced that is a better venue of engagement for old pharts like myself.

One of my great sources of amusement in this world is the sight of two grown men in their middle fifties fighting over whose size48 A2 repro is the more historically accurate.... The age thing is interesting - it particularly plays into the debate on wearing "unearned rank": I'm 43 now, and it would be absurd for me to try to pass as a private or some such. For a start, I'm too old now to have been conscripted, even later in the war (ignoring the fast that I'm in a reserved occupation, and that had I stayed put where I grew up, conscription would never have happened, hence my lacking the sort of direct link to both world wars that so many of my contemporaries have in their lines over here). By my age, I'd have had to have achieved some rank level as a career officer, so an accurate impression would require that. Sometimes I wonder what it is that causes this age imbalance in these hobbies - is it just an interest that older guys can disproportionately afford (as you note, it's not cheap, requiring a level of disposable income that many young men won't have), or is it in part reflective of the fact that we simply don't like to recognise the reality that so many major wars were fought largely by those who were effectively children, or not much older?

The ACW still fascinates me, for the complex politics (how it wasn't and yet was "all about" slavery), the sheer death toll (650,000 - that's 250,000 *more* than US troops who died in WW2, and that figure I believe only includes combatants?), the fact that so many who fought for the soul of the US were so fresh off the boat a significant proportion of them didn't have English as a first language.... The psychology of the Irish in that war would bed especially interesting, given they were, as best as I can make out, pretty much evenly split across both sides.

 

[HanauMan]

The difference in the death rate was mostly due to advances in medicine, especially with regards to surgery and, of course, 'King Pencillin', a real life saver. Most Civil War soldiers died through disease and infections rather than through actual death on the battlefield.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The difference in the death rate was mostly due to advances in medicine, especially with regards to surgery and, of course, 'King Pencillin', a real life saver. Most Civil War soldiers died through disease and infections rather than through actual death on the battlefield.

Very true. The war ended right before Lister made his discoveries regarding the benefits of antisepsis during surgery.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The ACW still fascinates me, for the complex politics (how it wasn't and yet was "all about" slavery), the sheer death toll (650,000 - that's 250,000 *more* than US troops who died in WW2, and that figure I believe only includes combatants?), the fact that so many who fought for the soul of the US were so fresh off the boat a significant proportion of them didn't have English as a first language.... The psychology of the Irish in that war would bed especially interesting, given they were, as best as I can make out, pretty much evenly split across both sides.

Bearing in mind that the population of the entire United States was a fraction of what it is now and those numbers are even more stunning. Meade lost about 3,100 Union dead in three days at Gettysburg in 1863: that's roughly half of the entire United States fatalities of the American War for Independence. I was a medical reenactor (surgeon) and I always believed that I had to impress upon spectators that what transpired was not some grand North vs. South football game type of affair: we staged fairly authentic amputations and other surgeries to that end.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's the thing that makes me a bit queasy about the whole "reenactor" thing -- I get what they're trying to do, but it's hard for me to shake the idea that it's basically an excuse for middle-aged men to play Army. Which is fine if that's what you want to do, but still, all the stitch-counting sound and fury over authenticity rings kind of hollow when nobody even has dysentery or trench foot.

 

[BlueTrain]

Retailers of reproduction clothing and equipment are frequently frustrated by customers who don't realize the variations that original material existed in and complain about products that are available. There are other things, too.

As I've probably mentioned before, when thinking of historical periods, even if it is as late as WWII, time is invariably compressed. You forget how long five years is when you're just 20 years old. You think that as soon as something new comes out, everyone has it two weeks later. For instance, the M1 rifle was adopted in 1936. Yet the '03 Springfield bolt-action was still being delivered to the army in 1944. And M1 rifles and BARs were still in use in the National Guard in the 1970s. But probably few quibble over rifles, reserving their attention for the correct shade of olive drab.

On the other hand, some things seem to disappear without a trace. I joined the army in 1965 and never saw a so-called Ridgeway cap, the baseball cap having replaced it by then. I also never saw an M16 the whole time I was in the army.

I've never been a reenactor, although I've long been interested in militaria and associated fields. Some former high-ranking individuals engaged in re-enacting, though not for the era they actually lived through. It does bother me sometime when reenactors seem to think that what they do will somehow change history. But perhaps my impression is all wrong.

 

[Harp]

... or is it in part reflective of the fact that we simply don't like to recognise the reality that so many major wars were fought largely by those who were effectively children, or not much older?

The Infantry so christened.