Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[tonyb]

It used to be that getting married was, in many people's' minds, a prerequisite to getting laid. And, you know, people really wanna get laid.

Pretty it up with poetry and appeals to the divine. That's good for business. But if there is natural law of any sort, it is that young adults wanna make the beast with two backs (or any of numerous variations thereon). It's what they're built for. It's what has kept the species moving along.

My mom was married at 17. She would have waited for her 18th birthday if not that the church building wasn't available for several weeks after her birthday due to Advent. So she got married a few weeks short of turning 18. My strong suspicion is that she would have stayed married well into her old age to that fellow who became my father had he not died about three years after their wedding. I have numerous relatives of her generation who got married and stayed married to the spouses they met in their teenage years, or earlier.

But that was then, and there.

 

[HudsonHawk]

My aforementioned sister got married at 18 to the guy she'd known most of her life. They're still married, 33 years and counting.

Which brings up an interesting observation; I know of very few people my age who ar divorced. Many of my friends' parents are, but it's extremely rare in my circle. If half a of marriages today end in divorce, I'm sure not seeing it.

 

[sheeplady]

The divorce rate has never really been 50% for first time marriages. It's closer to 30% for first time marriages. Second marriages have a higher divorce rate, third marriages even higher. Turns out if you don't work on figuring out what happened the first or third time, history can repeat itself.

The current divorce rate for first time marriages in which the woman holds a college education is like... 20%. The overall divorce rate peaked with the baby boomers in the 1970s and is falling steadily.

I've been married to my husband for 11 years. I've seen a lot of marriages implode in those 11 years. Mostly among my high school friends, some of which are on their second or third marriages.

The idea of dating now (the last time I dated was before social media) seems exhausting. My husband better not mess this thing up by dying on me or making me kill him.

 

[BlueTrain]

While the divorce rate may be high, or at least high enough, it is also likely that a married person will not be associating with divorced people, except perhaps at work. In any case, it sure doesn't have the stigma it used to. I was over 30 when I married the first time (still married to the same woman, too) and my father almost was. He was nearly 30 when he got drafted, too, for that matter. By our daughter married her high school sweetheart but not for a few years afterwards. Her husband was in the service by then and they immediately went overseas. He was deployed to Afghanistan while he was overseas, too, but they stayed put long enough for us to visit them in Germany.

The only relation I know of who divorced had married a lovely young woman from Serbia and we all thought there would be fresh blood in the family. But he was the sort who was footloose and never at home. He is currently in Afghanistan working for the U.N. He is sort of a success and has published a couple of books but I find him difficult to be around. He probably finds me boring, the same way you probably would.

Referring to jalopies again, I never saw any car like those in the photos above. I'm sure some boys had cars, invariably old cars, but when all the required safety inspections came along, those would have been more difficult to keep on the road. It's also more difficult for a teenager to find a job these days, too, but there are lots of indulgent parents around here who can afford to buy their offspring a set of wheels, which would probably be the third and maybe the fourth car in the family, too. I've noticed cars full of high school students on the way to school in the morning a few times. Among other things, they're learning to commute. At the same time, I'll bet there isn't a high school in the country that doesn't lose at least one student in a car accident fatality every year.

 

[Fading Fast]

Boston's always been a city that tends to be cobbled together from old junk. When they try to be Modern As Tomorrow, the results are usually very unfortunate.

Boston has some beautiful old sections and, overall, did a decent job of building out the "Wharf" section along the Harbor nicely with a blend of old and new buildings (it isn't quaint old and shows that modern architecture can work well with old), but the area above, I believe, is part of "Gov't Center" which is a brutal '60s era modern architecture area that failed miserably.

On either side of it, the city is welcoming and fun. On the weekends, when the major gov't building are closed, you'll see people socializing, walking, chatting, etc., on either side of Gov't Center, but all goes quiet at Gov't Center. Even during the week, people seem to walk, head-down and purposeful to get to and from those buildings. There is, IMHO, a noticeable lack of social activity and just general milling about at Gov't Center as the architecture pushes people away.

 

[Fading Fast]

...Another aspect of teen marriages that I witnessed that was ironic: girls who were "too cool" to go out with a geek like me in high school and ended up marrying Mr. Wonderful often found out that he turned out to be a lot less than they thought. I'd be greeted by them in my 30's (usually through one of those out of the blue phone calls) with the question, "Do you know a really good divorce lawyer?" Now, I really don't wish an anti-social, abusive, unfaithful, and/ or alcohol/ drug addicted spouse on anyone.. but there was always a sense of karma coming home to roost in that particular scenario. What was really sad was when a kid or kids were in the middle of it- sometimes a kid brought into the world with the hope of "saving" a failing marriage.

At 52, what I've observed is that the "power" in dating shifts decade by decade from women to men. All these are general observations - I know (as all of you do) many exceptions to what I am now going to generalize.

In high school, women rule and guys try ridiculously hard to get their attention. I continued to see women as having more "control" or "power" in the dating market when I was in my 20s, but by the 30s, I noticed a meaningful shift, as single women seemed more concerned about getting married; whereas, men seemed to gain confidence and had more "control."

And for reasons I simply don't understand, by the time men and women are in their 40s and 50s, it seems like it is an all men's game. I know several very interesting, smart, attractive and successful single women in their 40s / early 50s who cannot find a man with similar characteristics to save their lives. And when I've tried to help - I'll ask around at work, etc. - I discovered that almost every man in his 40s and 50s was married, but there were several women who were single. Statistically, as the population is about 50/50 men and women, this makes no sense, but it is what I have observed.

Again, I know of many contrary examples - and I've been living with my girlfriend for 20 years, so I'm not talking from personal experience - but as a broad analysis of the dating "market," the above is what I've seen.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Among my crowd, women in their thirties, forties, fifties and up who aren't "with somebody" have pretty much decided not to bother with it. It's the kids who get all het up over relationships. The rest of us are perfectly satisfied with books and cats, in the manner of "Live Alone And Like It."

The one exception in our little sorority was a woman in her late thirties who swore she was done with All That Stuff after a series of unsatisfactory relationships in earlier years. Then she met a guy we all referred to as "The Sailor," because he looked like one, even though he was a schoolteacher, and in short order she moved in with him, moved to the frozen north, got pregnant, got married, and had a baby. All of these things are things she swore up and down she would never do, and the rest of us shook our heads in mass perplexity. She had books and a cat, what more did she need?

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ More than anything, the male - female "experience" difference doesn't make sense to me.

A friend of mine (and I'm just going to say it), not a particularly good looking guy, sadly lost his wife to cancer in his early 40s and he had women knocking down the door - and some very attractive ones - to get to him.

One of my girlfriend's best friend, is a very nice, very (very) attractive 47 year old woman who can't even find anyone to go out with.

And similar stories to these repeat themselves in my life regularly.

What I don't get is why men and women have such different experiences in their 40s and 50s.

 

[Doctor Strange]

It's not just women who have difficulty dating later on. I've been divorced since 2001, and though I've dated on and off, I haven't been able to get into a relationship that survived more than a couple of months.

My observation is that when you're young and in thrall to the Life Force, you will do whatever it takes to become a couple. You are still malleable (and often not yet set in a career or part of the country) and can change and compromise as necessary to be compatible with a partner. When you're in the forties and later, your personality and attitudes/interests/etc. are pretty much set, and the level of compromise required to align with someone else is much, much more difficult. That is, we all have our own personal mishogas, and being compatible with someone else's is really hard, especially when you're sliding into geezerdom.

And despite all the bushwa society throws at us about the importance of change and personal growth, my observation is that most people do not change. Their circumstances change, but real change is unusual: nearly everyone I've known since the 60s and 70s are still essentially the same. The outgoing are still outgoing, the introverts are still introverts. The arrested cases are still living in the parents' homes. The ones primarily interested in business are thriving, the ones primarily interested in sex are on their second/third/fourth/etc. marriages/partnerships. The self-destructive ones are going down the tubes or already gone. The hard workers have accomplished much. The believers believe, the atheists don't.

So, I was inept at dating in my 20s, and despite everything I've accomplished - career, marriage, children - and all I have to offer... I'm still inept at it now!

 

[BlueTrain]

My son, now 35, says he'll never get married and probably won't but that's what I thought, too. I had lots of books but no cat.

My wife has a first cousin (out of a grand total of two) who she says never dated a guy. But even she got married--to another woman. We like them both, though, and don't give it a second thought.

Marriage has become very controversial and to some degree, always has been. That is, it is as if someone owns marriage and they get to say who can and who can't get married. In the past, it was inter-racial marriages that were an issue and that came with the idea that it was someone else who got to say what race you were. Inter-faith marriages were not an issue so much. Religious authorities (depending) even say that a Muslim can marry a Christian but that it is problematic. These days, of course, the issue is same sex marriage.

It is said that a man marries a woman thinking she won't change, but she does. Conversely, a woman marries a man thinking she will change him, but she can't.

I don't know anything about dating. I met my wife when we were doing folk dancing. It helps to be active doing something, although going to baseball games may not be enough. Where I'm from, family reunions are considered good places to meet girls.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The problem around here is that "the dating scene" is geared to the mentality of kids in their twenties -- it revolves around bars. Some of them are swanky "wine bars" and some of them are dives where fights break out every night, but a bar is a bar is a bar is a bar. Who the hell wants, in their fifties, to go sit in the dark, drinking something that tastes like Prestone and eating mediocre overpriced food, while being deafened by four pot-bellied baby boomers playing bad blues riffs on second-hand electric guitars, and trying to figure out if the person sitting across the table from you is for real or is just putting you on to get what he wants out of you?

Nuts to that. I'd much rather eat a bowl of All Bran, drink a glass of Alka Seltzer, and then go to bed with a book, a radio, and a cat.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Marriage has become very controversial and to some degree, always has been. That is, it is as if someone owns marriage and they get to say who can and who can't get married. In the past, it was inter-racial marriages that were an issue and that came with the idea that it was someone else who got to say what race you were. Inter-faith marriages were not an issue so much. Religious authorities (depending) even say that a Muslim can marry a Christian but that it is problematic. These days, of course, the issue is same sex marriage.

Around here the one mixed-marriage taboo is a Red Sox fan marrying a Yankee fan. It rarely works out and most people know better than even to try.

 

[BlueTrain]

Honestly, I don't understand the appeal of watching grown men playing games. That's not sport. Sport involves horses and sometimes guns. But then, I don't understand the appeal of the floor exercise in gymnastics where the girl (it's always a girl) is waving a scarf. Of course, if the girl's pretty, that's different.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In the Northeast, maybe from Maine down to Philadelphia, for most of the 20th Century baseball was less a sport than a religion -- you were born into your rooting interest the same way you were born into a religious belief and a political alignment, and of the three, your team allegience was the most indelible. I hear the people in parts of the Midwest were like this too -- especially Cubs, White Sox, and Cardinal fans -- but it's the Northeast where the attachment has likely been the most passionate, probably because that's where most of the teams were concentrated for most of the century, and the passions have flared occasionally into actual violence.

It's not as strong with kids born after about 1980 than it is with those born before then -- in my grandparents' and parents' generation and my own generation, baseball was the *only* sport worth talking about all year round, and that was its primary value -- it gave people from all walks of life a common point of reference. Didn't matter how much money you had, didn't matter what else you believed in, you could walk up to a total stranger and say "How 'bout them Sox?" and you'd be able to have a conversation. It's not like that now with younger people -- they either don't follow sports or follow pro football, except for the ones who want you to think they're cosmopolitan because they follow soccer. Or they moved here From Away from someplace where baseball is inconsequential. I mourn the loss of that universal interest because it was one of the things that really held our communities together.

 

[BlueTrain]

I think two things happened; the Dodgers moved. Any Dodgers fans in Brooklyn now? Then ticket prices became too much for some people and baseball was no longer an everyman's diversion (in person). I'm sure that stock car racing, something that every commuter can identify with, drew fans away from baseball, too. Most of the excitement in baseball involves fly balls.

 

[Fading Fast]

My father's interest in baseball was never the same after the Dodgers left.

But to Lizzie's point, sport's team allegiance was deep and like religion to the pre-1980s generations.

While strongest and deepest in baseball, in the NYC metro region, there was (and still is amongst older fans) outright antipathy between Jets and Giant fans to the point that either fan base does NOT root for the other team when that team is in the Super Bowl and one's preferred team is sitting home. Team loyalty trumps geographical affinity.

Lizzie, good point also about the community building aspect of baseball, especially in an era when radio broadcasts still mattered. I can remember regularly standing with my dad in a local deli-type of store (and some other stores as well) where the owner played the games on his radio (a table-top model, not a "sound system") and we'd - sometimes - stand for hours with others listening to the game and talking baseball.

At ten, I could be talking in that deli to a 65 year old man that I didn't really know, but we both spoke the common language of baseball. You could walk by a group of kids, or men, or a woman sitting on a stoop - none of whom you knew - and if you heard the game on their radio, you could ask them the score and, if you felt you weren't interrupting, for an update or recap of the game - and they'd give it to you happily.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There are, indeed, still Dodger fans in Brooklyn. When Ralph Branca died recently, his death made the front page of the Brooklyn Eagle -- a paper owned and edited by a generation not yet conceived when Walter F. O'Malley committed his crime. If you go to a Brooklyn Cyclones game -- a minor league afflilate of the Mets that plays at a neat little park on Coney Island -- you'll notice the place is fairly suffused with old-Dodger references. And as recently as 2011 there have been semi-serious rumblings about the possibility of the Dodgers themselves coming home.

I'm convinced that baseball is in the blood. Either you got it or you ain't, but if you do, it will never leave you. Pretty much the only thing keeping my mother alive is her love for the Red Sox. She's still refusing to accept that David Ortiz won't be back in the spring.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The problem around here is that "the dating scene" is geared to the mentality of kids in their twenties -- it revolves around bars. Some of them are swanky "wine bars" and some of them are dives where fights break out every night, but a bar is a bar is a bar is a bar. Who the hell wants, in their fifties, to go sit in the dark, drinking something that tastes like Prestone and eating mediocre overpriced food, while being deafened by four pot-bellied baby boomers playing bad blues riffs on second-hand electric guitars, and trying to figure out if the person sitting across the table from you is for real or is just putting you on to get what he wants out of you?

Nuts to that. I'd much rather eat a bowl of All Bran, drink a glass of Alka Seltzer, and then go to bed with a book, a radio, and a cat.

That (bar hopping) does display an abysmal lack of imagination when applied to the dating dynamic, doesn't it? I understand that options in a smaller town may be limited, but there still has to be viable alternatives to going to a bar: concerts, a picnic, movies, a dinner..... hell, even a nice walk. One of my more creative options back in the day was teaming up with a young lady and offering to watch the kids of one of the church's ministers so that he and his wife could enjoy a much- needed night out (You learn a lot about a person by seeing how they handle themselves around a hyper two and four year old around bedtime.).

The most memorable date I ever had with my now- wife was a day long steam train excursion: when I saw her jaw drop when they staged a run by of the steam train- rods, pounding, whistle screaming, smoke billowing from the stack, etc.- I knew that the relationship had a future. I knew that she wasn't a train geek.. but I could see that she appreciated the beauty, the drama, and the poetry of something that holds a place in my heart, and that is important.

I always hated bars... but I liked to visit pubs and enjoy live folk music. That was usually a group activity or a "night out with the guys" thing, however.

 

[BlueTrain]

There are bars and there are bars. When I was little, there was just one kind of bar, typically frequented by drunks (not the same as an alcoholic) and decidedly working-class, most located near the railroad station. This was not the same everywhere, though.

Where I live now, there are so-called sports bars (where you can watch grown men play games on television) but they are nice places where the family is welcome. They are not the same as an English pub and not all of them are the same anyway. But they have a bar, to be sure.

There was a time, before my time, when a young man would ask a young lady to go to a dance with him. The big hotel in the small town was likely to actually have a dance band, too, so the possibility was always there. Hardly all young men did that but I don't suppose any do now and what passes for a dance these days may not even be worth doing. But there are still dance clubs that do things you have to actually learn before doing them. Suitable partners can usually be found and they are always wholesome activities, a word (wholesome) that has virtually gone out of common usage. In the 1950s, a high school dance was something that took place at the National Guard armory where the girls danced with each other and the boys stood around outside smoking.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have "dance events" in town here, but they all take place in bars. Those who partake don't "go to a dance," they "go dancing," and they usually do it in groups of same-sex friends, not as couples. Sort of like going to a pot-luck.