Would you, if you could?

[JimWagner]

Just keep in mind that it's always "now".

 

[swinggal]

I would love to visit on and off when it suited me and come back to the current time but I would not want to live in my fav eras (20s, 30s 40s) permanently.

Not a good time to be woman or a minority back then either. In fact a terrible time for many. There are things I'd love to see, purchase by the score and experience - absolutely - but I do love modern technology, the freedoms that we have as people to be who we want, to work where we want and go where we want no matter what sex or race we are. So no, casual visits only for me

However...if I was transported back in time by some miracle not of my doing and stuck in the 30s or 40s, I am sure I would be able to cope a lot better than the average person who has NO affinity or interest in the eras we love here on FL, as there would be a higher degree of understanding of the attitudes, manners, etiquette and social graces of the time on my part. These are the things that would help someone 'fit in' better. Still, it would very difficult in so many respects as we take so much for granted in this day and age.

 

[Miss 1929]

Just a few of the myriad reasons...

Medicine. My mother remembers in her youth, every fall there would be a few kids who didn't make it through the summer to come back to school, they either died or were disabled by polio.

Racism. If I had been European, odds are I would have gone to the ovens. If American, I would have been considered a second-class citizen.

Sexism. I think we all know how it was for working women back then.

Technology. I love it so.

No thanks.

 

[Miss 1929]

...

I rather like tampons...

Invented in the teens by a nurse in WWI. Widely marketed and advertised in the 20s. So they are Golden Era! And what a wonderful invention they were.

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

I had pondered these things about changing the past (and therefore changing the future), the 'good' and the 'bad', etc. when I was watching 'Back to the Future'.

 

[Foofoogal]

Most definitely yes.
In America as a teen about 1952.
I think we have had many of these threads on this topic. I want after polio vaccine and antibiotics. The closest year after whatever that was.

I think it is because I had depression era parents who passed in the 1980s though I was young then. I have their thinking. Cannot help it but I try to wrap my brain around today. When you are taught old fashioned tools to deal with new ideas it is hard to come up to speed.
I had to play catch up fast.

I so yearn for the ladies I remember who hung around their back fences and clotheslines.

Turning on the TV will definitely remind me of why I would like to do this.

 

[Foofoogal]

Not a good time to be woman or a minority back then either.

I personally think it is much worse now but just hidden more. In many respects.

 

[Edward]

I think most people who want to live in the past want to live in a movie set in an idealized past, not the actual past.

Ain't that the truth. It's also no coincidence that they are overwhelmingly white, male, and financially comfortable. Me, much before Generation X (of which I am solidly a part), and without being melodramatic about it, it's a simple fact that I'd have been either institutionalised or dead by now.

 

[Dewhurst]

No thanks, I love the time I live in!

But I earnestly love learning from and about the past. And while the earlier half of the preceding century was fascinating, I am still the most positively enamored by the Greeks and ancient times.

Also, I love technology and science (with the exception of cell phones/smart phones).

 

[Marla]

I think living in the Golden Era some 70 years ago wouldn't be unlike living in a second-world country today, which is doable. Visually, it would be stunning to live the era of Art Deco. I'd travel back in time to the late 1930s as long as I would not have to be a housewife.

 

[Pilgrim]

I enjoy knowing of the things of the past - and enjoying some of them, like hats.

Otherwise - IMO today is the best I've had it.

 

[Warbaby]

Here's another thought about going back to the past - if you were suddenly snatched from the present and dropped into the 1920s, would your current skills/knowledge enable you to find work and survive?

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Here's another thought about going back to the past - if you were suddenly snatched from the present and dropped into the 1920s, would your current skills/knowledge enable you to find work and survive?

Yes, most definitely. As an artist I would have fit right into the Golden age of Illustration. If not right away, I would work as a machinist/inventor. If I could take all of the knowledge I have now with me, I could "invent" things before they were actually historically invented.

 

[fortworthgal]

I'd do it.

I know it would not be easy or idealized, and one would have to give up many advances in technology and medicine, but for me personally, I think the reward would be worth it. Having grown up very poor and in an isolated rural area that essentially *was* the 1940s, I know I could hack it. And I wouldn't mind giving up working to be a housewife one little bit.

Where do I sign up?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The skills I have would be of *much* greater value then than they are today. No question about that at all. Radio was a wide-open field for women in the late twenties -- roughly half of all copywriters were female, and many of the leading scriptwriters on network programs were women. Many women held executive positions in advertising agencies, local stations, and networks.

Or, I could stay in the business I'm in now -- the exact job I hold today was held by a woman thru most of our theatre's existance.

I wouldn't earn what I was worth, but I was in modern-era radio for fifteen years and didn't earn what I was worth then, either. I don't earn what I'm worth today. So what's new?

I wouldn't miss the technology at all. This computer is the only modern tech I use, and I wouldn't need it then. I can type sixty words a minute on a manual typewriter, I know how to maintain vacuum-tube electronics, I know how to operate a carbon-arc film projector, and I know how to work a linotype. Vintage technology doesn't intimidate me in the least.

I didn't grow up as part of the modern culture, and the older I get the more alien it becomes. Given the choice I'd much rather have lived my entire life in the twentieth century than to have experienced any part of the twenty-first.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I would almost certainly win a Nobel prize. Using all the very basic knowledge you get even in high school, you would be considered a scientific genius, assuming you had the ability to do the experiments to prove you were right.

Here's another thought about going back to the past - if you were suddenly snatched from the present and dropped into the 1920s, would your current skills/knowledge enable you to find work and survive?

 

[Puzzicato]

Here's another thought about going back to the past - if you were suddenly snatched from the present and dropped into the 1920s, would your current skills/knowledge enable you to find work and survive?

I think my fingers would seize up trying to maintain my typing speed on a manual typewriter, however I do know how to use correction paper. I can't do shorthand. So I think I would be demoted from my current position to a more menial post in the typing pool.

 

[Foofoogal]

Having grown up very poor and in an isolated rural area that essentially *was* the 1940s, I know I could hack it.

my thoughts exactly. I think I would thrive at it. I have said many times I need to have classes to teach people how to be poor monetarily. As no. 9 of 11 it taught me how to make a penny stretch.
I know many people that have no idea how to make a pot of beans.


Use what you have on hand. Amazing what you can come up with.

 

[ScionPI2005]

Here's another thought about going back to the past - if you were suddenly snatched from the present and dropped into the 1920s, would your current skills/knowledge enable you to find work and survive?

More than likely. I'm sure I would end up a cop somewhere, or some sort of detective.

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

Hmm...I don't really have an education beyond high school...so I think I'd shove myself off to learn a trade...one that dealt with ships.