The "Good Old Days?" Well, not so much, really.

[MineralMan]

Sometimes, when an old-timer like me posts something about something from the 1950s and 60s, as a contrast to something from right now, the old-timer gets accused of gloating about better times from the past. That's not it, though. Times weren't better. They were just different. in many ways, they were worse. Much worse. Let's take a look:

Social Justice
Open racism and legal discrimination against anyone who wasn't white.
Women treated as chattel. I remember women not being able to open a checking account or get any sort of loan. "Where is your husband."
Readily available contraception and abortion were illegal. Illegal!

Health Care
No available treatment other than surgery for cancer.
Widespread overuse of the few antibiotics that were available.
Mental health care consisted of terrible state hospitals in most places. You would not want to be in any of them.
Most people did not have health insurance. If you couldn't pay, you didn't get.

Economic Issues
Yeah, houses were cheap compared to today, but the minimum wage was $1.25 when I was sixteen in 1962. That same year, my parents bought a three-bedroom house for $14,500. It was a struggle, since my father, an auto mechanic, earned only just over $3/hr. He worked a lot of overtime.

College students didn't need student loans. That's true, but there weren't any student loans available in 1963 when I attended a state college that had $0.00 tuition. I had to drop out in early 1965, due to lack of funds, though. I enlisted in the USAF to avoid getting drafted in 1965. After four years, I went back to college on the GI Bill. There were still no student loans available, but I had the GI Bill. I like to think I earned it.

In 1974, my new wife and I bought a house. It cost only $20,000, but needed lots of work. We couldn't get a mortgage, but her father loaned us the money on a 10-year basis, and we paid it off in 5 years. That was helpful. We paid it off by scrimping on everything and driving $100 cars. Many of them. I fixed them up, drove them, and then sold them to someone else just getting by.

Politics
Goldwater and JFK. The right wing was up to the same garbage it's up to now. JFK was shot dead in 1963. I campaigned for him in 1960, while still in high school. Then, there was Nixon and Reagan. Yeah...things were tons better then...right...

In 1965, I drove across the country from California. Got to listen to Martin Luther King give his "How Long?" speech in Alabama. There were still "Whites Only" signs in many places. A terrible time for people of color. Things have improved, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

Conclusions
See, I don't think we had it so good when I was younger. In fact, I know we didn't. I hid under desks in school for A-Bomb drills. I remember that shit. Things are better now in many, many ways. Why? Well, in part because people like me worked hard to make them better. Now I'm old. I don't long for the "Good Old Days." They weren't. They still aren't, but they're better in some ways. Now, I just have a few more years, at best. Work for what you want. If you work hard, you might just get it.

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. Yeah, I scoff when I hear people talking about "the good ole days."

[MineralMan]

9. Either they weren't alive then,

or they just don't remember.

[Ferrets are Cool]

43. Wifey uses the phrase but she is very selective with her memories.

And it's usually when I have fucked up.

[Rebl2]

59. Same here

I was a child in the 60’s, but I paid attention and realized the horrible things people experienced. Guess what, not much has changed.

[Warpy]

93. The point about those good ole days is that they were KIDS

They had parents who wooried about things like paying the bills and getting them to dental appointments and whether or not they were reading at grade level and all the thousand and one things that go into basic survival. While being a kid and dealing with schoolwork and bullies isn't smooth sailing, it's a hell of a lot smoother than being an adult and dealing with a job and bullies.

Anybody who thinks the 1950s were like "Leave it to Beaver" simply wasn't there smelling the pollution and getting hit, a lot.

There were no good old days, ever, just the relative freedom of childhood followed by the constriction of adulthood. End of story.

[Ferrets are Cool]

100. I wish.

My childhood was filled with poverty and a father who abused me physically and mentally. I am glad yours was happy.

[Warpy]

108. I said relatively uncomplicated, not happy.

Close examination of most childhoods in the 50s will turn up things like physical abuse. Nobody spared the rod back then.

[AllyCat]

156. Oh my, I'm so sorry that happened to you.

I hope you are finding peace.

I enjoy your posts.

[Ferrets are Cool]

169. Thank you AC

Yes, the nightmares have diminished over the years and counseling helped. I'm 67 now and rarely thi k of him at all. Thank goodness for a great mother.

[leftyladyfrommo]

119. I grew up during the '50s and '60s in Spokane.

One good thing was that we had really good schools. That makes a huge difference. I wonder now if kids are getting any education at all.

We were very middle-class and so were most of the kids that lived near us. We also had a lot of airforce people renting around us. Some of those guys were really rough on their kids.

[Caliman73]

165. Many children are getting very good educations, many, unfortunately are not...

As with anything, it depends. Depends on where you are living, depends on the educational background, opportunities, and motivation of the parents to be involved, etc...

I grew up middle class. My parents worked hard. They wanted to send me to Catholic school. My education was pretty good. I went to a high school that was recognized for academics and sports. I was able to get into a good university. My wife grew up working class. She barely got into university, almost dropped out, but stuck it out and ended up getting two masters degrees and a doctorate. She had parents who expected her to get good grades, but weren't supportive of higher education, nor were they in any position to help her with any school work.

My children went to or are going to public school. My oldest graduated with an engineering degree from a good university. My younger two are in high school and middle school, are doing well academically, and are motivated to learn and get good grades. They are learning things now that were not taught when I was in school, but should have been. My kids are doing math in the 8th and 9th grade that I didn't do throughout high school. My nephews were taking classes on quantum computing in high school.

The problem with education now is similar to what it was back then. Conservatives do not want to fund public education and look for every reason to cut funding for schools, while they try to educate their children at the best private schools available. Conservatives also hate liberal education (which means education based in science, evidence, logic, arts, and humanities) because it teaches people to be critical thinkers, which often negates the tenets of Conservatism. There are groups or people funded by Conservative organizations that are infiltrating school boards and trying to stop teaching accurate history, any mention of race or gender, or other information that would lead people to want progress and change in society.

[Elessar Zappa]

2. Yes,

many people long for a golden era that never existed. We’re going backwards in many ways but we’re still better off than we were 60 years ago. I will say that I enjoy 20th century music much more than modern music lol. Of course that’s just a personal preference and I’m sure there’s still some great music being made that I’m not aware of.

[qwlauren35]

166. You said it!!!

I so enjoy the music of the 70's and 80's.

I have some younger friends who think that music of the 90's was best.

I think what you find is that the music of your teens and twenties is the music you like the best.

I can think of two songs of the 21st century that I like. Bruno Mars' Uptown Funk which is completely retro and reminds most people of music from the 80's. And Mary J. Blige's "I'm Just Fine".

The rest... half of it has no instruments, so I don't consider it music.

[duhneece]

3. And about domestic violence or child abuse, the 'it's not our business'

concept prevailed.

Even animal abuse was more easily accepted.

Reports of sexual abuse within the home were rarely reported.

Some days, looking back at all you said but fluctuating between hope and despair at today, I feel nuts.

[MineralMan]

6. Yes, those things, too.

Thanks for remembering them!

[debm55]

40. agree

[Diamond_Dog]

4. Good post. And, as a woman,

Who in her right mind would want to go back to that time? Women had no rights at all.

[MineralMan]

7. Exactly. I remember women's struggle, too.

Not such good old days...

[1WorldHope]

60. I fear we don't have any rights, again. n/t

[Wednesdays]

153. Exactly.

If you were a woman then, you couldn't get a credit card or a bank account without your husband's permission.
No husband? Then you were SOL.

And I didn't even touch on reproductive rights.

[True Dough]

5. And you wouldn't have

shared your thoughts on an online forum in the 1950s and '60s. The internet is a wonderful thing (mostly).

[MineralMan]

8. Good point. Yes.

On the other hand, I took my first computer programming class in 1963. I could see the possibilities, although it took a few more decades before it was possible.

[Permanut]

129. Now there's a trip down memory lane!

Hollerith punch cards?

[MineralMan]

130. Yup. FORTRAN on an IBM 1620.

[willamette]

147. It was 1969 for me for programming.

Fortran IV on the IBM 360. Yes, 80 column cards, except for the teletypes ---- paper tape. I graduated with the first Computer Science class at Washington State. Muu Yuu.
After FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) ALGOL, PL/1, COBOL, and of course, Assembler 360. The address space was fixed. Save space, don't put in four digit years in your code, it will never still be used in 30 years ...

[MineralMan]

160. I had a couple of programming classes in 1963-4.

That was it until the mid 1980s, when I finally got a PC clone. It was part of my contract to write a DIY book for Rodale Press. I said I'd do the book for them, but I wanted a PC. I fell in love with it immediately, and soon began writing code in MS-BASIC. Later, I switched to he QuickBasic compiler, and finally to Visual Basic. I had a small shareware software company, making special purpose applications and utilities. Some of the stuff sold pretty well, and even got reviews in major computer magazines.

All self taught. So, my coding style was not normal, really. I didn't learn any other languages, because I didn't need to to do what I wanted to do. For me, BASIC was just another language I learned. The only difference was that I was telling a machine what to do.

[willamette]

167. I always had a client or boss,

and never wrote my own software to sell.

MineralMan wrote that he was pretty much a self-taught programmer, and that he eventually had a software company.

I thought I would, but didn't. Every new job was a new language or two. But outside of LISP (used just in college for a course), they all were pretty similar. The big changes were when structures were built into the compilers, and then, of course, object oriented programming.

[MineralMan]

171. Yeah, self-taught, which is why I stuck to variations of BASIC.

Despite all of its limitations, I extended it to do a lot of things it wasn't supposed to be able to do.

At one point, I designed an event-oriented user interface for MS-DOS, complete with drop-down menus, full use of the two-button mouse, and a bunch of other things that let me do what I wanted to do with the software I was developing. In MS-DOS, I adopted the QuickBasic compiler from it's first version. Another company offered extensions that let me access a lot of additional tools, as well.

As soon as Microsoft offered Visual Basic, I switched to creating applications and utilities for Windows. I began to work with large arrays to manage variables that had lots of parameters. Since my datasets were relatively small, I could store all of those arrays in memory. You could simply write those arrays to files and reload them. Pretty much nobody was doing that, so I shared that concept online, mainly on CompuServe, since the Internet wasn't fully active yet. I wanted an animated splash screen for my company's programs, so I figured out how to do animations, using some interesting trickery in Visual Basic. I shared those techniques by making a public domain animation module and sharing the source code.

Basically, I was having fun, really. But, I did a few applications that were useful, like a business card design program that printed business cards on the pre-perforated card stock that was available. The program had an editing screen and a preview screen, since I couldn't do WYSIWYG in VB. The program's interface had menus, but most of the functions that were available also had on-screen drop-down lists for things like font selection, graphics, line-drawing, etc. It was a busy interface, but easy to learn. The name of the software was Rockford.

I converted that to a related program for designing labels, either for printing multiple labels on one page or address labels from a built-in database in the program. That database was also array-based, so it was as fast as lightning. It was limited to 750 records, but you could save the data in as many files as you liked, so it was unlimited. That program was MultiLabel.

Windows didn't have a decent way to preview uninstalled TrueType fonts, so I Created Fonter, which let you preview fonts you downloaded from somewhere and print font samples. It also tested the fonts for errors that could crash Windows. There were some really badly done fonts out there. Then, you could use Fonter to install the fonts in Windows permanently, or temporarily for that session of Windows. A related program, which was free, just tested fonts before you installed them. Microsoft had that program available on its own website for people wanting such a thing.

I also had some smaller utility programs I created because I wanted them for myself. Those I just put out there as freeware, in the public domain.

I made some money with some of that software, but not a lot. Maybe $10-15K a year. OsoSoft, my little company, was around for about 10 years, but I finally shut it down and made all of the software public domain. It was all just a fun exercise for me, really.

[TSExile]

10. Addiction

Shows like Bewitched and more recently, Mad Men, portrayed business meals as "champagne breakfasts" and "martini lunches". Social drinking often blew up into full-blown alcoholism, often among the "elite".

Many people smoked like chimneys. It was only in the past couple of decades that "smoking" sections of restaurants and bars were done away with. Ads for cigarettes were everywhere in those days - both in print and on screen.

[MineralMan]

11. Just don't try to use marijuana, though.

Prison sentences were long, as I remember.

[Wednesdays]

154. In Texas, possession of anything over an ounce

Was LIFE imprisonment.

[dalton99a]

12. And if your car broke down

Find a public payphone

[Ferrets are Cool]

45. I honestly don't know how I drove ANYWHERE before google maps.

Half my time was spent driving and the other half looking at Rand McNally maps.

[LeftInTX]

125. I always wrote down directions before I left my home.

It is kind of amazing that I found my way around town without even a Rand McNally map!
I have a pretty good sense of direction and used to have a good memory.

I used to zip through places like Chicago and St. Louis. I did got lost in Dallas though.

[Ferrets are Cool]

151. "I have a pretty good sense of direction "

Not me, I can get lost walking out to my mailbox.

[LudwigPastorius]

146. Mapsco!

[mnhtnbb]

148. The Thomas Guide to Los Angeles County

was a fixture in my car when I lived in L.A. from 1969-1988. It made getting around L.A. so easy.

Rand McNally still publishes them. You can get one on Amazon for $37.!

[MineralMan]

164. I had that, too, and I didn't even live in LA.

I went there often enough, though, that finding my way often depended on it.

Even with in-car Google, I check maps before leaving. The Google lady isn't always right, it seems. I try to have my route in my head before setting out.

[LeftInTX]

172. Are those the spiral bound?

Amazon has them new for $250.


I remember we had a spiral bound of San Antonio, but it was extremely expensive, so I just used a paper map and/or somehow I figured out how to get to where I wanted to go. I never got lost.

I was pretty good at memorizing streets.I remember I would sometimes stop at gas stations and ask directions.


I used to drive from Texas to Wisconsin without really having to look at a map, except for Dallas. Don't ask me about Dallas!

It was a straight shot on 35, then get on 44 in OK City, until St Louis. Then get on 55. Follow the tolls in Chicago to get on I-94 N.

I would stop before that crazy I-35 Dallas/FW split and look at the map. Then, I would look at the map prior to making reservations for the night, somewhere in Southern OK. Then, the next night would be somewhere in Missouri.

[Ziggysmom]

13. Living was more affordable back in the 1960s. More people could afford homes.

https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/housing-trends-visualized/

"In 1960, the median home cost $11,900, while the median income was $5,600, indicating a price-to-income ratio of 2.1.
By contrast, in 2019 the median home cost $240,500 with an estimated median income of $68,703, a price-to-income ratio of 3.5.
Simply put, housing is significantly less affordable for Americans now than it was 60 years ago.

Homes have become less affordable: In 1960, approximately 68 out of 100 Americans could afford a home, but now only around 43 out of 100 can afford one."


In 2023 the situation is even worse. The rich have gotten richer on the backs of the poor and middle class. CEO pay has increased 1,008% between 1978 and 2018, while typical worker pay has edged up only 12%.

[Elessar Zappa]

15. That's one thing that was better.

And that only applied to white people. Blacks and other minorities were often denied loans to finance a home. And there’s plenty of other parts of life that were way worse back then, especially for minorities, women, and the lgbtq community. And by the 70s and up to the late 90s the crime and murder rate was much higher than it is now.

[Ferrets are Cool]

46. IMO, most of that wasn't because things were better but because people lived

within their means. Credit, except for homes and some cars was unheard of. The rise of credit cards and "keeping up with the Jones' changed all of that.

[Caliman73]

168. That wasn't a result of "credit cards" and isn't unique to our time...

Just before the Great Depression in the 1930's, there was a boom in credit and everyone was encouraged to get into the stock market. Lavish lifestyles were promoted and there were items "you just had to have"...

It is Capitalism and the desire of those with money to get MORE money without putting more money into circulation with higher wages. Bernie Sanders talked about this all the time, that the compensation of the richest people has gone up hundreds of percentage points while wages for working people have stagnated. and have not even kept up with inflation. How to you stimulate the economy when people can't really even afford to buy the necessities? Push credit and the "lavish lifestyle".

Are people making choices? Sure, but to say, "back then people lived within their means..." sounds like a judgment of individuals, when we all exist within systems that very much limit and/or push us into choices they want us to make. Like in the 1970's when Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House and was pushing America to make choices about energy and consumption, but then Reagan came along, took the solar panels off, subsidized fossil fuels heavily, started dismantling Unions, and said, "We're America! We're number one and we don't apologize for anything..." Then proceeded to slash corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy by more than 50%, went after social welfare programs, and praised the rise of yuppies and consumer culture.

[Farmer-Rick]

67. The 2008 crash wiped out a lot of middle class home ownership

Congress even provided a program for helping a few middle class home owners after the foreclosure freeze was lifted. But no one used it. Even when it was discovered that the money was just sitting there waiting, the states refused to use it to help anyone. Hey, they bailed out the banks what more could you possibly want? Can you say austerity? But no austerity for the filthy-rich.

So, yeah, homeownership is in the crapper now.

I remember when used cars were really junk. New cars lasted for a couple of years then fell apart. Buying used cars was buying someone else's problems.

Light bulbs lasted a couple of months before they crapped out too. Now I have light bulbs that are years old.

Not much variety in middle class meals outside of processed foods. Industry was making lots of sugar laden processed foods but recipes were pretty limited in ideas and fresh food was never offered out of season without a hefty price. But we did have a lot more farmers.

[Sky Jewels]

87. Republicans started intentionally destroying the middle class with Reagan.

They wanted to move as much money from bottom to top as possible. And they have succeeded wildly.

[intheflow]

114. +1

[marble falls]

14. The good old days weren't every time I hear about how good the schools were in the fifties, I ...

... point out high school had a close to 60% drop out rate.


Dropout Rates in The United States: 2000,

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf

Page eight.

[MineralMan]

16. True.

Bottom line is that there is good and bad at all times. Times change, but that doesn't change.

Some things are better now. Others are worse. But the "good old days" never are or were, really,

[andym]

131. The downside of nostalgia, which paints the past as rosier than it was. NT.

[marble falls]

133. Life has been pretty tough at times. I don't know about wanting to back to the fifties.

[chicoescuela]

17. Agree 100%, maybe we mostly long to be young again?

[MineralMan]

18. Could be.

For me, every age has been OK, really. I've never really wished to be the age I was at some point in the past. Life has always been interesting, at whatever age. That's all I can ask or expect, I think. It's all been very interesting, and still is.

[chicoescuela]

28. Yes, I'm happy and grateful for my life today but given a choice I would choose

youth and hopefully not an episode of the Twilight Zone

[MineralMan]

32. Still, we are not given that choice.

Oh, well...

[chicoescuela]

121. Exactly, hence the Twilight Zone reference

[underpants]

19. I worked with a guy who went from Newport News to Houston in the early 60's

Great guy. Recently retired after 50 years at the same organization.

He told me his story over lunch once.

Me: Why Houston?
Him: we were registering people to vote
Me: (pause)
Him: Yeah. We got our asses kicked a lot.
Another old timer at the table laughed and nodded “I’ll bet so”
We both thanked the guy for what he did. Took some serious balls.

[MineralMan]

21. The people who participated in voting issues

in the 60s were very, very brave people. Some of them died doing it. I didn't begin doing activism until the anti-war movement in the later 60s. I was stationed near Washington, DC in 1968-9, while still in the USAF. I participated actively in the anti-war protests and other similar things during that time. A little risky, but...

[Archae]

20. During the 1970's nostalgia fad, I wrote an essay about the "good old days."

For school. (I got an A)

When cars were only a plaything for the really rich, especially in cities, people used horses for nearly everything.
And it was awful.
Horses poop and pee. A lot.
And it would stink, to high heaven.
City horses, often overworked, simply would drop dead.
And their bodies often would lie where they died for days, or weeks, rotting.
And can you imagine a traffic jam, with horse-drawn carriages? Oh yeah, they happened.

Sewers were inadequate, at best.
Water supplies were contaminated, often with diseases like cholera.

Central heating? A fantasy.
Most people had fireplaces or iron stoves.
And hot water was really hit or miss.

Medicine?
Stuff we now know is dope, (like heroin and cocaine,) were openly marketed for babies and kids.

Food was often rotten and contaminated.

[MineralMan]

23. Actually looking at the realities of things

in the past often reveals all of the negative things, for sure. We often gloss over that, especially if we did not live through it.

For most people living today, the idea of A-bomb drills where schoolchildren dove under their desks doesn't seem real. However, now we have active shooter drills. There's always something, it seems.

[yardwork]

66. Government regulations improved things!

I get so frustrated when I hear people complain about government regulations. One of the biggest reasons people vote GOP is because they're supposedly sick of government regulations getting in the way of their "freedoms."

Your description is a reminder of what it was like when rich people were free to do whatever they wanted. They polluted the air, soil and water - and moved their families outside town to escape the stink. They sold poison to people. They acted totally irresponsibly because they could, and until the government started passing laws against it, many people died young after living miserable lives.

That's what MAGATs think they want to return to - a world where sociopaths like Trump and Musk can do whatever they want, no matter who they hurt.

[Wednesdays]

157. I remember reading a book in the 1970's

"The Good Old Days--They Were Terrible!"

About how "the good old days" (the Gilded Age of the 1890's-1910's) weren't all they were cracked up to be.
Pretty much echoes the same points you were making.

https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-They-Terrible/dp/0394709411

[Mr. Ected]

22. The best thing about the good old days

Were that they were my good young days.

How I miss my youthful vigor!

[MineralMan]

24. Oh, I don't know. I can still do all the things I used to do.

Just not as often, nor for as long.

[Mr. Ected]

26. You're a hoot, MineralMan!

Or should I say "MiracleMan"?!

Keep writing my friend. You always have a way with words.

[MineralMan]

33. You're very kind.

I will keep writing. It's what I do. Thanks!

[NCDem47]

25. No offense to our more mature readers, but

I wouldn't want to go back to the 50s or earlier for ANYTHING!!

[MineralMan]

34. Neither would we, frankly.

Very few people are alive, though, who remember anything before the 1950s. I was born in 1945, a week before the Hiroshima bomb. I have almost no memories earlier than 1950, though.

My parent's generation is all but gone. Time moves on inexorably.

[twodogsbarking]

96. I was born in 1952. Grew up on a farm. We were not poor. Many of my friends were.

There are still too many poor and we are adding to it I fear.

[MineralMan]

98. Indeed there are too many poor.

I have no solution for that, I'm afraid.

[wryter2000]

27. Spot on

However, in the 60s we had civil rights laws and the war on poverty/great society. If we could have continued those endeavors, this country would be a different place. Thank that old hater Ronald Reagan for moving us backward.

[MineralMan]

36. We had those because people who were young in those years

pushed to have them. The very people who are now old geezers like me. That's why we had them then. And getting them was not easy, by any means.

[wryter2000]

103. I'm one of those old geezers

We pushed, but the black people pulled the heavy load. We learned from them. Of course, those folks are geezers now, too.

[MineralMan]

107. Yes. They did. I remember talking to

a civil rights worker in 1965 in Alabama. I wanted to work for change. I asked him what I could do, as a 19 year old white kid. He said, "Listen to us. Always listen. What you can do will come to you when you are able." He was right. Listen.

[wryter2000]

111. Wonderful

I've learned so much from listening to black people. Put any defensiveness away and open your ears and your mind.

[MineralMan]

113. That's very difficult for most people to do.

Worthwhile, though.

[cksmithy]

29. I remember the old days

the same way you do. I think I am about 5+- years younger than you. We hid under our desks too.

The entire school went out to board buses to go home one day (for about 30 minutes) during the Bay of Pigs, and waited for an all clear. My elementary school was less than 15 miles from Fort Ord, CA.

My dad worked for the state of CA and we had pamphlets on how to survive a nuclear attack. It was very a very scary time. At least we didn't have nuts shooting up schools with machine guns. (I know they are not machine guns but they are as deadly.)

Couldn't vote until I was 21, while high school boys had to register for the draft. Sent to a war as teenagers without being adult enough to vote.

[MineralMan]

37. Yes. Exactly.

[Ocelot II]

30. We remember the old days as good old days because we were kids

and we weren't often aware of the bad parts unless we were directly affected somehow. If you were like me, a white kid growing up in a Midwestern suburb with a stable, financially secure family, those were the good old days as you remembered them, because things were OK for you and you were a kid and you were protected and isolated from the bad stuff. As you got older, though, you started noticing things - I was always a newspaper reader, lurking by the front door so I could grab the evening paper (there was one in those days) before anybody else, and I watched TV news, and I became aware of the civil rights movement and the cold war (and of course there was that whole duck and cover thing); I started to notice that there were two categories of help wanted ads in the paper and all the good jobs that paid well were in the help wanted: men section. And even as a spoiled white kid I figured out that although my own little world was pretty comfortable, not everything in the big world was all beer and skittles.

And for some people these days, the good old days were good precisely because discrimination against anyone who wasn't white was legal and women were treated as chattel who couldn't open a checking account or get a loan without a husband's signature - and, of course, abortion and even contraception were illegal. Those are the good old days the lunatic right wants to revert to.

[Hekate]

105. All of what you said is what I remember except we weren't financially secure...

Nor were we in the far-off and fabled Midwest!

And yet we never rented, a circumstance I now understand was due to white privilege, and in 1948 that little piece of real estate gave my young parents that first toehold in SoCal.

[paleotn]

31. The "good old days" weren't always good and tomorrow isn't as bad as it seems

To quote Billy Joel. Back in the 70's, while shopping in a department store on Church Street in Nashville, my dad showed me the outline of where the colored water fountain once was. It was a teaching moment. Though no one would consider dad a flaming progressive, he had an over active sense of fairness and equality that I inherited.

[MineralMan]

41. I remember the impact seeing those signs for the first time.

No such signs in California back then, but once you got to the southern states in the early 60s, there they were. I was dumbfounded.

[thucythucy]

35. And homophobia was the norm, accepted, and often lethal.

Being gay was illegal. Many police forces had units that specifically targeted the gay community. Blackmail was a constant threat. The violence was awful.

There's still a lot of oppression, and we are now in the midst of a backlash against anything to do with non-hetero culture, but it's nothing like it was in the '50s '60s '70s--even into the 80s when the Reagan administration refused to do anything to counter the AIDS epidemic because it was "a gay disease."

The '60s marked a huge change in so many ways. Just one small example to show how straight laced and petty things could be: girls could be suspended from school for wearing pants. Girls wearing pants!! The Horror!!!

Oh, and then too, rape victims were generally assumed to have "asked for it." No rape crisis centers. No rape counselors.

As for disability rights--they didn't exist. No ADA. No curb cuts or ramps. Courthouses, police stations, schools, mass transit, most stores were inaccessiblle. "Access" in that sense wasn't even a concept. If you had a significant and visible disability--forget about getting a job. Chances were good you'd spend your life in a nursing home or institution or locked in a back room. It was considered a shameful thing to have a disability, or to have a disabled person in your family. Even cancer patients were made to somehow feel ashamed of having the disease.

And of course, all of this was so much worse if you were a person of color.

[MineralMan]

38. Yes, those things too.

The list of things that needed fixing is a very, very long list. We tried to fix them, with some success and many failures. The fight goes on, and will probably always go on.

[chowmama]

39. Too many people think Leave It To Beaver was a documentary

I, too, grew up during that period. It damn well wasn't.

[MineralMan]

42. All of those sitcoms were fantasies,

mostly. Especially if you weren't a nice white family.

[MineralMan]

47. In my freshman year at college in 1963, I had a Japanese-American

friend. She was born in the Manzanar internment camp. Her father committed suicide in the camp. I learned many things from my friend when I was just 18 years old. And other things from other new friends.

I grew up in a small citrus-growing town in California. When I went to the first grade, it was the first year that Hispanic and Anglo kids attended the same elementary school. I had no idea at the time, but many of my friends had homes where Spanish was the language. So, I learned Spanish sort of automatically so I could talk to my friends' parents and grandparents. I thought nothing of it until much later, when I learned what that actually meant. The town was about 1/3 Hispanic. Over the years, I learned much more about their history.

[bucolic_frolic]

44. Yeah, there were no MRIs just X-Rays, much surgery was "Exploratory" to see what's going on

But count me skeptical of today's world too. Some think they can solve anything with enough money and advanced degrees. But while the content of degrees is more, the quality is less because the bell-shaped curve now has degrees, and all of life is distracted by digital content and media. That includes education.

The 80s and 90s were a sweet spot. Obama too, though he was hindered by the dump of GOP fallout.

[MineralMan]

48. There is always good and bad, regardless of the time period.

That's the real lesson.

[Collimator]

49. There are some scholars who posit . . .

. . . That the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden represents the human yearning for an imagined simpler time of ease and comfort. It has also been argued that theories of a Golden Age of Matriarchy when women ruled and humans lived in harmony and with justice are just nostalgic longings for when we were young children and our mothers provided for us and protected us and our problems were easy to resolve.

Jean Auel's Earth's Children series features a passage in which one of the characters dreams of their Earth Mother Deity no longer providing for their needs directly which is seen as an allegory for humanity moving from hunting/gathering to farming.

Change is the only constant in the Universe and memory is mutable. Things ARE a lot better for a great many people nowadays, but we have a social communication structure based on complaining. That's not necessarily bad; acknowledging when something is wrong is the first step towards efforts to improve it. The problem is that some people are adept at magnifying those complaints and laying the blame with the wrong parties.

One of the things that pisses me off is the framing of poverty as a moral deficiency on the part of the poor and suggestions that they are destroying our society or way of life or whatever. Poor people aren't ruining the world! They don't have the power to do anything of the kind! Most of them are expending every inner resolve they have on just surviving. And some people run the limits of their stength and fall apart.

People shouldn't have to be towering heroes of the Human Spirit just to survive. Most of us aren't. We're just humans, trying to get by. But the only people who can be forgiven for just "being human" are the Right-Wing Mouthpieces who claim to speak for God when it comes to telling the rest of us how to live our lives.

(I dare say that I have gone off topic. Allow me to return.)

Earlier today, I ran water from different faucets in my home and I flushed away unmentionable materials with the simple push of a lever. When my late father was a boy-- living in a major US city-- they still used chamber pots and had to go to publicly-operated facilities to bathe.

Things. Are. Better. Now. . . And things are different-- finding flexibility to meet new challenges makes more sense than trying to turn back the clock to a world none of us can remember with any objectivity anyway.

[MineralMan]

51. Yes, exactly.

Thanks!

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

104. Demonizing the poor is not a recent development

It's existed since time immemorial, and in just about every culture. Even many primitive cultures have looked down on the less fortunate amongst them.

I can point to numerous writings of the classical period (and earlier) where the attitude towards the poor wasn't all that different from now. Cruelty like that has always been with us.

Humans can be terrifying animals.

[Collimator]

139. That's true.

And from what I have read, one of the appeals of the early Christian cult was its compassion and concern for the poor. Of course, we all know how that turned out.

[malaise]

50. A fabulous OP

Rec

[MineralMan]

53. Thank you.

I'm writing fewer OPs these days. I appreciate you reading them, more than you realize.

[malaise]

55. I am just glad you are writing them

You are one of my DU treasures 😀

[MineralMan]

56. And you are one of mine!

[Hekate]

109. You are one of the people I look for

[Marthe48]

52. I didn't write this post

but I could have.

Thank you for taking the time

[MineralMan]

54. Thanks! My pleasure.

[Lanius]

57. Not that long ago

I think it's funny when right-wing conservatives (disingenuously) act like racism is over and we should all stop "whining" about it, yet there are plenty of people alive today who were young adults before and during the Civil Rights era.

ETA: And as someone of color, I've never bought into the "good ol' days" crap because things weren't so "good" for my people before the 1990s.

[MineralMan]

58. Yes. Not that long ago.

Some things have changed. Some have not. The struggle continues.

[CaptainTruth]

61. Coincidentally I was recently thinking about when the "good old days" were in America.

I found myself going all the way back to when most of "America" was the Spanish colony of La Florida & the decades after St Augustine was founded in 1565, when people of various nationalities & skin colors lived together in relative peace, & from what I've read, had good relations with the Native Americans in the area.

Indeed, St Augustine became a haven for escaped slaves, allowing them to live in freedom & serving as a destination for the first "underground railroad." In 1738 Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the first legally sanctioned free community of former slaves, was established.

Florida has changed a lot since then. [Understatement of the century. Or the last few centuries.]

Yes, I know it wasn't perfect, folks of that era experienced a long list of problems we don't have to deal with today, but it seems like things were better in some very significant respects (racism, slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans) before the British took over.

Just some of the random things I think about when I'm trying to fall asleep.

[stuck in the middle]

126. Back in the Good Old Days, ...

…at the height of my wife’s culture, her ancestors were rustling cattle from their former masters, who they had run away from.

As I understand it, every family grouping was allotted one cow a week.

Not to get all nostalgic and all for the 1700s, but…

[Iggo]

62. Just the music.

Twentieth century music was better, and I’ll die on that fucking hill.

[moniss]

69. Amen

[housecat]

76. Absolutely! Good point

[heckles65]

63. Smoking on airplanes

...and in restaurants. Yes, some people see that as The Good Old Days.

Me? I loathe cigarette smoke like I loathe Donald Trump.

[MineralMan]

71. Even encouraged on planes.

I remember getting a free 5-pack of some brand of cigarettes with my hot meal on a Continental airlines flight in 1965. As it happened, that was my very first airline flight, and it was going to San Antonio, Texas where I was about to experience USAF Basic Training.

The free cigarettes on airline flights was a common thing back then.

[intheflow]

116. And metal silverware!

My dad had a full set of American Airlines silverware he took from an international flight in the early '60s that was actually silver-plated! Insane to think about that in this post-9/11 world. (Not to mention to air safety in general. Hit some turbulence, get a fork in your eye.)

[MineralMan]

117. Yeah, I remember that, too.

All through the 1960s. I flew a lot during those years, generally on military standby tickets. Cheap travel.

[twodogsbarking]

64. Vietnam.

[moniss]

70. Korea and

the Dominican Republic. The Berlin blockade

[moniss]

65. I hear you

but I will also say some things today are much worse than the "old days". Customer service in stores for one. People taking a moment of their time to be courteous for another. As an example I see older people with mobility problems struggle to get themselves in through a door while all kinds of people stand around with their thumb up their backside and/or their head glued to that *@%& phone and could give a damn less about another person other than themselves. The same goes when a mom is trying to wrangle 3 kids and bags from the store and get to the car. Could anybody possibly think she might need a hand? Every time I am at the grocery store (the super-mart, uh huh) when it's raining I see elderly ladies who have mobility problems struggle out into the rain to their car with their bags while other people walk along with umbrellas and never do they give a crap enough about what's going on around them to take a couple of minutes to walk alongside that lady with their umbrella while she gets to her car.

Sure there were people like that in the old days too but it is way worse today. I go to the big Kroger store and the "fresh cut" meat department has nobody out front staffing it and no buzzer or button or anything to alert the employees in the back prepping meat that customers are at the meat case and need them to pull and wrap their purchase. This has been brought to their managements attention by dozens of people and the managers just shrug it off. When I worked in grocery and in other retail if you had this attitude about customers you would be fired. Period.

I agree with the things you point to MM but there are things that are way worse today.

[MineralMan]

72. I don't remember people being any more courteous or helpful

back in the 60s. Not at all. Nope.

[moniss]

80. You probably lived in an area different from me.

The same goes for manners and phone etiquette. Way better then and way worse now.

[usaf-vet]

68. Ditto Mineral Man! We are from the same generation. In 1965-1969 I was in US southern states.

USAF boot camp Lackland AFB. Basic medics training Mississippi. Surgical Scrub Training Alabama. Permanent Party Station South Carolina.

On discharge, I head north to home, thinking I had seen the last of "Whites Only." Today, 2023, it is not any better. It is likely worse now.

Home was a three-bedroom house on a dead-end street where Mom and Dad raised six kids. Dad was a Union member who often had a part-time job. When we were in school, Mom had a part-time job. We took a two-week summer vacation camping. In tents and riding in a used station wagon.

The day JFK was shot, I was in fourth-period Algebra class. Which was one of the desks fellow students hid under

I went to college on the GI bill and graduated on the same day with two of my sisters. Think
Mom and Dad were proud that day?

We joked about it and still do to this day. I was the first in our family to have a college degree.

The college handed out degrees based on your major. I have a BS in Biology. My sisters have an Education degree and a Psychology degree—no Anthropology graduates.

Five of us are still married to our first and only spouse. My wife and I will celebrate 53 years this November.

All but one of us have retired.

I am the only one who is actively political. Although I believe five of us are voting Democrats like Mom and Dad.

I am the only male and served in the military, following in my grandfather's and father's footsteps. WW I, WW II, Vietnam.

I cannot believe the state that this country is in. I doubt I will live to see it get better. HOW in the F did we get here?

[MineralMan]

74. I was stationed only briefly at Texas AFBs.

Basic and one technical training base.

Same years as you.

[usaf-vet]

110. I thought we had similar backgrounds.

I thought we had similar backgrounds.

Guessing Huachuca? My daughter was there in the late 1990's

[MineralMan]

115. Nope. Lackland and Goodfellow.

then, it was off to Turkey and then to work in the NSA building. 65-69. I was a Russian linguist. A very rare specialty in the USAF. I had a very interesting enlistment.

[usaf-vet]

120. Wow my daughter and her husband are both at NSA.......now.

[MineralMan]

122. I'll bet that place has changed a lot since 1969.

I can't even imagine, really.

[usaf-vet]

123. I think you are right. I'll bet in your time, a FORMER president didn't take custody of TS docs....

..... claiming he has a right to those documents.

How the hell did we get here?

Thanks for your service and your contributions to DU.

Later MM.

[stuck in the middle]

73. twenty one pilots: Stressed Out [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

?si=TpVq0T1VRL-0vo9c

[intheflow]

75. The problem is that posts that are about one thing affecting young adults today

get subsumed by replies from older DUers about how "back in their day" they put up with so much in ways that aren't directly comparable to what's going on today. In a recent post about dorm room size and student mental health, SO MANY DUers jumped in with what they gladly put up with as young adults. This comes off sounding tone-deaf because it's a different time. No one talked about mental health when Boomers were young? We didn't know what we know about mental health now. Bully for those who survived, I guess the legions that became drug-addicted or committed suicide are just a sidebar to those personal nostalgia posts.

Also, I've never read anyone saying the '50s/'60s/'70s were the good old days (outside of the arts scene). What happens is people post replies talking about their own experiences, not to comment on the post but to make the post about them and their experiences, rather than reflecting on how their experiences are not the norm today, and how mores have changed over the last 50-ish years.

[housecat]

79. Glad you mention the arts scene. Half a century later we're still using mid-cendtury designs for

furniture and furnishings, clothing, graphic design, and even hair styles.

[intheflow]

101. Same goes for music, writing, and cinema/tv.

The hardest rock in the 1960s and '70s is now so mainstreamed it plays in supermarkets.

Many literary authors today credit Harper Lee, Alex Haley, Ray Bradbury, and others for inspiring their writing.
Scholars from many educational disciplines still routinely reference Betty Friedan, Joan Didion, Rachel Carson, Michel Foucault, and Howard Zinn, among many others.

Look no further than the endless reboots, sequels, and prequels of Star Trek and Star Wars to see that popular entertainment is also deeply influenced by mid-20th century America.

[housecat]

135. Absolutely! Good list

[MineralMan]

82. That thread triggered this one.

College dorm rooms have always been, and still are, small. That's simply the fact. That's a challenge now, and it was a challenge then, especially for people with any mental health issues. That's all the old farts were saying. Their dorm rooms were small, too, and they remain small at many colleges and universities.

You're wrong, though, about people talking about mental health then. We talked about it then, too, but there were fewer options available, so people with mental health problems suffered with them. Many dropped out. Some committed suicide. Some self-medicated, then, as now. The realities haven't changed.

It's not nostalgia. It's just the reality of conditions in college dorms. These days, there are options available that were not available when I was in school. That's a good thing. But small dorm rooms remain a reality for many students, particularly freshmen, who are often required to live in the dorms at many colleges and universities.

People tell you how things were, not to change the subject, but to tell you how things were. If they are still that way, that's not surprising, either. Housing and boards were expensive then, and they're expensive now. My freshman year, in 1963/4, the tiny dorm rooms and meal plans cost about $250/month. At that time, that was a bunch of money. Many could not afford that, but they were required to live in the dorms their freshman year anyhow, for some reason. Most moved out after that year and bunked up with several others in apartments for less money.

That's how it was. How it is now, I'm not experiencing, so I'm not certain about it. I do know that the new Freshman class of some of my friends still is required to live in the dorm. Not necessarily a rewarding thing. Some can't do it. Others manage, much like we did.

You're on a discussion forum, where all age groups are present. Trust me, the oldsters are going to write from their experiences, just as the younger members write from their own experiences. It's not personal. It's just reality.

[stuck in the middle]

149. THIS

You're on a discussion forum, where all age groups are present. Trust me, the oldsters are going to write from their experiences, just as the younger members write from their own experiences. It's not personal. It's just reality.

[betsuni]

150. And nobody knew about learning disabilities then.

[MineralMan]

158. Well, they didn't know much about them, anyhow.

[Lars39]

161. At UT Knoxville the freshmen aren't required

to live on campus because there’s not enough dorm rooms. They hold raffles for the rooms.

If you can’t afford or even find off-campus housing to share you are effectively priced out of going to college.

Student loans are limited and go directly to the colleges, not the students, so unless parents are helping somehow that student is not going to college.

Part-time or even full-time jobs can’t fill the gaps either as expensive as tuition and housing has become.

[MineralMan]

163. Yes. Off-campus housing is often out of reach, financially.

Many schools, though, still require freshmen to live in the dorms. Not all, of course, and some might have a room shortage, like UTK. I don't have every school's requirements in my head, I'm afraid.

[twodogsbarking]

77. We can do better. One person at a time. Be kind. Don't be an asshole.

[MineralMan]

84. As always.

[world wide wally]

78. I think that we have such fond memories of the good old days because we were so young

and our parents had to bear all of the responsibilities. The only money kids needed was for a Coke and sometimes maybe a movie or some special event. However, most of our fathers had to fight in a World War to get to that point. There is good and bad in all times, but I don't know that we were as obsessed with money as much way back when. But I could be mistaken about that too.

[housecat]

102. Everything was simpler. There were expectations for behavior and a limited number of alternatives

for family structure and appearances of anything from cars and buildings to fashion and graphics. It was easy to fit in or to avoid fitting in and to stand out against the conformity. Today there are so many choices, our world is more complex than in the past. Nostalgia may be remembrance of a simpler life, but not a better life.

Personally I always had my art and writing to go to when I dropped out of something. Other kids who "dropped out" had music or sports or other positive places to go to for comfort and growth. Maybe today there are so many dropping out with nowhere to go, violence and extreme conformity are all they have to go to.

[leftyladyfrommo]

81. I remember a whole lot of child abd domestic abuse.

Everyone just looked the other way.

[MineralMan]

85. Yes. Often, though, they still do.

Just look the other way.

[tiredtoo]

83. MineralMan

I enjoy your posts and agree with almost everything you post. However this post bothers me somewhat. Personally, I prefer focusing on the positive. I graduated High School in 1959 and for some reason I never had to hide under a desk in fear of A-bombs. My dad was a city firefighter and we always had health insurance. Health insurance which was a non-profit industry at that time, so rates were reasonable.
I did struggle through my teenage years but that was more of a personal thing then any public policy thing.

Just sharing my view. Not meant as an attack. Carry on we all must continue in our fight to maintain a democratic republic government.

[MineralMan]

86. I don't take posts here as attacks.

We all have different experiences. We can learn from the experiences of others, if we want to. Or, we can just ignore them.

[Blue Owl]

88. K&R

[Hekate]

89. TY for the reality check. When I was young, I was optimistic--I miss that about the old days

The energy and optimism of one’s youth can put a rosy tint on the past.

[MineralMan]

91. We all were, pretty much.

You're right. Memories are selective, especially memories that are decades old. Those late teens and early 20s days were fun and exciting, at least for most people. So, naturally we remember them fondly, if not realistically.

Somehow, I became aware of society's ills during that time of my life, and that colored my view significantly, despite good times. Dropping out of college and spending four years in the military helped me gain a more realistic view of things, in general. When I returned to get my degree, my attitudes were very different from those of the 18-year old living in the freshman dorm.

Different folks, different strokes.

[enki23]

90. 3 dollars/hr in 1962 would be 30/hr today.

The value of that house, if it just tracked inflation, would be around 145,000. Good luck finding a decent three bedroom house for that today, especially in the sort of places that would pay $30/hr to an auto mechanic (who, it's not at all unlikely, might have some student loans to pay back).

That's just the start. I know you have some points in there, and the good old days were shit in many, many ways. But whenever people start comparing economics and how bad wages used to be and how they struggled to buy a house, I just want to scream a bit. Some things have gotten better, though the vast majority of that better went to the top. Class mobility, wealth inequality, in particular, has gotten a lot, lot worse. A big part of that decline is due to the fact that housing inflation has far outstripped wage growth since the 1960's.

[Martin Eden]

92. Reactionaries who want America to revert to the "good old days"

Long for the time when "coloreds" and women knew their place, institutional discrimination was prevalent, and gays dare not come out of the closet.

Today's "conservative" politicians hook voters on bigotry and ignorance (cultural fearmongering) while working against the economic interests of their voters. In the first decades after WW2 unions were strong, and the rich paid their fair share of taxes.

Republicans want a future which discards the few good things from that era while embracing the worst.

[MineralMan]

95. Yes, exactly.

[Fiendish Thingy]

94. The best things about the Good Old Days:

40% of workers were unionized, with defined benefit pensions, not 401k’s
91% top marginal tax rate
Wages were high enough that many single income non-college educated (ok, white) families could afford to buy a house.

I’d like to bring those elements back for ALL working families.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

97. Yes, some things back then were worse

But you're off about a couple of things in your post. Like:

Health Care
No available treatment other than surgery for cancer.

Doctors started treating cancer with radiation therapy all the way back in 1903. The techniques were primitive an often caused more harm than good, but, by the late 1940s, they were starting to get a handle on how to use it in less dangerous ways.

In 1956, chemotherapy succeeded in treating those suffering from a rare form of uterine cancer that presented with tumors. By the 1960s, there were several chemo protocols available for a variety of different cancers. By the end of the decade, doctors were using several chemo drugs in assorted combinations to get even better results. That's when things really took off with cancer treatment.

The reason surgery occurred so often back then was because more people waited too long to see a doctor. Or a doctor didn't realize what the patient's symptoms meant, because the continuing education standards were much lower back then. A bunch of doctors simply didn't keep up with the latest developments, because nothing required them to do so. That doesn't happen so much these days.

Whichever the case, by the time it was obvious a patient had cancer, non-invasive treatments had zero chance of working; ergo, surgery as a last resort. But for those patients who went to the doctor early enough (or could afford to go often enough), and who had a doctor up on the latest info, radiation and chemo were increasingly available (and successful) treatments in the late 50s and throughout the 1960s.

Economic Issues
Yeah, houses were cheap compared to today, but the minimum wage was $1.25 when I was sixteen in 1962. That same year, my parents bought a three-bedroom house for $14,500. It was a struggle, since my father, an auto mechanic, earned only just over $3/hr. He worked a lot of overtime.

People were more likely to be able to afford a home in 1962 because the cost of homes was closer to their yearly salaries. Yes, your dad earned just over $3/hr, but a $14,500 home was still well under 2.5 times his annual salary. That's not the case anymore. In many areas, the majority are lucky to find a fixer-upper at 5X their annual salary. Places like California, it's more like 10-20X (or more) the average household income--as in two people working.

We don't even need to get into the student loan issue (although it's had a huge impact on under-35 y/o home ownership), because something else has made it more difficult to afford homes, even for people who have no student loans: Wages have simply not kept up with the cost of living. That minimum wage in 1962? It should be at least $13 today, not $7.25. And your dad's wage? It should be $31/hr today. Do you have any idea how many Americans can only dream of earning that much money? Tens of millions of working Americans make far less than that.

By the way: A house 2.5 times the yearly pay of someone making $31/hr is $161,200. Try finding the intersection between places that pay $31/hr, and decent homes, even fixer-uppers, that cost $161,200. Places where houses cost $161K don't tend to have any jobs paying $31/hr. And places that do pay that high? You're lucky if you can find a home costing 10X your yearly pay.

[MineralMan]

106. All of what you say is true, of course.

Housing costs are way out of whack, for sure, especially when you compare them to household earnings. One difference now, is that most households have two incomes, rather than just one. That has changed dramatically since my childhood days.

It also makes a difference where you are looking at home prices. I live in the Twin Cities metro area. While you can occasionally find a house for sale under $200K, you'll have to do some work on it. That's always been true, of course, for houses on the low end of the market. Sweat equity can be a good thing, but not everyone can do the work. However, if you draw a circle with a 50 mile radius, you can find places to buy around $150K. Depending on what the source of your income is, that can be an option. There are markets in the USA where even $100K can buy a house. Again, what you can earn in those markets has to be a consideration.

When I bought my first house in 1974, what I could pay was well below market price. It took me about three months to find a house I could buy, and it needed a huge amount of work. However, I had the skills to do almost all of that work. So, my new wife and I bought it, and I did that work. Some things I had to learn to do, but that's always possible. In the end, when I sold it, 30 years later, it was long paid for and the difference in home prices there and where I was moving were enough to let me buy the next house for cash, and to have a nest egg to stash away.

My advantage was that both my wife and I were freelancers, so we could live and work anywhere. So, we moved to a place where houses cost less. A choice. We had a choice. Now, living in Minnesota is not as nice as living in a coastal community in California, but we got a house and a nest egg. A trade-off. We traded climate for financial security.

Every person has a set of parameters that control what they can and cannot do. Often, those parameters cannot be changed easily, if at all. It's complicated. Life is complicated. Sometimes, you have to think creatively to find a path that will work.

[Lars39]

99. It's not necessarily gloating...

it’s the reader’s perception that the “old-timer” thinks everything still works that way.
It’s really noticeable when the topic is student loans. People have gaps in their knowledge, or haven’t kept up.

[MineralMan]

112. The student loan thing is complicated.

Had I needed one, I probably would have shifted my plans to a skilled trade. Because of my father's DIY mindset, I had already learned the rudiments of more than one. But, I didn't need a student loan (not available at the time anyhow), so I went ahead and got a degree, after 4 years in the USAF. Did I use that degree? Not really. I ended up doing trade work anyhow, but as a DIY writer for magazines. Nothing I learned as an English major helped with that. Magazine articles are very unlike scholarly papers.

One of the very serious problems I see is that most career paths that lead toward high-paying jobs require a degree these days. Except for the skilled trades, and those really need some training as well, but a community college can usually provide that. Sadly, many other jobs that require degrees don't pay all that well, which complicates matters even more.

So, I don't know what to do about student loans from an individual perspective. I wish we could go back to taxpayer supported state colleges nationwide. That, at least, lowers the costs to some degree. I doubt that's going to happen, though. We've forgotten what that was like, I'm afraid.

[intheflow]

152. Housing/mortgage costs, too.

Older DUers love to talk about the sacrifices they made to buy their first home at some nutty high interest rate while never acknowledging the considerable difference in interest paid on a $50k house at 8% and a $350,000k home now, even as it’s the same house and 50 years older. Tone-deaf is putting it kindly.

[betsuni]

118. K&R

[TexasBushwhacker]

124. And about that GI Bill

It was administered by the states, so if you were a white male, it was available in all 50 states. If you weren't white or were female and lived Alabama, for example, you were SOL. The idea that it was available to ALL veterans is a myth

[MineralMan]

127. I don't know about the details of that.

I went back to school in 1970, in California. I filled out a couple of forms, provided my DD Form 214 and got a check for $256 every month while I was back in school from the US Treasury. I don't remember the state being involved in any way. That and another $100 a month was just enough. I did earn a bit with a couple of side hustles at the time.

As for the details, I paid no attention to those. So, you might possibly be right, but I never heard of any such limitations while I was getting it.

Can you point me to some information online about that?

[TexasBushwhacker]

143. Scroll down to "The GI Bill and discrimination"

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/gi-bill

"Although the GI Bill extended benefits to all veterans regardless of gender or race, it was easier for some people to collect than others. In many cases, benefits were administered by an all-white Veterans Administration at the state and local level.

In an era of rampant racial and gender discrimination, African Americans and women struggled to receive higher education or loans. In some southern states, they were steered to menial jobs instead of college."

[MineralMan]

159. Ah. OK, the WWII GI Bill...

That wasn't what I used to go back to school, so I don't think the same discrimination was in effect in 1970. There have been a few iterations of the GI Bill. Each was different from the original one.

[Fla Dem]

128. I started work late 1965 just out of high school.

I was an entry level clerical worker for a major life insurance company in one of their regional home offices. Worked 37.5 hrs per week and my starting salary was $57.50 per week, so about $1.50 per hour. Had good benefits though. Got a 6 month raise for 2 years and then annual salary raise after that. Got an hour for lunch in their free cafeteria. Later years you had to pay. Got health care insurance and life insurance. One weeks paid vacation the 1st year then 2 weeks with 5 paid sick days. But, most supervisors and all the managers and upper level management/execs were male.

A couple of years after I started there was a union movement in the big cities to increase salary and benefits for non-management workers. They were targeting the several big insurance companies who had regional or corporate home offices in the cities. I think the movement was nationwide in major cities, but at the time I was only aware of what was happening locally.

The company I worked for increased the salary levels for each clerical position within the year. They made no bones about wanting to do it to avoid the clerical staff becoming unionized.

Within a short period of time, Gloria Steinem and her woman's movement became very influential in getting major companies to start advancing women into executive and managerial positions. I remember how excited we were when the 1st female was promoted to an Assistant Manager's position.

I lived at home and commuted by train and subway each day to work. But I was able to buy a brand new 1968 Ford Mustang (Lime Gold) for about $2000 after only 3 years of work on a clerical salary.

I was fortunate. I started at a major corporation in a major city just when there was a movement to improve working conditions for all non-management employees, increase pay and include women in managerial positions.

I'm sure others struggled in low paying jobs My parents couldn't put me through college because they were already putting my older brother through. My Dad was working 2 jobs to support a family of 6. He would get home from his day job just long enough to have some dinner and then go to his night job 3 days a week, sometimes 4. I actually paid my Mom and Dad rent; $25 a month and when my salary went up my rent would go up a couple of dollars a week. We lived in a house I loved, which would now probably be called a bungalow. One Bath 3 bedrooms. The bedroom I shared with my sister, barely had room for 2 bunk beds.

I do think there were situations where life was easier (not for minorities) for middle class Americans in the 60's, just as now there are middle class families doing well, just look at the airports and families headed for Disney World/Land, the Carribean and European vacations, or flying cross country to visit family or go to the Grand Canyon. I'm happy for them to be able to do that. There will always be disparities between the comfortable middle class and the struggling middle class.

[andym]

132. The downside of nostalgia: Keep in mind that the middle-aged then longed for earlier good old days

which in reality were even worse.

Norman Lear's created Archie Bunker to represent some of the worst of conservative thinking from that era-- but Bunker is a guidepost to today's conservatives.

The theme to "All In The Family" says it all--"Mister we can use a man like Herbert Hoover again." Imagine what viewers who largely blamed Hoover for not doing enough to forestall the Great Depression, thought of Bunker's conservative nostalgia.

[Grins]

134. Google to find Eliz. Warren's talk at Cal-Berkeley!

When she was still at Harvard.
Topic was the good old days, and - What the hell happened????

Found it by chance. Hour long.
Decided to watch 5 mins then get back to work.
After 5 mins, “I’ll give it another 5…”
Repeat, Repeat, repeat…
Until the hour was up!

Closing note: I had a college loan in 1968. Local bank but loan guaranteed by Feds if I defaulted.
Had to start paying back a year after graduation.
But I went into the Army so it was 3-years later.
It was still hard to pay off.

[NotVeryImportant]

136. Well said, OP.

Well said.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

138. Make America Great Again is a plea to restore racism and bigotry

[struggle4progress]

140. Wasn't that a time

[bluestarone]

141. TY MM.

Always enjoy your posts. We are almost same age group. I worked part time in 63 (16 years old) 75 cents hr. but was also getting some training. I guess we compare prices of items then vs now, making it sound like the good o days. Hell candy bars were 4 times the size and cost 5 cents. I guess those are the things we remember. Anyway MM, nice to read your posts here! You ARE one of our best! TY

[MineralMan]

142. Thanks.

I'll keep trying.

[Buttoneer]

144. ..."they were terrible" book

From my sociology class circa 1980

[LudwigPastorius]

145. OK, Boomer.

(That's a joke. I'm one myself.)

[Joinfortmill]

155. I'm about the same age and....

My experience was a bit different. I grew up in a small N.E. city. I was raised by a divorced mom who received no child support. She worked as a waitress and we had a cute small apartment. I had my own bedroom and went to Catholic school the first 3 grades. No car, but it didn't matter because buses ran everywhere. We could afford to see a doctor. I belonged to the Brownies. I never went hungry (my grandfather had a garden but that was just supplemental veges). I always had clothes and my mom had a t.v. We were poor, but I didn't know it. When my mom remarried, I was nine. We moved to a townhouse and my new dad had a Ford sedan. Those were about the only differences.
My take is working class folks could live a decent life in this country until Reagan. (I'll spare you my own tale).After Reagan it got much harder.
The social ills are a completely different matter. In that respect, it was much worse.

[Elessar Zappa]

170. Working class WHITE folks did better before Reagan.

Minorities for the most part didn’t see any of that prosperity that white folks were experiencing.

[Joinfortmill]

173. Point taken

[jaxexpat]

162. That's what I thought, too. Though, I must say,

I believe the rewards of hard work were more readily harvested in the 50s-70s than these days. That may be the result of an institutional cynicism that I don't remember back then. Perhaps we've seen a lot of 'bad-faith but profitable' dealings from the 1%.

BTW, great to see you're still among the posters here.