Children of “The Greatest Generation” A Short Memoir

[John Schmidt]

Born in the 1930s and early 40s, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the Silent Generation. We are the smallest number of children born since the early 1900s. We are the “last ones.”
 
We are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
 
We are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans. We hand mixed white stuff with yellow stuff to make fake butter(oleo).

We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available. We can remember milk being delivered to our house early in the morning and placed in the milk box on the porch. [A friend’s mother delivered milk in a horse-drawn cart.]
 
We are the last to hear Roosevelt's radio assurances and to see gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors.

We can also remember the parades on August 15, 1945, VJ Day.

We saw the “boys” home from the war build their Cape Cod style houses, pouring the cellar, tar papering it over and living there until they could afford the time and money to build it out.
 
We are the last generation who spent childhood without television. Instead we imagined what we heard on the radio. As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood “playing outside until the street lights came on.”
 
We did play outside and we did play on our own. There was no Little League. There was no city playground for kids. To play in the water, we turned the fire hydrants on and ran through the spray.
 
The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like. Our Saturday afternoons, if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the Holocaust sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.
 
Telephones were one to a house, often shared and hung on the wall. Computer were called calculators and were hand cranked. Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon.

The Internet and Google were words that didn’t exist. Newspapers and magazines were written for adults. We are the last group who had to find out for ourselves.
 
As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth. The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow. VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent-up demand coupled with new installment payment plans put factories to work.
 
New highways would bring jobs and mobility. The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics. In the late 40s and early 50s the country seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order as it gave birth to its new middle class (which became known as Baby Boomers).
 
The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands of stations. The telephone started to become a common method of communications and "Faxes" sent hard copy around the world.
 
Our parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
 
We weren't neglected but we weren't today's all-consuming family focus. They were glad we played by ourselves “until the street lights came on.’” They were busy discovering the post war world.
 
Most of us had no life plan, but with the unexpected virtue of ignorance and an economic rising tide we simply stepped into the world and started to find out what the world was about. We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity, a world where we were welcomed. Based on our naïve belief that there was more where this came from, we shaped life as we went.
 
We enjoyed a luxury. We felt secure in our future. Of course, just as today, not all Americans shared in this experience. Depression poverty was deep rooted. Polio was still a crippler.

The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 50s, and by mid-decade, school children were ducking under desks. Russia built the Iron Curtain and China became Red China. Eisenhower sent the first “advisors” to Vietnam, and years later, Johnson invented a war there.

Castro set up camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.
 
We are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no existential threats to our homeland. We came of age in the 40s and early 50s. The war was over and the Cold War, terrorism, Martin Luther King, civil rights, technological upheaval, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with insistent unease.
 
Only our generation can remember both a time of apocalyptic war and 
a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. We have lived through both.
 
We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better, not worse.
 
We are the Silent Generation, “the last ones.”
 
The last of us was born in 1942, more than 99.9% of us are either retired or dead, and all of us believe we grew up in the best of times!

Author unknown.

[solo1]

And that, John, is what makes it so hard for me to understand why our country is now led by a bunch of dishonest fools.
I look back at true leaders like Ike, Truman, etc and I can't believe that our choices of a POTUS boils down to a ambitious, phony, deliberate liar and a egotist who can't control his mouth.

[_Sheffjs_]

I soon will be 55 and from even a young age I have always been jealous of those who were blessed to grow up in the late 40s and anytime in the 50's. What a time it must have been. 

[art]

I'm pretty close born the first day of 43. Remember nothing of the war but heard about it. I had the crap scared out of me seeing a few fighter planes practicing dive bombing near Boston somewhere.I thought I was going to get bombed. The Korean war hit home . My uncle was injured there in 53. He came home after losing one leg diving into a foxhole avoiding a grenade. I do remember the cars of the 50s and the motorcycles. I had cars from the 40s and 50s. Tv? no such thing until I was around 8-10 years old. We used to sit around the floor listening to the Lone Ranger ,Amos an Andy, The Shadow an others.It was a great time to grow up.

[John Schmidt]

And that, John, is what makes it so hard for me to understand why our country is now led by a bunch of dishonest fools.
I look back at true leaders like Ike, Truman, etc and I can't believe that our choices of a POTUS boils down to a ambitious, phony, deliberate liar and a egotist who can't control his mouth.

Wayne, I agree. I recently rec'd. a letter from an old HS friend and toward the end of it our current political scene came up. They stated something re. an old statement; "the fate of mankind is in the hands of fools."  One could interject "our nation" in place of "mankind" and it would still be apropos. 

Both of us wished we could go back to those easier times. I'd gladly give up the technological advances for an easier lifestyle. 

[bigguy]

I was born in 1956, so I'm not in that generation. However. I'm an army brat and lived on base in Germany for four years in the early 60's.
We didn't have TV on base so I grew up with Saturday morning serials. (Gene Autry and the lost city, Radar men from the moon.) We also listened to radio serials played over the base radio station. (The lone Ranger, Orphan Annie.)
We played outside until dark. There would be a hundred kids from different buildings, playing war. Some times the battle would go on for days with both sides claiming to be the Americans.
The flag would come down at 5:00 and Taps would play over loud speakers. Where ever you were, you'd stop, face the direction of the flag, and put your hand over your heart.
We were a hundred miles south of the Fulda gap during the heart of the cold war, but I don't think I've ever felt safer. I was surrounded by the men who would protect our country and most of the ones I knew inspired respect and confidence.
People who did not have the opportunity to grow up in such an environment – one where we knew right from wrong, who the bad guys were, and were committed to protecting our loved ones, country, and values – have missed out on something wonderful.
I miss those days of security and contentment. I thought that country would last forever. I could never have imagined what it has morphed into.
I don't think we'll be here much longer. Never in the recorded history of the world has a country that doesn't value it's identity survived for long. The number of people willing to fight and potentially die for those values is diminishing daily.

[solo1]

John, I grew up in Ft. Wayne.  I do remember in 1949 I lived in a nice quiet tree lined neighborhood in the SE part.  Things were looking up. I managed to buy a 1946 Matchless from a widow who let me pay off the bike in easy installments.  My folks still didn't work but it was an easier time than during the Great Depression.

As you know, John, I like to write stories for my memories and for the pleasures of others.  The following true story is about those better times.  The neighborhood of which I speak is now 100% black and it no longer is safe even to see if the building that housed 'Todds Place' is still there, probably not.
That is spoken without racial overtones, just the fact as Jack Webb used to say.

So here is the story, for both of us to remember better times.

Wayne


                                                         The Good Ole Days

I  pointed the Matchless down the alley. It was the end of another ‘plonking’ and the ‘sweet smell of summer’ day..  I stopped the Flying M in front of Mr. Clarks old ramshackle garage,  I leaned the bike on its sidestand making sure it wouldn’t roll forward as the sidestand was spring loaded and the slightest twitch would let the spring pull the stand up with the resulting bike on its side and a  dumb sh** exclamation.

I opened one side of the double doors, got back on the bike, rode it inside, and with one last  satisfied whiff of the newly cleaned gunk enhanced engine, I reluctantly pulled the compression release to quiet the Matchless for the day.  It was a very pleasant ride but at the end of the day, I felt perhaps a little more pleasantness would be very helpful.. Hastily, I closed the door of the garage and set off down the alley.  It was a short walk to the neighborhood tavern.

A few minutes later I opened the door of “Todds Place” and walked in.. Todds Place had the old fashioned sights and smells of  taverns of that 1940’s era. The smell of stale beer mixed with the somewhat musty odor of an old basement.  No air conditioning just dim lights, and quiet conversation, no juke box playing, no loud talk.  It was  a relaxing place to enjoy one or more cool ones.

I  sat down on one of the stools at the bar.  The bar was solid walnut, marred by dents caused by thousands of beer glasses banging down as their owners made a point during their conversations.  The brass rail under my feet was polished from years of supporting shoes and feet after a hard day's work.

The planked floor trembled as Jerry Helmsing, a really big guy and the owner, came ambling over to take my order. It might’ve been Todds Place but Jerry was the owner. Todds Place was sorta like ‘Duffy’s Tavern’ in that Duffy never was there…..You know “Duffy’s Tavern,  This is Archie, Duffy ain’t here”  I never found out why it was called Todds Place.

I gave Jerry my usual order;  A Carlings Black Label and a braunschweiger on rye with extra mustard.   In no time Jerry brought me the sandwich and an ice cold Carlings.  Mabel would’ve been proud!  Jerry wiped his hands on his tent size apron, we talked a little about riding, and then he went on to other customers.

I could feel myself relaxing even more as I wrapped myself around that simple but good sandwich and drank the Black Label.  Ordering another beer, I almost was lulled to sleep by the totally relaxed and siesta like ‘easy does it’ quietness of “Todds Place’

Time to go, I paid the tab, got up and walked the short block to Mom and Dads house with the full intention of doing this again. Ride first, Todds Place second!

And so I did.  Fond memories of days long gone.

[solo1]

I miss those days of security and contentment. I thought that country would last forever. I could never have imagined what it has morphed into.  QUOTE by Big Guy

I agree 100%.  I, too, could've never visualized how one POTUS, helped by a Do Nothing Congress and uncaring citizens, have plunged our country into a dark place.

Wayne