thebigp

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
Confucius


99% of people born between 1930 and 1946 (GLOBALLY) are now dead.

If you were born in this time span, your ages range between 77 and 93 years old (a 16-year age span) and you are one of the rare surviving one-percenters.

You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900's.

You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.

You are the last to remember ration books for everything from tea to sugar to shoes. You saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into cans.

You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" at the front door. Discipline was enforced by parents and teachers. You are the last generation who spent childhood without television and instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio.

With no TV, you spent your childhood "playing outside". There was no city playground for kids. The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.

We got “black-and-white” TV in the late 50s that had 3 stations and no remote.

Telephones (if you had one) were one to a house and hung on the wall in the kitchen (who cares about privacy). Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked. Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon. INTERNET and GOOGLE were words that did not exist.

Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and your dad would give you the comic pages after he read the news. The news was broadcast on your radio in the evening. The radio network gradually expanded from 3 stations to thousands.

New highways would bring jobs and mobility. Most highways were 2 lanes and there were no Motorways. You went downtown to shop. You walked to school.

Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into working hard to make a living for their families.

You weren't neglected, but you weren't today's all-consuming family focus. They were glad you played by yourselves. They were busy discovering the postwar world. You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves. You felt secure in your future, although the depression and poverty were deeply remembered.

Polio was still a crippler. Everyone knew someone who had it.

You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our country. World War 2 was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life. Only your generation can remember a time after WW2 when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better.

More than 99% of you are retired now, and you should feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!" If you have already reached the age of 77 years old, you have outlived 99% of all the other people on this planet. We are a 1% 'er!
-

saltwind 78 Loc: Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

Big T, I am now seventy nine years old, and remember much of your posts. My earliest memory was looking across Queens Blvd, in Queens, NY, and seeing the Quonset huts where the vets coming back from WW11 lived. It wasn't the greatest of times growing up. We all lived in fear of communism, and a nuclear war. There was no such thing as home computers, cell phones, or color tvs. Our first television was a 6 inch black and white, and only had a few channels. It stopped broadcasting around 11: 0 clock. TV antennas topped every house.
There were no mass shootings, or a federal highway system. I remember we all had much less material things, but somehow were happier. After the war, I remember all the cars were black.

LogicallyRight Loc: Chicago

The one war thing I remembered was my dad reading in the paper that 100 war planes would fly over Chicago at noon that day. I was 5 or 6, Around noon I heard a roar, ran inside and saw it was noon. Ran back out and saw 100 planes heading over Lake Michigan for the war in Europe.

Yes we played outside, in whatever place we could find. I kissed my first girl about then. I walked to school. I remember the Victory Gardens and wandering over and stealing a carrot and eating it right there. Fresh out of the ground.

83 now. Just last night I was complaining after a run, about my lack of ability to keep up with my friends. Still did four miles, mostly jogging. My friend reminded me that I'm 83. Well we just read where I out survived 99% of the people I was born with. I still dream of getting in shape enough to run a marathon. How many are in walkers, and wheel chairs? How many are in nursing homes? Remember, we can all get in a little better shape and keep on living.

Snoopy

Big:

I am one of the 1% at 91! I lived ALL of those Good Things . . . Great home life, freedom & respect! And recovery! And the BAD . . . The fear of war, rationing uncles who never came back!

Snoopy

Snoopy

Saltwind:

I was born in Maspeth, Queens in 1932. Barely remember the Quonset huts along Horace Harding Blvd. Later, remembered the big Howard Johnson’s on Queens Blvd., my first dining-out experience!

Dnoopy