slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Got the following from our own BadBobby...will be 95 the 30th of this month

Special Group / Born Between 1926 - 1946. Today, they range in ages

76 to 95. Are you or do you know someone "still here"?

Interesting Facts:

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

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 which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.

You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.

You saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.

You saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available.

You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" on the porch.

You are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.

You saw the 'boys' home from the war, build their little houses.

You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you imagined what you heard on the radio.

With no TV until the '50s, you spent your childhood "playing outside".

There was no little league.

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.

On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave you newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.

Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines) and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no 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 the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening

As you grew up, the country was exploding with growth.

The government gave returning Veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.

Loans fanned a housing boom.

Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans opened many factories for work.

New highways would bring jobs and mobility.

The Veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.

The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.

Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.

You weren't neglected, but you weren't today's all-consuming family focus

They were glad you played by yourselves until the street lights came on.

They were busy discovering the post-war world.

You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves and felt secure in your future though depression poverty was deeply remembered.

Polio was still a crippler.

You came of age in the 50s and 60s.

You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.

The second world war was over and the cold war, terrorism, g****l w*****g, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.

Only your generation can remember both a time of great war, and a time 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.

You are "The Last Ones." More than 99 % of you are either retired or deceased, and you feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!"

saltwind 78 Loc: Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

I was born in 1944. I'm 76 and remember some of what you write, but certainly not all. I always thought of myself as a baby boomer. My earliest memory is looking across Queens Blvd. in Queens, NYC, and seeing the Quonset huts that were the temporary homes of the guys coming home from World War 2.

vernon

how true.I can remember when way back i was laying on the floor and my daddy was looking at the paper .the head lines were JAPS BOMB PEARL HARBOR .

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Vernon, I thought of you when I first read this thread by BB on The Fishing Stage.

Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

I remember when there were no TV sets in my town. When a neighbor put up a tall antennae us kids watched it believing that TV would come out of the sky like at the Drive in. The first TV I saw belonged to that man and he invited everyone in the neighborhood to come see the enormous box with a tiny screen that he showed off while beaming with p***e.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

I have similar memories and suspect many of us do.

Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

When we were kids we made a lot of our own toys. We loved sling shots and high powered rubber band rifles. We would go to a filling station and ask for old inner tubes to make our rubber bands with. If we scored a red rubber tube we had Gold. The red ones were much more stretchy and were very much sought after.

Snoopy

Hi Saltwind:

I was born in 1932, at home, in Maspeth, Queens. I remember those Quonset huts, on Horace Harding Blvd, before the LIE. We still have samples of ration stamps, red for meat, blue for gasoline, I think. I remember eating “mystery meat” brought to us by an old upstate relative. My friends & I felt fearful and at first didn’t understand what being at war meant.

Snoopy

Oldsailor65 Loc: Iowa

I was born in 44 and sadly believe that people my age have experienced this country at it's greatest. Sadly my daughter and beautiful grand daughter will not experience this country as great as it was.