Happy to Grow Up In the 50s and 60s

SeaBreeze

SeaBreeze

Endlessly Groovin'
Location
USA
Seeing how things are today, and how they've been in the past I'm happy to have grown up in the 1950s and 1960s...couldn't pick a better time IMO. How about you, do you feel the same?
 

SeaBreeze, I feel exactly the same as you ! Life was so different, so safe, and uncomplicated in the 50s.
I used to go across town with my friends, when I was the age to go trick or treating , and we never worried about being harmed, or getting anything unsafe in our bags.
I loved it when I got a homemade cookie, which we usually had to sing a song to receive from a little Grandma-type lady.

When I was in Jr. High, I joined the local rifle range, and we learned to shoot an old military style 22, going through the shooting levels as we became better shooters. We started with prone, then sitting, kneeling, and finally standing positions, and received awards as we progressed through to our sharpshooter status.
All families pretty much had a gun in the closet, but it was used for deer hunting, no one really needed one for protection.
There was no such thing as someone going crazy and shooting up innocent people.

We could go to a restaurant and order a Porterhouse steak rare, if you liked it that way, and no one ever got sick from it. We ate healthy foods, and there was not much heart disease, and cancer was an uncommon sickness.
Gas was around 17cents a gallon, crabs and chicken were 25 cents a lb, and milk still came with cream on top.
French fries were made from a real whole potato, and curly-q fries were the greatest.

Kids actually went outside and played after school, and we played kick the can, and cowboys & Indians , and used our Roy Rogers cap guns, and Red Ryder rifles .
We put the Mickey Mantle baseball cards in our bicycle spokes..... Who even dreamed they would become a valuable collectors item ?
Yes, life growing up in the 50s was a wonderful experience, and I am glad I am a Baby Boomer.
 
Happyflowerlady said:
SeaBreeze, I feel exactly the same as you ! Life was so different, so safe, and uncomplicated in the 50s.
Yes, life growing up in the 50s was a wonderful experience, and I am glad I am a Baby Boomer.
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:iagree:...if I passed on tonight, I'd be grateful to have lived the humble life I've lived as a 'boomer'...it's all good, wouldn't have it any other way! :sentimental:
 

Oh yes SB. I sometimes wonder if we 'baby boomers' haven't been the luckiest generation ever to have been born because of our 'timing.'

We've seen the best of the old, enjoyed the 'natural' life as lived by our grandparents and that gave us the comparison to be able to appreciate the improvements. And we have seen the best views of the planet before they built the car parks.

Our parents experienced the fastest advances ever made in human history, from buggy to moon lander. We though were spared the buggies.:)


We've watched technology and medical science make life steadily better and a whole lot more interesting throughout our lives. How many other generations found their lives and circumstances continually improving as they aged?
How much harder was it to be aged and infirm a Century ago?
We've lived in a reasonably secure environment, after the World Wars and the fear and deprivations that went with them. And so far dodged the threat of the next big one.

But further than that, I wouldn't want to be just starting out either. While I enjoy the technology, and it's 'toys', I can't, hard as I try, see the future appealing to my more simple earthy tastes.
I'm saddened to see the wild places tamed. Disappointed for the young who take things that were wonderful to me for granted and treat them as ordinary.
They won't be disappointed though of course as they too will grow and adapt to whatever the future brings. But personally, no, I don't want to go there.

I penned a ditty for my tombstone once in a cheesed off mood at what was happening to 'my' World and kind of 'flicking the bird' at future generations.

I've seen the Earth when it was green,
when air was clear, and Oceans clean.
The best of food, and times and friends,
but life and good things have their ends.
It isn't sad that I am dead,
I've won life's game, and am well ahead.
 
You've expressed my thoughts too Di.
It's been quite wonderful overall.
It's wonderful still.

(That's Pollyanna talking, of course, but I agree with her entirely)

 
Mmmm thinking of growing up in the 50's and 60's is just a reminder to me that I am getting older and I also have less sleep than I did back then.:notfair:
 
Lucky them. :(
Sorry Gdad, I was never a fan of his at all. Nor Elvis for that matter. Liked Rock and Roll but didn't have any 'idols'.
The Rolling Stones were the only band I'd have bothered going to a concert to see. Still are.
 
It was really the 40's and 50' I grew up in and overlapping into the 60's, rock 'n' roll was my favourite music when it first made an appearance and I still enjoy it to this day.:)
 
It was a great time to grow up. I look back and wonder why it seemed to go by so fast. I was alone a lot of the time, but still could entertain myself for hours building model airplanes, listening to radio, hiking, exploring caves and empty barns, getting butted by grandpas mean old goat, and hundreds of other things I enjoyed. (Not so much the butting to the rear by Bachlor Button.) stupid goat.

here's a couple oldies. Circa 1948-1950. Me on bike and buddy Terry on an Easter Sunday. Quality is not to good.
 
Not to be a kill-joy - okay, I AM a kill-joy :playful: - but maybe the reason we think we grew up in the best of times is because we don't know - we can't know - any other.

Our personal pasts are almost always seen through rose-tinted glasses. Yes, growing up in the '60's was magical for me, looking back at it, but I suppose it's because I was unspoiled by the world at that point. I had no responsibilities except going to school, eating and excreting wastes, and through being severely chastised eventually learned not to try doing all three at once.

I often wonder, now, what it would have been like to grow up in different times. Victorian London, ancient Rome, even the American Wild West of the 1800's. Would I have looked back in my senior years and thought that I had lived the most wonderful of all possible lives?

Probably, because I wouldn't have known any other.

Not to blow any minds, but metaphysically speaking had I been born in any other time I wouldn't be who and what I am now. I can only know what appears to be perfect for myself as I am right this moment - any other alternate timeline would have produced a totally different person with a very different idea of what constituted a wonderful life ...
 
The fifties were those days when we played outside all day and didn't have to wear helmets . . .

I enjoyed the best and the worst of the sixties. It was truly a time of major cultural changes world wide.
 
Ozarkgal said:
Phil:


Yea, Yea, Yea....keep out of my fantasy world..:playful:
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*sigh* Now I know how lonely it can be when you're above-average in intelligence ...

As Sherlock Holmes once said, "I wonder what it's like in that little world of yours?" :p;)

Oops, gotta go - the unicorns are hungry, haven't had their Skittles yet!
 
Quote from Charles Dickens...A Tale of Two Cities


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

I think this could apply to any era that people grow up in.
 

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