How Do You Explain the 'Good Old Days' to the Kids? [Archive] - Marine Corps

LivinSoFree

07-01-05, 06:55 PM

Funny... everyone remembers "the good old days." No one stops and really thinks that maybe the "good old days" weren't really that good at all?

If you went to a bathroom, water fountain, bus, or any other public facility, you first had to decide between "white" and "colored." Don't even think about trying to have friends outside your race or especially about trying to date someone of a different hue.

Medical care was, by our standards today, medieval in comparison. How many polio victims exist in the United States today?

HUAC might knock on your door one day and ruin your life, if you became politically inconvenient or spoke too loudly in support of something that didn't flow with the American ideal of "mom and apple pie."

Everyone smoked. Even the doctors. No one really wondered if it was bad for you, until they all got lung cancer and died, decades later.

Spousal abuse rarely went reported, because it was considered "private buisness" within the family, and "none of our affair," to the neighbors who might've heard it or seen the bruises the next day.

The awareness of the surrounding world was limited to what you could get from one or two newspapers and the clips they showed before a movie... the idea of true geopolitical awareness, or even a basic appreciation for the wonders of this world we live in was a foreign thought to many, and college was "for rich folk."

I could go on, maybe I'm just a young guy waiting to get his comeuppance, but it seems to me that "the good old days" weren't so great as everyone seems to think they were.

Joseph P Carey

07-01-05, 11:30 PM

Originally posted by LivinSoFree
Funny... everyone remembers "the good old days." No one stops and really thinks that maybe the "good old days" weren't really that good at all?

If you went to a bathroom, water fountain, bus, or any other public facility, you first had to decide between "white" and "colored." Don't even think about trying to have friends outside your race or especially about trying to date someone of a different hue.

Medical care was, by our standards today, medieval in comparison. How many polio victims exist in the United States today?

HUAC might knock on your door one day and ruin your life, if you became politically inconvenient or spoke too loudly in support of something that didn't flow with the American ideal of "mom and apple pie."

Everyone smoked. Even the doctors. No one really wondered if it was bad for you, until they all got lung cancer and died, decades later.

Spousal abuse rarely went reported, because it was considered "private buisness" within the family, and "none of our affair," to the neighbors who might've heard it or seen the bruises the next day.

The awareness of the surrounding world was limited to what you could get from one or two newspapers and the clips they showed before a movie... the idea of true geopolitical awareness, or even a basic appreciation for the wonders of this world we live in was a foreign thought to many, and college was "for rich folk."

I could go on, maybe I'm just a young guy waiting to get his comeuppance, but it seems to me that "the good old days" weren't so great as everyone seems to think they were.

Sometime, even the paranoid is aware that people are really out to get him.

I don't know where you read this stuff junior, but I think you should know there were no secret police that hunted you down, if you did not agree with the government. As best I could tell, they only hunted you if you were for the government.

The Colored and white drinking fountains were a small area of the country, and many people just did not care who used the fountains. I grew up in the South! You must be reading Abby Hoffman's version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin!' Believe it or not we were integrated in the 50's and the 60's, and the places that fought integration the most were in the Blue States of Mass and NY. Welcome to the real world.

The House Unamerican Activities under McCarthy did not last that long, besides we were involved in a war with Communism at the time that lasted up to the fall of the Liberal Guiding Light in the USSR. Hell! The Liberal oppression by the minorities in this country has lasted longer than that. The well known 'feel guilty about everything' era it will be called. In truth, try listening to Bill Cosby sometimes, and forget Fonda, Kerry, Sharpton and others. Mr Cosby seems to have it right, and he is talking about it! He is trying to create a change in the way people think of themselves and their communities without the all inspired finger pointing and guilt trip Liberals.

I find it funny that people are telling us what horrible medical care system we had back then, when the basic thing was that we could afford it back then, and as the children of the Depression, who ate mush three times a day, and all of those greasy foods, and things like potatoes and Bacon and eggs, are living into their hundreds. It wasn't modern medicine that did this for them, because many can not afford it. It is the progression of time that did it and the bodies antibodies that are handed down from generations that are doing it.

If I remember most drugs will kill you eventually. Smoking was not the invention of my father, or even his father. Tobacco was a cash crop that kept the South alive for many a year before my generation even existed.

As far as spousal abuse goes, there was never a great deal of it. I saw recently on a TV news show where there were many folks taking their second vows as a married couple after 60 years of marriage. My parents were married for 54 years before my Dad died! As far as spousal abuse, the neighbors usually took care of things in their own way back then. A person's reputation was worth much more in those times. Who do you know that has lived together as a couple for any period of time today? Again, you slip back to your Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by the likes of Abby Hoffman and others. All the things that were not the norm, but portrayed as such.

As far as college went, it was not needed back then. The former head of Chrysler was an immigrant that never went to College, Lee Iaccoca, and he didn't find his way into jail the way the College crowd are doing today.

We all knew where every country was on the map of the world when I was a child. Today they don't even know what the names of the States in the Union are. The educational level has gone down so far that children can not make change without a calculator. They can not even break down a sentence, and as far as spelling goes and literacy, the numbers are terrible. In my school we had to answer questions in a formal essay answer on Term and weekly examination. There were no multiple choice questions. And, teachers had to know how to teach their subjects back then, or they were fired. That has long since said goodbye to the school systems of today. Our high School graduates were better than the College Grads of today.

So, before you start getting your information from the wrong source, you had better do a little background first. Today is not the greatest of times, not even close!