if i had to chose between the way we grew up in the late 1940s and early 50s and the way kids are today..i would stick with the old way. It was not perfect...parents did not play with us,the conversation with adults was all one way..the did not care about our point of view. But we were kids..we had our own society away from the adults...we made a lot of noise yelling and laughing and arguments that never lasted long. We travelled for miles on the Nassau/Queens border...the adults did not have a clue what we did as long as we heard the whistle at supper time. Each father had his unique whistle sound and it was not debatable. You knew everyone in the neighborhood of every age...and if they were old crabs they paid the price from us merciless kids. Yup tings are different today !
In the neighborhood I used to live in (last 30 yrs), the kids had many activities outside the home like- dance lessons, swimming, sports, going to pool, etc. The parents were always taking them somewhere since nothing was in walking distance.
Now, when I was growing up my Dad was in the army so we were lived a lot of different places, went mostly to military run schools (few disciplines problems) so more unique experience. We were on Okinawa from 70 to 74 so I missed a lot of the social change during that time. I felt like an outsider when we returned.
I went to military schools for three years. Bomb threats, devices of some kind exploded in the hallways, kids in trouble all the time. My experience in military schools was quite the opposite of yours, Angore. Just shows how our microcosmic experiences do not necessarily reflect the reality that others experience.
In my neighborhood, there are a ton of kids of all ages. The majority of the time, I never see them when I happen to take a walk around the various blocks.
"We were on Okinawa from 70 to 74 so I missed a lot of the social change during that time. "
I had the reciprocal experience. I was in Berkeley from 70-75 and, then, found my self visiting Andersen AFB (Guam), thinking "this is like the 60s never happened".
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"I collect stamps today precisely the way I collected stamps when I was ten years old."
"We were on Okinawa from 70 to 74 so I missed a lot of the social change during that time. I felt like an outsider when we returned."
I understand that feeling! My father was a US Army officer and we lived abroad. He had mostly non-US assignments through the 1960s. We were in Germany from 1969-1972 so we only saw what was happening in the USA through newspapers and what we saw on the one US TV station.
My parents thought that all American schools were full of hippies, free love, drugs and violence, so when we landed back in the USA in 1972, I was in my freshman year of high school and they put me in a private Catholic school.
Here is where we went. Now, Dad was an officer so that was a plus.
Ft Hood Texas
Schweinfurt, Germany = 3 yrs
Fort Campbell, KY
Vicksburg, MS while Dad was in Vietnam
Fort Bragg, NC = 2 yrs
Fort Hamilton, NY (in Brooklyn - went off base to PS104...that was wild)
Okinawa - 4 yrs
Fort Bragg, NC
In Germany, there was no real English language TV. There was AFRTS Radio. On Okinawa, we saw select reruns of US shows on AFRTS(later FEN) - some recent but many years old in B&W.
At Fort Bragg, we would often spend nights picking my Dad up at a drop zone after a jump - some on base, others off.
I recall we went to the Mess Hall to have Christmas and Thanksgiving with other troops.
I was in Puglia Southern Italy in 1961 The Italians had T.V. But not many channels or shows..Perry Mason was very popular and the commercials were quite clever.
Dialysis, damned if you do...dead if you don't 29 Jun 2018 05:09:44pm
re: We were kids !
I have been working with a cognitive neuroscientist over the last 8 years and we have been doing R&D work for the NIH with memory and cognitive impairment. Research clearly shows that as humans we tend to hold onto our good memories far more (and longer) than the bad memories. This is what leads to every generation thinking the ‘the good ol days’ were better than they actually really were. Additionally, humans avoid and dislike change. Change is more challenging than status quo and evolution has taught us that change can be dangerous (eating unknown berries, taking an unknown path on your travels, etc.) Most of us can certainly remember our grandparents lamenting the ‘good ol days’ and now it is our turn.
I have always felt that I was born in the wrong century, there is something familiar with ‘the old days’ that holds a lot of intrinsic feelings for me. It is hard to ignore that warm embrace of nostalgia; it is like a pair of warm, fuzzy bedroom slippers on a cold winter night.
I grew up in the early 1960s when after playing all summer afternoon nothing was better than grabbing a neighbors (any neighbor) garden hose and getting a drink. Or the sound of the Good Humor truck coming down the street on a summer evening...
On the intellectual level I know why I feel this way, but on the emotional level my selective memories are certainly enjoyable.
Don
Yea the Good Humor man...if you could fish up a dime,and the mailman came twice a day(why?) the bread man delivered a couple of loaves of bread , the milk man a couple of bottles of homoginized milk with the cream on top and i imagine all these guys were making a living. Utopia !
"Here is where we went. Now, Dad was an officer so that was a plus.
Ft Hood Texas
Schweinfurt, Germany = 3 yrs
Fort Campbell, KY
Vicksburg, MS while Dad was in Vietnam
Fort Bragg, NC = 2 yrs
Fort Hamilton, NY (in Brooklyn - went off base to PS104...that was wild)
Okinawa - 4 yrs
Fort Bragg, NC
In Germany, there was no real English language TV. There was AFRTS Radio. On Okinawa, we saw select reruns of US shows on AFRTS(later FEN) - some recent but many years old in B&W."
We were at Fort Riley, Kansas in 1959-61.
My father was in Viet Nam in 1962-3 so we lived near my grandparents in Jersey City, NJ.
1964-1966 my father taught ROTC at the University of Dayton, so we lived in a civilian new housing development.
1966-1968 we were in Izmir, Turkey. My father worked for NATO. We lived in town. I learned enough Turkish to play with the neighborhood kids. They had no TV then.
1968-1969 My father went to Korea so we again went to Jersey City where we caught up with TV!
1969-72 Pirmasens, Germany. We lived in officer quarters on post. One US AFN TV station that played last year's shows. We discovered German TV which had current US shows.. when we returned to the US I discovered that Marsha Brady didn't speak German. That was a culture shock, considering her voice was also very different!
1973-74 Ft Monmouth, New Jersey. My father taught at the Signal School there. At the end of the Viet Nam war, the school was moving down south. At the same time the army was reducing in size so my father volunteered to retire, rather than move again!
It was an interesting life. We didn't think anything of it since it was the only life we knew. You knew how long you'd be in a specific place. When you met potential friends as kids, you'd ask "What's your DOROS? (Date of Rotation Of Service), which told you how long you'd be friends.
The toughest part was the move to Jersey City in 1968-69 into a civilian community. The kids there all knew each other since birth so I was always an outsider and treated accordingly. I envied those kids since they had that longevity. As an adult, I wanted that for my kids, so we lived in the same house the entire time they were growing up. In their 30s they are still friends with kids they knew since kindergarten.
I remember the Ameican kids on our little base in Southern Italy...sorry we called you guys "dependants" . We saw them at the sea shore and they were good kids. As immature as i was i realized that i would probably someday marry and have have kids. I just could not imagine remaining in the service and moving my family or being separated from them every 3 or four years.
"The toughest part was the move to Jersey City in 1968-69 into a civilian community. The kids there all knew each other since birth so I was always an outsider and treated accordingly."
Just remembered a story as I reread this.. That year my mother, sister and I lived in an apartment while my father was away in Korea. The kids rode me mercilessly that I didn't have a father at all, and I had made up the whole army thing. That really hurt me.
When my father came home, we picked him up at Newark airport (which was a small place at the time!) and he was in uniform. Before I even let him go into the house, I marched him down to Ann's Candy Store where all the kids hung out. The kids just scattered!
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