Do you remember what it was like going to High School in the 1970s? I do. I most certainly do. In fact, the older I get the more removed that I am from it. As time passes, it starts to look like some kind of a scene from “The Twilight Zone”. The truth is that the kind of life that I had growing up is really alien to the way kids grow up today. That is worrisome, and it really concerns me.

When an American intern comes in to work for me, I am stunned just how absolutely helpless they are. They do not realize that they must go to work before the start of the working hours, and cannot leave until the workday is over. They don’t realize some of the most fundamentals regarding self-initiative is totally missing from them. American kids today are robots, or maybe zombies. They need and expect constant supervision. They are afraid to do anything.

Now this only pertains to my American interns.

The interns that I get from Germany, France, Singapore, and England are just fine. What is wrong with America? What are they teaching in schools there? Ugh. I think that I will devote another post to cover that subject. As it is truly alarming.

Whenever I berate an intern about something that they did wrong, I often use examples from my childhood. I use them to illustrate key points. Such as, [1] you need to eat breakfast at home before you come to work. [2] Showers are not optional. [3] Don’t check your Facebook when you are in a meeting with the boss. [4] Lunchtime is for one hour, and long lunches are not an option. As well, as a pet peeve of mine, [5] you must do the work assigned to you whether you want to do it or not.

Where in the Hell do they get this idea that they can argue or debate with the boss? A task is a task. You are assigned it and you must do it to the best of your ability. Unfortunately, many American interns think that they don’t have to do an assigned task, if they don’t want to. WTF?

When I was growing up, man we HAD to work. It wasn’t an option. Moreover, when I turned 18, I was on my own, or in college. And if I failed, I would be on the streets. This is literally. My family would be too ashamed to have me hide in their basement. A man needed to work.

Granted, I realize that not everyone had the same experiences that I had. My experiences were of a different time. I had the experience of fighting forest fires, working in coalmines, and laboring in steel. Today, they work as barristers in Starbucks, code games on laptops in “open work” environments, and drive uber taxis. Never the less, there is something very important about being able to earn your own money. There is something important about putting in a good, hard day’s labor. There is something very important about carving out your life by your own effort, alone.

To this end, let me talk a little bit what it was like for me growing up. I am sure that everyone has other experiences, and perhaps other ideas of what it was like. This is what it was like for me…

Growing up in Pittsburgh

I am a normal guy.

While I was born in the Connecticut Valley in Bridgeport, CT, I spent the bulk of my youth and High School years in the Pittsburgh area.  Pittsburgh was, at that time, the center of steel manufacturing.  Surrounding it were miles and miles of coalmines, and timber. America is a very big nation, and as such, it is culturally subdivided into regions. I was part of the Pittsburgh (or “Western Pennsylvania”) region. I was an “Iron Steel Baby” (So named because of the local “Iron City” beer and the steel mills up and down the major rivers in the region.).

Over the years I have lived in many other areas. Each area was very different. I have lived in the Central Florida, the Rio Grande, the Los Angles, the Fresno, the Memphis-Little Rock, the Louisville, the Cincinnati, the Indianapolis, the Upstate NY and the Boston New England regional areas. I wonder what cultural enclave that you, the reader, is from?

When I was little

When I was little, my father worked in a steel mill. To improve our life, he would go to night school. Eventually, he was able to get his diploma and degree. With that, he was able to get a better job, and we moved into a house that he was finally able to buy. My mother was a housewife, and she watched us kids.

I played “cops and robbers” and “cowboys and Indians” when I was little.  I played with fireworks, climbed cliffs and jumped off them into muddy water in the long hot summers. We would often put a penny on railroad tracks to watch the coal cars flatten it into a long oval copper plate. You can’t really do that with pennies today. That is because pennies are made out of plastic. Instead you can use a dime or a nickel. Both of these coins have a high percentage of copper in it.

Busybodies think that flattening a penny is not safe, and is dangerous to children. (Not everyone shares my point of view.  HERE is an article where it is considered the height of danger and folly to walk on train tracks. HERE is an article that says that it is terribly DANGEROUS and maybe evil to even suggest children participate in such a thing.) But you know what? I don’t care what they think. I personally like the Chinese solution when it comes to these busybodies.

Life in the Trees

I had a “tree house” that I would hang out in with my cat Sedgwick, and played “tug of war” under the willow tree with my pet husky and a big “bull rope” that hung down from one of the limbs. (This is an awesome tree that had flowing branches that fell to the ground.  You could go inside the tree and it was like you were inside a tent. Though in the spring, it was filled with bees and other insects attracted to the flowers.)

I had a “fifth finger toy gun”. It looked like a pointing finger, and it shot this little plastic pellet.  I also had this “joy buzzer” that you could “shock” your friends with (by giving them a handshake). Other toys included “Chinese handcuffs”, which was this woven contraption that you would stick on the ends of your fingers.

“let’s see, I slept outside in a tent almost every night during summer vacation, played lawn darts, shot arrows into the air and we would scatter like doves for the cover of a roof, sled riding down steep tree lined hills. 

Jumped ramps with our bikes (damn near lost one of my man marbles doing that though) climbed trees, built tree houses, floated down the swollen stream on a telephone pole after a 100 year rain storm. drove the flat bottom boat behind river barges to ride the wakes. 

Jumped off roofs with a homemade parachute (didn't work) played with matches, played with matches and gas, played with matches gas and fireworks, had a wrist rocket, bb gun, bow and arrow, went to a catholic grade school with hard ass nuns. I should be in kiddy Gitmo still.”

- booboo Feb 2, 2018 9:55 PM Permalink

Quicksand

We played “quicksand”, usually holding on to tree limbs and trying to avoid touching the sidewalk. (It, like many other things, turned out not to be as serious a threat that we thought it was when we “grew up”.) Talk about a disappointment!

Yeah. When we grew up we were in for some surprises…

The world that we envisioned was nothing like what we saw on television.  We never got to fight secret agents. The rocket ships to the stars never materialized. None of us ever got to tour the nation in a multicolored school bus and play musical numbers in different high schools . Our friends were never as organized as Spanky and his gang , and we never were able to harness a donkey with a carrot. That truly would have been awesome! The truth is, to this day, I have never come across a spot of quicksand.  What a shame.  What a true shame.

However, the reader need not give up hope on their childhood. There still is a Archie McPhee . Thank God for that!

Hats

I, like others of my generation, (in my pre-teens) usually wore a hat when we went outside. (The same was true for the ladies and the girls of that time.) There was even an entire set of rules and behaviors associated with these hats.  The church pews even had these little spring-loaded contraptions to hold the hats in place when in church. (This pretty much fell into disuse in the early 1970’s, along with eating fish on Fridays.) Coat racks in offices, dental offices, and insurance offices all had a shelf along the top of the rack to place your hats on.  For standing racks, there were also “pins” for holding one’s hat.

Take off your hat (civilian, that is) whenever you are indoors, except in a synagogue and except in places which are akin to public streets: lobbies, corridors, street conveyances, crowded elevators of non-residential public buildings (department stores, office buildings). Apartment house elevators and halls are classed as indoors, and so are eating places!

Take it off whenever you pray or witness a religious ceremony, as at a burial, outdoor wedding, dedication. Take it off whenever the flag goes by. And fergodsakes take it off when you have your photograph taken for the place of honor on her dressing table – and take it off before you kiss her!

Lift it momentarily as accompaniment to courtesies when hello, goodbye, how do you do, thank you, excuse me or you’re welcome are expressed or understood. The gesture is to grasp the front crown of a soft hat or the brim of a stiff one, thus to lift the hat slightly off and forward, and simultaneously to nod or bow your head as you say (or smile) your say.

Whenever you perform a service for a strange woman, or ask one—when, for example, you pick up something she has dropped on the sidewalk, or ask her (indirectly) to get her bundles the hell off that vacant bus-seat—you tip your hat to acknowledge her thanks or to give yours. Whenever you greet in passing or fall into step with a woman you know (your wife included), you tip your hat. In fact, the tip of the hat is a must for all brief exchanges with women, known or unknown.

A man rates your hat-lift, too, when he has performed some service for the woman you’re with—when he’s given his bus seat to your wife, for instance (in which case you should give him a card to your psychiatrist, as well). And also when he has been greeted by your woman companion, you tip your hat whether or not you know him. If she stops and if she introduces you, your hat comes off—but this is because you are standing and talking with a woman.

- From Esquire Etiquette: A Guide to Business, Sports, and Social Conduct, 1954

Boys and Girls liked to Play

When I was young, we all played together.  Boys and girls played together. Boys would tend to want to play “army” or “sports”.  Girls would tend to want to play “Barbie” or “house”. I really don’t think it was due to the way that we were raised. It was our interests at the time.

Anyways, we grew up normally. At that time, it was considered normal for boys to like girls, and girls to be interested in boys.  But, apparently today, that view is not shared.  Today there is a “zero tolerance” for anything deemed sexual harassment in young children. Which means that boys just cannot tell a girl he likes her. Today it is deemed “sexual harassment”. Sigh.

Please, why can’t you just let children be children?

We Played

If a boy wants to play with a toy gun, well then let him. If he wants to play with a Barbie doll instead, well then let him do that instead. If a girl wants to play football, I say go for it! If she wants to play house and dress up, good for her! Just let children be children. One of the things that has surprised me is the ever growing list of prohibitions that American children cannot do. Let’s see…

• Can’t play with toy guns.
• Can’t play with fireworks.
• Can’t play knives.
• Can’t play with slingshots.
• Can’t play with tree-houses.
• Can’t play with fire.
• Can’t ride their bike alone through town.
• Can’t stay out late after dark.
• Can’t walk by themselves to school.
• Can’t be in a playground without supervision.
• Can’t go into a store without a parent.

This lack of play has had an absolutely devastating effect on the young millennials just now in college. Since they have never been on their own, and used their own self-guided imagination, they are retarded in certain significant cognitive abilities. It is truly worrisome.

My Kid Sister

Consider my kid sister.

I have a niece who is a girly-girl. She loves clothes. One Easter Sunday my mother bought her this really nice Easter dress. My sister, totally hated it, and did not want the girls (I have numerous nieces) to have anything to do with it. However, my nieces, being strong willed, went out and got the dresses out from the closet anyways. The oldest niece, well she was a “Tomboy”, and refused to wear the dress that was bought for her. However, the girly-girl niece grabbed her dress and ran through the house with it.

As she ran, her socks went off. Her shoes went off. Her pants came off, then her top. She shinnied on the dress and went running outside in the yard in bare feet. The dress flying in bright white, and pink with ribbons floating. She ran, jumped, and leaped. She was the happiest girl in the entire world at that moment. She was totally absorbed in living that moment.

You just had to see it. The sky was blue and clear. The air was cool but sunny. The grass was a fresh lush green and the girl with her rosy happy smile on her fantastic sunny face was a picture of the Sun itself. Ah, such a very wonderful time, and a wonderful day…

As I said. Let the children play.

Elementary School

Things were different then compared to today.

I first went to parochial school, and then later, attended public school. In parochial school we were taught how to write in cursive, memorized poetry, studied basic Latin, learned how to perform mathematics using only a paper and pencil, and studied our collective history.  Indeed, when I attended school we learned history, and we were expected to understand it well enough to write a paper on it.  In fact, one of the seemingly yearly events all through middle school into my high school years was writing a paper on history. Sadly, that is no longer the case. Ah, history can tell us so much, and can be a real joy to read about if taught properly.

History has continued to be one of my favorite interests. I personally think that many people don’t know anything about history because it is really not being taught properly.

Coffee

My childhood is a tale of coffee. Coffee was the cheapest thing that you could buy in America. As such, everyone had a coffee pot, and we all drank it 24-7. We would cook it in percolators, and the smell of coffee and the sound of percolating coffee was the way most American woke up to in the mornings. There was even a television commercial that had a jingle that sounded like a percolating coffee pot.

As a child, I didn’t really drink coffee. It wasn’t until I was around 12 or so when I started to share a cup with my parents. That was two full years before I started to work.  It started to “put hair on my chest”.

The coffee was so cheap. In the movie, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” the main character is down on his luck in Mexico. To underline just how poor he was, he asks a passing stranger “Hey can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee”. That’s pretty down. Coffee was offered freely throughout the USA and Mexico. I’ll bet that the significance on that statement was pretty much lost on the reader when you watched the movie, eh?

via GIPHY

I well remember the time when the coffee suppliers began to jack up their prices. It was insane. I was working as a stock clerk in a grocery store at the time, and the prices just getting higher and higher. It kept going up…up… and up. First, it was 20%. Then another 20%. Then another 50%. Then 200%. Then 1000%. There was no stopping it.

The customers were angry. Then frustrated. Then crying. Nevertheless, still they bought the coffee. By then, the entire United States was addicted to it. The coffee plantations in Columbia, and Venezuela, and Mexico saw profits, and just took advantage of it. Wow!  With all the billions and billions of earnings that the companies (and owners) raked in, you would think that the nations would now be rich paradises. You would think…

I wonder why not…

Maybe it’s because they are all progressive socialist democracies, and only the rich get the money. Yup. We all know how that all works out. Look at all the wealthy and successful people in Cuba. Look at all the successful and wealthy people in Kenya. Look at all the wealthy and successful people in North Korea. Yuppur! Those progressive socialist paradises really know how to do things, now don’t they?

Grandparents

Every weekend we would visit our grandparents. There, we would often sit on the metal porch glider and have bottled soda and cold-cut sandwiches. Both of my grandparents would buy a case of soda in large glass bottles, and I would spend my entire visit drinking it. It would normally be placed in the cellar. That was a cool spot in the house, and it kept the soda cool, but not cold. As is typical for the Pittsburgh area, the basement had a commode located smack dab in the middle of the basement. It’s a Pittsburgh thing that I could never quite figure out. (Same with the idea of putting chairs in front of the house to reserve a parking space.)

Adults could drink their fill of beer. We always had beer in various old refrigerators, or boxes full of ice. When I started to work, at 14, my father figured that I was going to work like a man, then I could be treated as one as well. From that moment on, I was able to drink beer at all the family gatherings. Which was pretty cool. I was able to get tipsy, and then go to my room to sleep it off without making a scene.

My childhood was all about learning how to be a MAN.

The television was often on with a sports program or two in the background. They, of course, had a large picture of the “Last Supper” on the kitchen wall overlooking the table there. In fact, just about all of my friends had a similar picture. Today, I rarely see it, and absolutely NO television shows have this symbol of Americana displayed. We also had a painting of the “black Madonna” on the wall near the fireplace, and a statue of the Mother Mary in prayer inside a half buried cast iron bathtub in the back yard.

We ate well, and my mother insisted that we have fresh milk every day.

Fresh milk was delivered to our porch daily. It sat inside a small-galvanized metal box cooler specifically designed for that purpose.  It was delivered early in the morning and one of the routines was for my mother to fetch the milk and put it in the refrigerator promptly. The bill (for the milk) was left in an envelope inside the metal cooler box, and my parents would put money in the envelope inside the box to pay for the milk. It was a system that worked well then. I wonder how it would work today.

Crime

We lived in a very safe neighborhood. I grew up in a small town. The town was big enough to have an elementary and a high school. Though, it was too small to have a middle school. It was a great place to grow up in.

Oh, we heard about the crime in the urban areas of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but that was a world that was way beyond our experience. We didn’t lock our house doors.  No one did. In fact, the front door lock was often stubborn from disuse. That went for the cars as well. We left the car keys in the ignition. Everyone knew everyone else. All the mothers knew each other.

All of the men knew each other. Maybe they did not work together, but they were all members of the various social clubs like the Rotary, the Elks, and the Moose. (As well as the Polish Falcons.) There would be a meeting or two at the lodge each month and my father would attend. Because everyone knew everyone else, no one was trying to take from each other.

For us kids growing up, the entire town was like one big playground. It was most certainly like a scene out of Mayberry RFD. If you want to know what it was really like then read “The Mad Scientist’s Club”.  It was exactly like that.

We would say “Hi” to our neighbors and play with their kids.  “Hi, Mr. Baley.”, or “Hi, Miss Cambell.”. We all played baseball in the neighborhood ballpark, and rode our bikes all over the town. If someone bought a new appliance, then we would make “forts” out of the cardboard boxes it came in, and play with that.

Boyhood Essentials

I always carried a pocket knife with me, and used it to cut small branches and to chew on twigs from a birch tree (it tastes like root beer). It was a blue Cub Scout knife with three blades. I carried it everywhere. My father bought it for me when I was six years old. Ah, it was a male rite of passage.

One of the things that has surprised me is that NONE of the male interns that have worked for me (from the United States) ever owned their own pocketknife. Most have heard about it, and knew what it was, but none had ever owned one. It really stuns me. My male interns from France, England, and Germany all have owned pocketknives. I just cannot get over the fact how retarded that American boys have become. It is almost like they have turned into girls.

Anyways…

Bicycles

I was very shy with girls, and not so great at sports.  However, I was a fantastic swimmer, an average golfer, and an active tennis player. I was a member of the cub scouts, and rode a gold Schwinn “banana seat” bike with “high bars” and a “drag strip” (non-tread) rear tire. Every one of my friends owned a bicycle. My sister had one with a white plastic basket in the front. My bike had these long streamers of plastic that plugged into the handles. I eventually tore those things off. But I would put a card (from a deck of cards) and attach it to the bicycle with a wooden clothes pin. That way my bicycle would make some “cool” sounds when I rode fast. It had a huge red circular red reflector on the back, right under the white “banana seat”. Like the GTO I would later drive when I was in High School, the bicycle was an orange color.

My bike was a personal selection. When my father took me to a store to pick it out, I chose a really simple and rugged model. There were no front or rear brakes on the handlebars. To brake, you would just use the pedals. There also weren’t any gears. There was one gear only. It came with a rear view mirror, that soon broke off, and that was about it. My friends all had more complicated bicycles, and over the years, they were perpetually repairing their bikes and trying to fix them. For me, I never had that problem.

Chores

Every Spring I would help my father take down the “storm doors” and put up the “summer doors”. These doors had mosquito mesh instead of glass. It allowed fresh air to get inside the house, but kept the bugs out. To swap the doors was an easy chore. All you needed was a large screwdriver. Once I proved my mastery of that task, my father made sure that I did it every spring and fall. (Whoops! Roped in to another chore again!)

Ice Cream

We ate “soft serve” ice cream from the local Dairy Queen stand, or had banana malt milk shakes.  My father would always take us out for a ride on Sundays after dinner. (Sunday dinner was the most important dinner of the week, and the most elaborate.) We all would hop into the car and ride over to the local Dairy Queen stand. There I would get a large vanilla (soft serve) ice-cream cone. Everyone got one. Even our dog Belle who was a husky. She would get hers’ in a little plastic dish.

We ate plump, real ground beef hamburgers and bacon-wrapped hotdogs.  We would eat a fine can of pork and beans, and let’s not forget the buttered corn on the cob, potato salad, and the macaroni salad as sides. Us kids would have an iced cooler full of all the soda we could drink and the parents drank all the beer they could muster. (Typically, Iron City, Bud, PBR, and Michelob.)

News

I would watch the news reluctantly. For me it was pretty boring.

However, I did follow the news about space. You couldn’t miss it. Everyone was talking about space, and the moon. That is all you heard aboout as a child of the 1960’s. The television shows also helped to maintain this theme.

As the news that played on the radio concerned our exploration of space and the Vietnam War.  Of course I didn’t know what was going on. It was a takeover of the United States government by dark forces embedded deep inside the United States government. When JFK was shot, my father insisted that I watch the television. He kept telling me that this was the most important thing to happen to the United States since the Civil War. He was a lifelong Democrat and he had real concerns that there was more to the story than what the government was saying. Later, after he died and President Trump released the transcripts, it turned out that my father was right after all.

The “Deep State” murdered our President.

“This fucker, johnson should be dug up and pissed on, and torn apart. Every modern ill can be traced to him.” 

-sowhat1929

On Sunday we watched Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”, and “The FBI” (Starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr) after the Walt Disney hour. If I wasn’t watching television, I was building plastic scale models, or experimenting on my Gilbert chemistry (and electrical) sets.

The A. C. Gilbert Company was an American toy company, once one of the largest toy companies in the world. It is best known for introducing the Erector Set to the marketplace. A chemistry set is an educational toy allowing the user (typically a teenager) to perform simple chemistry experiments.

During the Bill Clinton presidency (D) all sales of chemistry, electronics, and mechanical kits were put under investigation as possible routes for “home grown” terroristic activities, and were subsequently suppressed, if not outright banned. Over the Bush years (R), they resurfaced and eked out a small living.  However, by 2017 most hobby kit suppliers went out of business. Ramsey electronics, Heithkit electronics RIP.

Little Treasures

I, like my contemporaries, had my little treasures. Some of my friends collected baseball cards. Others, collected Indian arrowheads, and still others collected comic books. I had one friend with quite an impressive collection of comic books, and Doc Savage paperback books. I ended up buying his entire collection for $10 when he moved out of state.

I owned (but rarely wore) a “mood ring” that I found in an old “mason jar” filled with old “Indian head” pennies, marbles, and campaign pins (I picked it up at a yard sale for twenty five cents.).  I also wore a catholic ring of Saint Christopher that I picked up at a church sale on “Polish Hill” in Pittsburgh.

I was pretty stylish. I wore “Beatles style” hair with bangs that were always covering my forehead and falling in front of my eyes. My parents absolutely hated it.

Bottle Collecting

My favorite thing to do when I was around eight or nine would be to go “bottle collecting”. Here I would go into the local “woods” to dig for “old bottles” (in long disused trash dumps, often 100 years old) that I would then clean and collect. We had a couple of “dumps” that we frequented. One of the best, with the most impressive bottles, was near the river next to an old railroad spur. It was the home of many a “whittle marked” bottle, old time bitters, and about a hundred thousand Lydia Pinkham bottles. (I guess that the local woman folk must have had a lot of “womanly” problems.)

Our parents let us kids go out and play.

“I used to puzzle over a particular statistic that routinely comes up in articles about time use: even though women work vastly more hours now than they did in the 1970s, mothers—and fathers—of all income levels spend much more time with their children than they used to. This seemed impossible to me until recently, when I began to think about my own life. 

My mother didn’t work all that much when I was younger, but she didn’t spend vast amounts of time with me, either. 

She didn’t arrange my playdates or drive me to swimming lessons or introduce me to cool music she liked. On weekdays after school she just expected me to show up for dinner; on weekends I barely saw her at all. 

I, on the other hand, might easily spend every waking Saturday hour with one if not all three of my children, taking one to a soccer game, the second to a theater program, the third to a friend’s house, or just hanging out with them at home. When my daughter was about 10, my husband suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult. Not 10 minutes in 10 years.”

-The Overprotected Kid

Ah. My bedroom was a collection of old colorful bottles, scale models of tanks on shelves (and planes hanging from strings from the ceiling), as well as a quite a large collection of paperback books and comics. I had stacks and stacks of magazines. Magazines included “Lost Treasure magazine”, “Men’s Adventure”, “The Good Old Days”, “Mechanics Illustrated”,  “Popular Science”, “Popular Mechanics”, “Mad Magazine” and “Analog”. In fact, the upstairs bathroom had a closet, and the bottom two shelves were devoted to all sorts of magazines and comic books.

Money and Costs

Things were cheaper then.

In fact, most things could be paid for using coins.  If you ate at a restaurant, you would rarely need to use any bills.  Just a handful of coins (from a coin purse) was all you would need. Indeed, my father carried a coin purse and a money clip.  Wallets didn’t really become popular until the 1970’s. (When inflation had jacked up food prices to obscene levels.)

I would fill up the air in my bicycle tires with air from the local gas station.  (For free. Paying for air didn’t become vogue until the 1980’s.) It was a white building with two (gas) pumps outside, and an open garage bay where the owner would typically be fixing the cars of the local townspeople. Inside were dusty pin-up photos of sexy girls taken from magazines (like playboy, the “open spread” foldout format was well suited to wall-poster applications.) and industry calendars which always had a picture of a topless chick (or nearly topless) holding a wrench or hammer.

I drank from a lawn hose in the summer when I was thirsty. It tasted like warm plastic.

If I was off away on a farm, or near a dirt road we would stop at a well and get a drink of spring water. At sometime in the 1960s all wells in Pennsylvania had to be covered up (so that no one would fall into them). Instead the placed these large iron hand-pumps (often painted red of green) that you could pump the water up and drink. The water was free to whomever needed it. Which is so unlike today where even common tap water is bottled by Walmart for a profit.

I was typical, and not a “bad boy” at all. When my friends started to smoke cigarettes, I refused. When I started to work, and was offered beer by the older boys, I drank and soon discovered that I was a “light weight” and numerous embarrassing events ensued. My friends chewed tobacco and often had a can of “chew” in the back pocket of their jeans (often creating a round circle of wear). I didn’t do this.  For the most part, my serious engagement of vices occurred much later… after my retirement.

Television

Television was rather primitive.

While we did have a color television, we still needed to walk across the room to change the channel. Imagine that! Remote controls were not available until the mid-1970’s. On top of it were “rabbit ears” until we were able to subscribe to cable in the late 1970’s. My grandmother had her “rabbit ears” with aluminum foil wrapped around it. She said that it improved her reception. Maybe it did. I don’t know, her reception really sucked, so it must have been really, really terrible.

My favorite after-school show was “The Flintstones”. All of my classmates watched it. There were many shows that I watched when I was growing up. It went from the black and white “Diver Dan” series, to the Fireball XL-5, Supercar, and included such staples as Gilligans Island, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E..

Toy Guns

I had full toy replica M-14 with “action sound” back in the day. We would go around the neighborhood playing war with the other kids with their (own) toy guns. Let’s see, I had a toy M1, a tommy gun, a grease gun, a Beretta that shot projectiles with a suction cup at the end, and a large collection of cap guns and water pistols. Not one parent had an issue.  Not one snowflake triggered.  Not one police call.  Even the girls loved it.

“I remember when toy trucks (Tonka) was made of metal. When automobiles were made of steel. When a carton of cigarettes cost $5, when there where phone booths, a gallon of gas was 45 cents, a postage stamp was 5 cents, a bottle of Coca-Cola was a dime, a nickel-bag of weed was $5, the Sun was yellow. 

I remember a time when you could find starfish and beautiful shells on the beaches of the Atlantic ocean. I remember when our skies where blue, not hazy white. I remember when slot machines paid out silver dollars. I remember a time when children could play safely outside.

I remember when kids could sell lemonade without being arrested. I remember when you could crack your child's ass in public for being a brat and not being arrested. A lot has indeed changed.”

-Hugh Mann Oct 21, 2017 1:34 PM

Lemonade Stands

Talking about selling lemonade, it was a method that introduced business techniques to children. The schools didn’t have any courses on how to start and run your own business. The boy scouts taught self-initiative and independence. If you wanted to know how to start your own business, and the basics on how it worked, your parents would teach you by allowing you to sell lemonade. It was a method by which a child could learn the basics of business management, and production.

Of course, during the Obama administration, this was forbidden.  Moreover, a war on young children, their lemonade stands, and the parents who would teach children about work began. The result was a decimation of the understanding of the basics of industry to an entire generation of children. Read about some of the thousands of instances here;

• Lemonade stand shut down because of no permit
• The Inexplicable War on Lemonade Stands
• Cops Shut Down Lemonade Stand, Said Little Girls Need a Permit
• Texas cops shut down girls’ ‘illegal’ lemonade stand
• Lemonade Stand Busted By Cops For Being ‘Illegal’?
• Texas Police Officers Shut Down Girls’ Lemonade Stand Because They Didn’t Have A Permit
• Texas police shut down girls’ lemonade stand, demand permit
• “I’ve Done A Bad Thing” 5yo Girl Bursts into Tears As Cops Fine Her for Lemonade Stand
• Georgia Police Close Girls’ Lemonade Stand
• The Yellow Menace
• Georgia Girl Scout Troop’s Cookie Booth Shut Down By Police (VIDEO)

Meals

We ate formal meals.

That is to say, that we ate in the “dining room” with a fully laid-out table with tablecloth (and undercloth), china dishes and silverware. My father sat at the “head” of the table, and my mother sat at the other end.  Us kids, sat in the middle. Household meals always had a meat or a fish with sides of mashed potatoes, a salad, cooked vegetables and bread. Meats would include pot roasts, pork chops, Salisbury steaks, roast chicken, and ham. We ate fish on Fridays. We only ate pizza or hamburgers when we ate outside or at a restaurant. (We rarely ever ate pizza, or “junk food” at home.  We ate “real” “sit down” formal meals.) With an intact family-centered life, we ate far better than Americans do today.

• The Importance of a Family Meal Together

Late Night Horror Movies

We acted like kids, and participated in the activities normal for that time. Most of our time was divided between school and play.  Of that, we enjoyed playing the most.  With our days filled with outdoor activities (such as hiking and bike riding) followed by evening television viewing. Whether it was “the Rat Patrol”, or “Chilly Billy Car dilly” on “Channel 11” showing low-grade “B” horror flicks, we watched them all.

In fact, I must say that I was a big “Ultraman” fan “in the day”.  But, overall, I was  Vincent Price fan.

I really liked all of the Vincent Price movies.  These were often B-grade flicks made in the 1970’s which you would watch on a cold and snowy winter weekend afternoon. In fact, I would say that my all-time favorite movies are the Doctor Phibes series.  I don’t know why that is.  Maybe it’s because of the mechanical gadgets.  Maybe it’s because of the tales of creative revenge.  Or, maybe it’s because I always had a crush on his beautiful assistant(s).  LOL!

I was a good kid, though a bit “nerdy” compared to my classmates.

Nerd

I had other interests, which tended to be on the nerdy side. For instance…

I played Panzer Blitz and Squad Leader board games.  (But only with the handful of friends who actually knew how to play the complex games and enjoyed strategy.) Board games were popular, and it took the entire computer industry to demolish the stranglehold that strategy games held. Games would last hours, even an entire day.

“I was just over at ebay scanning the wargames (because of threads in this forum such as the demise of boardgames) and seeing AH Panzer Leader there brought back fond memories. I am sure I had one box at one time, have to find it. I remember in high school, my friends and I had three Panzer Leader and two Panzer Blitz games plus some made up boardmaps, put them all together for a massive tactical wargame that lasted throughout the summer. Our german opponent, stuck in the middle in a replay of 1945, was able to keep the Sov and US units from meeting. Amazing.”

-AnimalAl

I also was very interested in the “computer revolution” that was just getting started. I had taken some basic programming classes, and excelled in them. However, my father thought that there would not be any kind of future in computers. So he STRONGLY recommended that I take something practical. He suggested that I go to university to study something that had potential. Engineering most certainly, but not anything related to computers. He felt that it was a passing fad that would soon go away.

We had a nice long “sit down” chat about my future, and he believed that I would be best served if I went to a military academy to reach my dream of being a spaceman. I believed in it. While it might sound crazy today, it was a reality during the 1960s. and 1970s. I tended to agree with him, and with that in mind I took High School classes that would be beneficial for me to attend the Air Force academy.

Telephones

There were no cell phones; indeed most phones hung on the wall, and fully 50% of them had dials instead of push buttons.  Our home had two phones. One was an old Bakelite black phone from the 1920’s hidden away in the basement. I loved the feeling of it. There was a weight to it that you just couldn’t get during the 1970’s. We also had a “main” phone in the kitchen. It had an extra-long cord. My sister was always “hogging it up”. So one year they bought her a phone for her room. She still spent most of her time on the phone, it’s just that she wasn’t talking in the kitchen all day.

In the house we wore “house clothes” also known as PJ’s, with a robe. Mother would make sure that there was always a pot of coffee brewing, and us kids would always fight over who would get to read the comics section of the paper first.  Of course, our dogs and cats merrily participated in the morning ritual. Picture above is not the ideal, it was the actual.

Chores

From the time I was five years old I needed to pull my weight at the house. I had chores.

I would use a push lawn mower on the weekends to mow our grass (with no breaks until I was finished), and rake the leaves in the fall (with a break drinking apple cider).  No respite during the seasons, as I even had to shovel the snow in winter (with a break drinking egg nog on Christmas Day). (Such was the life of a typical boy in the 1970’s.) Us boys all had chores that we had to finish before we could go out and “play”. When we became old enough, typically 16 years old, we went and got our first job working for someone else.  It was what you did if you were a male boy. (Eh. I started at 14, as my father insisted that work would make me into a man.) So, I went to school until it ended, and then off to work from 4 to 9 every evening. Most of my life consisted of 12 to 14 hour shifts at work.

So, of course, I am going to take offense at the idea that I had “white male privilege”. And, I really get more than just a little hot under the collar when some female SWJ tries to make that point. There was no “white male privilege” in scrubbing out the filthy toilets in a coal mine, getting covered with dirty grease while you climb up a dragline, or being dressed down just because you are young and don’t know anything yet.

I was a typical boy. While many of my friends got to play football and other sports, I worked. I was bred to be a great work horse. That was the experience of boys of my generation. The experience of girls was quite different.

Girls were treated differently. My sisters all got weekly allowances.  This enabled them to go out with their other friends and buy the latest fashions. They were all members of the various cheerleader organizations, and participated in all the local events sponsored by the school.

Poetry

In my early school years (grades 1 through 3), I attended private parochial (Catholic) schools.  They offered and provided a superior education compared to the public schools that I attended afterwards.  I learned the Latin language as well as my English grammar. In fact, one of my most significant “loves” was introduced to me in first grade.

Here we were told (forced) to memorize poetry. (Oh, and boy did I hate it at the time. I would cry and cry. My father would record my complaints and play them back to me. Oh, I hated it. I HATED it.) Now, today, I really appreciate that memorization. I memorized Robert Frost, and Taylor Coleridge.

These are poems that I have NEVER forgotten.

The Road Not Taken - Poem by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

There is a certain timelessness about this poem. I always loved the sound of it, but it wasn’t until I was much older did I appreciate the meaning. You know, when you are in elementary school, you haven’t lived long enough to experience decisions and consequences. However, when you are older, that is something else altogether. Today, the poem speaks to me like no book or movie can. And that is what poetry is all about.

The poem speaks to me personally. I can well guess that it might speak to you (the reader) as well. We have chosen paths that other people didn’t. They took us to interesting places. They have altered our lives in ways… special and significant ways.

Here is another timeless poem by Robert Frost;

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost


Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Poems are wonderful. Now that I am older I really appreciate all the effort that the nuns made to force me to learn these poems.

Girls never seemed to care that I could recite poems. So it really wasn’t an issue about getting chicks. The girls of High School seemed only to care about the football players, and hot cars. The poems made a difference in my life when I got older. Then, the complexities of live began to take its toll, and it was poetry that became my refuge when the world spiraled out of control.

Whenever I am stressed at work, and there is some just outlandish and power crazed manager spouting nonsense (remember I worked in a corporate environment during the 1980’s and 1990’s), I would stand off to the side and recite a poem or two. It calmed me down. Because, no matter what role my boss would have, and no matter if he controlled my income, I could recite poetry, and he simply could not.

That fact always put a smile on my face and comforted me.

It also ended up being a great way to “break the ice” in China. I would offer a toast. Then, I would recite a poem. The Chinese, especially the English speaking ones, are always absolutely amazed. As are the beautiful Chinese ladies. Chinese poetry is different, but just as beautiful.

Kubla Khan - Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.


So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.


But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !


And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.


Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !


The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !


A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !


And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,


For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Not one American intern, boys or girls, could recite a poem. Any poem. What in the heck do they teach at schools today? Many times, but not all, they do not even know a poem or could name one. What a sad, sad, state of affairs. It is almost like a part of their life is missing…

How far American Education has Degraded

Just for fun, let’s see if you (the reader) can take a simple 8^th grade level test from 1912. Now this is from 1912. This is the kind of test that our grandparents, or in some cases, our great-grandparents took. My parents were constantly harping on how the educational system was dumbing down. Moreover, that was in 1960! One can only imagine what they would think of schools today.

Now, I have passed this test on to my (senior-year university) interns, and they constantly fail it. They justify their failure. Which is something that I teach them NOT to do, and thus the reason for having the interns take the test. Their excuses range from “the computer spell checks for me”, “I don’t need to know trivia”, to “that’s why Wikipedia exists.” Sigh.

Let’s see how you, the reader, can do…

The test begins with a spelling exam. The teacher would recite each of the following words. They would recite it three times. The student taking the test would then need to spell the words correctly. There are forty words in total.

Math and Reading questions from the 1912 eighth grade test.

You can find the answers to this test on this page HERE. Now, compare that with eighth grade students today.

Penmanship

We wrote in script, and printing out answers was discouraged (and frowned upon). A measure of one’s ability to communicate was penmanship. (Indeed, there is a scientific correlation between writing in script, poetry and improved thinking processes.  This was something, I believe, that gave me advantage over my public-school educated peers.)

When the New Year was upon us, we would go out and buy a “Farmer’s Almanac”. It was filled with all sorts of interesting things.  However, I believe that my mother would use it as a guide as to when we should till the earth, and plant our garden. It is still being printed. Thank God!

We wore bell-bottoms and nylon shirts with big-puffy sleeves, and wide collars.  I  also wore a tight collar around my neck made out of white beads. It was called a “choke collar”.

Hamper Migration

I was pretty much a typical boy, and got dirty a lot. When the clothes were dirty, we threw them into fashionable “hampers”, not the large super cheap polypropylene baskets that are sold in Wal-Mart today. In fact, we have seem many things go the same way as the “hamper migration” of the last few decades.

In regards to the function and design of the hampers.  I suggest that the reader pay attention that there was a migration in overall quality, utility, and appearance over time. Indeed, this also translated into longevity as well.  The older products were better made, lasted longer, and were designed for function AND appearance.  Somehow, and we all know why, American products became obsessed with cost savings at the expense of everything else.  Why? It was NEVER this way before.

The answer is simple.

It all is because of the passage of the Income tax and the Federal Reserve. Before the Federal Reserve was established, Americans ate quality food, bought quality clothes, furniture and housing. After the Federal Reserve was established there was a sudden drop in the value of the US dollar. This affected everything. Most notably the purchase power of American citizens.

With non-Americans controlling the American money supply, they could use it as they deemed fit.  They ran the value of the US dollar into the ground. As a consequence, both parents needed to work.  Families became dysfunctional.  People could only afford the cheapest food.  Butter became expensive, and so people bought margarine. As a result, people got fatter.  Greed ruined the core of what made America great.

Inflation ensued.

As the US dollar lost its worth, people could no longer afford what they once could.  Thus, stores that provided the cheapest products and solutions to home management dominated the industry.  (Such as Wal-Mart, and the Dollar Store.) The devastation of the value of the dollar can be traced back to one and only one sole cause. That is one of the many consequences of the imposition of the income tax and establishment of the Federal Reserve…

Ah, but I digress (yet again.)

Partylines

The interns that I employ act as if everyone has a smartphone and it is a requirement to own one. Heck, it wasn’t until the 1990’s that companies started requiring their employees to have a phone. When I was growing up in rural Pennsylvania, many people shared a phone line. This was known as a “party line”. When you picked up the phone, if someone was using it, you would have to wait until they got off before you could use the phone. Seriously, that is the way it was.

Things are so different now.

The problem, as I see it, is that Americans only know what they know. Since many have never experienced furniture made out of real hardwoods, and real solid metals, they don’t think anything of it. They think that just because Walmart is popular today, that it has always been popular. They think that because they need to buy water at a supermarket today they you always needed to buy water at a supermarket. And, finally, they think that just because coffee at Starbucks is expensive that it always was expensive.

No it wasn’t. In fact, until coffee was monetized, coffee was THE cheapest thing that you could buy in America.

This trend towards higher prices and cheaper products is not a random occurrence. It is systematic and has been going on for a long time now. It’s just that you don’t really see it unless you have lived for a while. Then you can see the differences. You can see things changing and then you can compare your experiences with the changes and come up with conclusions.

I blame the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve and the Decline of the USD

As the value of the dollar decreased, both parents needed to work to support the family. Children no longer had parental guidance, and problems came about as a result. The dollar’s value continued to plummet. So people could only afford the cheapest products. Still, that was not enough. The dollar still continued to plummet. Soon, people had to purchase things in credit to just get their basic needs met.

But don’t believe me. Look at the graph yourself. It is obvious whoever is running the American monetary supply is doing a FUCKING PISS POOR JOB at it. This is an obvious fact. It means that the entire system must be scrapped and replaced with one that maintains it’s value over time. If our elected officials were actually doing their job, they would have noticed a problem at the very start of this fiasco.

The Value of the US Dollar since the establishment of the Federal Reserve. The performance of the first ten years should have told everyone what a huge fucking mistake that they made. The truth is for the last 90 years, the value of the USD has had an unstoppable downward vector.

Door to Door

It was a time when door to door salesmen would sell young couples a huge multi-volume encyclopedia that would take months to pay off. (One can come across the huge collections in yard sales and estate sales.  Maybe on eBay.  Perhaps one of the greatest influences of my childhood was an illustrated encyclopedia for children that I would spend hours perusing.) My father saw what an interest the illustrated encyclopedia had on me that he considered it to be a great idea to get a full “adult” set. This was a great set, however it wasn’t for elementary children to read. As such, I really didn’t touch it or have any interest in it until I hit my teens.

Today is so different.

Back then we could play in parks.  We could climb trees there.  We could play games on the “monkey bars”, and slide down the slide.  We could ride on the “see-saw”, and splash in the pond. That was what their purpose was.  It was for fun. Yet, today it is something else entirely. Today “playgrounds” are no longer about play, they are about being safe. They should be called “safegrounds”, or even better “safe spaces”.

Porch Lights

It was a time of innocence. I wore a tee-shirt that had a big yellow smily icon, and the words “have a Nice Day” under it. My sister had a baton that she would practice twilling all day. (She also had a “Hula Hoop”. I could never get the hang of that thing. I guess that I just didn’t have the hips for it.

In the rural sections of the nation, porch lights were used to show “openness” to visitors. If you were lonely or just wanted to meet up with someone and talk, it would be pretty hard to do in the country. There just wasn’t any restaurants open, or places to gather around others. The roads were desolate and empty of cars at night. You could walk down them in total silence. It could be a little depressing.

So what people would do, if they wanted to be with someone else, is to turn on their porch light.

The porch light being on signified on of two things. Either [1] you were waiting for someone to arrive, or [2] you were open for visitors.  It was a way to keep everyone in a closed-knit community together with face-to-face communication rather than relying on telephones. Of course, the first thing you would do, when a person knocked on your door, was to lead them into the kitchen and put a fresh pot of coffee on. It was the neighborly thing to do.

In a small community, everyone knew each other. It was a great way to meet up, make friends, and renew friendships and just chat. Other ways to do so included church, the various fraternities and clubs, and of course, the Scouts.

Cub Scouts

I was a cub scout up until I entered my teenage years.  Every week we would attend meetings in the homes of one of the scout mothers (called “Den Mothers”), and they would help us work on our “badges”, and get ready for the various events.  These events included picnics, hikes, plays and social get togethers.  We would proudly wear our uniform during parades, or on holidays like the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, or Labor Day.  We would salute the flag in school and lead the Pledge of Allegiance at school in the mornings. (Big change from today, when you have multi-millionaire NFL stars refusing to stand for the US Flag. I find it completely reprehensible and disgusting. But, then I am from the “old school”.)

One of the first things that I got when I joined the Cub Scouts was a blue uniform.  I well remember my mother teaching me how to put on my yellow scarf.  In addition, I got to have my very own hand axe.  It was a Rite of Passage for me.  Here at seven years old, I could carry a hand axe.  I was taught how to use it to cut trees, and how to throw it (just in case I might come across some desperate Indians…).

While I went to elementary school in the 1960’s, it was my experiences during the 1970’s, which influenced my personality. Indeed, it is my feelings and experiences that reflect that period in time.

High School

Through most of my high school years, I wore “bell bottom” pants, and wide-collared polyester shirts. Our biggest source of entertainment was our television. We listened to the radio, and for me I would read or build plastic models in my bedroom while listening to FM radio on my “mult-band” radio receiver. At that time,  listened to WYDD, which was the “alternative radio” of the day. I also had a “Lava lamp” that was given to my father by a drunk friend who stole it out of a bar and didn’t know what to do with it.

We drank Orange Crush soda, along with Tab, Sprite and 7up. Our parents would drive to the “State Store” or “Beer Distributor” to buy the booze for the week.  In Pennsylvania, the government had a monopoly on the distribution of alcohol.  I guess that they reasoned that it would better” protect” the people of the commonwealth, or maybe they justified it by promising to fix the roads (snort!). Still promising (from what I gather from friends and family).  Yep.  One day the “potholes” all over the Pennsylvania roads will get fixed.  Yessur.

Ashtrays and Chairs

Cars had cigarette lighters and ashtrays.  In fact, even airplanes had ashtrays built into the armrests of the seats.  (This all began to disappear during the Bill Clinton Presidency.) My grandparents both had standalone ashtrays that were their own piece of furniture.  They consisted of a large glass ashtray on a metal pedestal that sat next to the “Man’s chair” in the living room. In my family, as well as the families of all my friends, the father always had “his” chair that he sat in. While us kids might manage to use it, we would always get off of it and defer to our father once we walked into the room.

By the way, if you are dating a girl who says that she does not see the need for a man to have his own chair, run like the wind. I once dated a girl like this. Man, did she have father issues. She eventually dyed her hair a bright sickly pink-orange, shaved the left side of her head, put a nose ring that belonged in an ox’s nose, and went full-on militant feminazi.

Everyone in a household should have their own “space”.

It might be a bathroom that is “hers”. It might be a chair that is “his”. It might a dog that might have his own “special” toy. When you meet someone who believes that everything is equal, and that there are no differences, and no privacy, then you know that the person is mentally ill. Everyone needs and deserves some privacy. Everyone. If you are with someone who does not understand this most basic human needs, then you must avoid them. Avoid them.

Work and Play

My sisters were cheerleaders in school.  All my friends played High School football.  I didn’t. I had to work. My parents were pretty unique in that regard. Most of my classmates got to have fun playing football, basketball, or baseball.  However, my father strongly felt that I needed to be a man, and that meant that instead of playing after school, I should learn how to work and to provide for a family.  Well, in a way he was right. But, in a way he was wrong too.

“The older I get, the more I realize how fortunate I was to grow up in the 70's (graduated HS in '78). It was just one simple, easy time. The stress of the 60's and all the racial/revolutionary crap that came with it was over. The greed of the 80's hadn't hit yet.

There wasn't crap on TV, and no computers or video games, so we spent our time just hanging out with friends, listening to 8-tracks and drinking beer (was actually legal to drink and drive in Texas in the 70's). If we were underage and were caught by the cops with beer, they just made us pour it out and go home.

Like an earlier post mentioned, "Dazed and Confused" really does capture those times well. I look at kids growing up today, with a federal government that's a a joke, police forces that nobody wants to trust, trillions of dollars wasted in "wars" we had no business fighting, college costs through the roof, and... well.. damn.. look at me.. I guess i turned into an old fart after all.”

-Reddit quote

Anyways, to my father, sports were just a game. You couldn’t really make any money off of it. Though, a decade later, my classmate Jim Kelly sure as heck was raking in some real money being a football quarterback. Ah, but that’s a story for another time…

Sports were more about social interaction than play. And, work, well… my history strongly indicates a disconnect from the traditional working models in favor of a debt-slave relationship to a powerful person or group.  But… more about that later…

Square Dancing and Weight Lifting

My favorite time during high school was during “study hall”. There, if we had finished our homework, we could participate in other activities. There wasn’t much at our school, but my two favorite activities were weight lifting (at the high school “Universal Gym”), and “square dancing”. There, believe it or not, the girls would come over and ask and invite me to join them dancing. It was great because there were only a precious few boys who would go dancing with the girls. LOL.

The Idols

I had a poster of Farah Faucett on my wall. She was smiling with this amazing smile, and her huge hair. We all had a crush on her. That, Loni Anderson and Rachael Welch as well.

I had numerous posters on my wall. One was the mandatory “black light” poster on velvet. (It glowed under UV light.) One was a picture of Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple) performing a guitar solo. (I had super imposed a F-14 on it for combined imagery. After all, space and high-performance aircraft and rock n’ roll was my dream.) One was a Roger Dean poster (anyone remember the group “Yes”?).

Overall, I had a great childhood.  I grew up in the 1960s and attended high school in the 1970s. It was a great time, and not at all what is portrayed in conventional American media today  (as a time of “racism and bigotry”). It was a time of family values, productivity, and freedom. Black, white, yellow and red.  We were all Americans.

All of us lived, more or less, the same lifestyle. (Don’t believe me? Go to your grandmother’s house and go through her family albums of photographs.)  Our fathers worked.  Our mothers stayed home and tended to the house, the budget, and us kids.

What? Do I feel a bitching sesson coming on…

We were all Suffering through the Incompetence of Washington, D.C.

That was at a point in time before the Federal Reserve still hadn’t completely decimated the US Dollar. It was still worth around twenty cents. As the dollar kept on losing value, both parents needed to go to work. This fact, forced the breakup of the American family. The family had to break up, as the mother had to work as well as the father.

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.

We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

- Woodrow Wilson. Quoted in “National Economy and the Banking System," Senate Documents Co. 3, No. 23, 76th Congress, 1st session, 1939. The origional quote was published in "The New Freedom" in 1913.

There is a lot of debate on this particular quote. You can look at watch the sparks fly as the debate a rages on. Oh, my goodness! It is all so silly! One side says “here is the quote”, and the other side goes “Oh, No no no. He never said it! It’s all revisionist history. The Income Tax was wonderful!” It really is silly.

Here is my take.

The value of the USD (United States Dollar) was pretty stable. It had it’s ups and downs, but for the most part it was pretty consistent. It was stable. Then, after the passage of the 16^th Amendment, the value of the USD dropped like a stone. It plummeted to 50% of its value within a ten-year span of time. It dropped 50% in a decade. That is horrifying!

Only a fucking idiot wouldn’t regret the decision to establish the Federal Reserve.

You have a fairly stable dollar. Some “friends” and “associates” convince you to change the system that is working just fine, and replace it with a different system. So, low and behold, you put a new banking system in place. Then suddenly, right before your eyes, the value of the dollar collapses. It goes completely to shit. Every year it gets worse and worse!

So…

[1] So, ok, maybe the former President didn’t say that quote. If so, then he was a fucking idiot. He was evil and selfish and couldn’t read a simple chart. That is the only conclusion that you can come to, if this quote did not belong to him. Because that is, what the statists are arguing. They are saying that the President was just fine and dandy and happy with what happened with the imposition of the Income tax and the Federal Reserve. He saw the result of the change, he saw the value of the dollar collapse, and agreed that it was all good and well.

[2] If the quote is indeed accurate, then he is a normal person who is able to read charts, and ended up with regrets. This is what a normal and sane person would be. They would see that what they put in place went to complete shit. This would be what a normal person would do. Personally, I can live both concepts. And you, the reader, should as well.

Anyways, with the collapse of the USD, now everything became more and more expensive. Both parents now had to go to work.

The Breakup of the Family

Both parents now had to go to work. As such, there were periods of no parental supervision after school.  That is how American society began to fracture. The parents were absent and replaced by the reality as portrayed by television, and narrated by the people in power.

As such, we LOST many of the important things that really mattered to families. We lost such things as “jobs for everyone”, the ability to save, and formal family meals.

At the end of the day we had formal “sit-down” meals where we would all gather around a multi-dish meal and discuss the events of the day. We kids would talk about the events in school, and our parents would talk about their day. My father would sit at the head of the table. Then, once the meal was complete, we would retire with some coffee and ice cream, and us kids would clean the table and do the dishes. Dinners were great. It was one of the things that I miss most from my childhood.

• The Importance of a Family Meal Together

At that time, in both the 1960s and 1970s,  it was important to participate in your family. It was important to participate in your school.  It was important to participate in local events, and to become a meaningful participant in society.  My, how quaint and outdated that seems today.

"Elephant-leg, hip-hugger pants, halters and platform shoes were the biggest fads.”

-- Lori West, graduated in 1976 from West Forsyth High School in Winston Salem, NC

Fashions come and go. But I always had a fondness for tube-tops, bell bottoms, and those two zipper front jeans that the girls used to wear. The tube-tops showed off the soft curves , and the “painted on” jeans showed off why guys like to look at girls. For a while, platform shoes were very popular, and I ended up having a pair that made me feel like Richie Blackmore on the stage.

Guns

All my classmates owned guns, and many hunted. My father was a very liberal Democrat, and he forbade me from learning how to shoot. (Of course, today he would be considered a Right-Wing Conservative.) The attempts at disarming the American people dates way back, but it wasn’t until the very successful efforts in the 1990’s did Americans start to FEEL the repression of the Federal Government.

The second amendment was considered important. Mass shootings using firearms DID NOT occur until government started campaigns to take away guns.  There are those who think that this is not really a coincidence. I, for one, KNOW that there is no such thing as coincidence.  “Coincidences” are simply pre-positioned “signs” by others who have constructed elements of our fated existence. But then again, that is just MAJestic speaking.

Anyways… Know your history. Americans are being dumbed down to become cattle. (And you do DO know what happens to cattle, don’t you?)

Ah, television then was geared towards “most” Americans.  (When I refer to “most” Americans, I am actually referring to the MAJORITY of people.  It was not focused on capturing a minority.) That is to say that this was prior to the reorientation of television programing in the 1970’s. The reorientation changed what was presented on television, and marketed directly to the black urban communities. Before that, television shows were about straight white males and reflected the world at that time. (As America was, and still is, a Caucasian majority nation.)

Television Shows

Shows about black people were limited to “Stanford and Son”, and “The Jefferson’s”.

“The "rural purge" of American television networks (in particular CBS) was a series of cancellations in the early 1970s of still-popular rural-themed shows with demographically skewed audiences, the majority of which occurred at the end of the 1970–71 television season. In addition to rural themed shows, the purge also eliminated several high rating variety shows that had been on CBS since their beginning of television broadcasting. One of the earliest efforts at channel drift, CBS in particular saw a dramatic change in direction with the shift, moving away from shows with rural themes and toward ones with supposedly more appeal to urban audiences.”

-Wikipedia

The shows we watched were funnier than what you see on television today.  And, maybe, just maybe a little more innocent. “The Bob Newhart Show” was typical. The humor involved day to day situations and NEVER mentioned race (compare that to today), and had a real twisted surrealistic sense of humor. Consider “Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman”, or “Green Acres”. You can find out more here.

Ah, you’ve got to hear about the three yokel brothers in the (very surrealistic) 80’s “The Bob Newhart show”. I loved these guys. They might have been the highlight of the show. Heck, they could have had their own show (hint. Hint.)

“…discovering that a witch is buried in the basement of their Vermont inn. They want to find out who she was, but they also want her 300-year-old grave dug up and removed. 

The silly-from-next-door tells him he knows some guys who`ll do anything for a buck.

Next thing, three goofy-looking, backwoods brothers from the genetically weak side of Vermont show up. “Oh, Lord!” says Bob, getting a whiff. Larry--the only brother who ever talks--hands Bob their card.

“We`ll do anything for a buck,” it says.”

- Larry, Darryl And Darryl Are `Newhart` Hits

Larry was the spokesman. Darryl and Darryl never spoke except in the classic final episode. No matter how many times Larry met you, he always started off by saying “Hello. I’m Larry. This is my brother Darryl and this is my other brother Darryl.“

They were quite good hearted, and obviously lived a strange, strange life. Afterall, clubbed weasel was their idea of good eatin’. Larry’s totally deadpan delivery of some very bizarre lines was always a highlight of any Newhart episode. “We went to the bakery ’cause they were advertising ‘bear claws’, but it turned out to just be a come-on.“

Ah. Good times. Good times.

Movies and television portrayed westerns (with “white men” taming the wilderness), war adventures (mostly involving world war II fighting the evil Nazi army), space exploration (such as Lost in Space, Star Trek, Fireball XL-5, Thunderbirds are Go and Land of the Giants), and Spy Adventures (against the Soviet Union or against fictional organizations such as T.H.R.U.S.H.).

Ah the 1970s

Kitchens had olive colored (baked porcelain steel sheet) appliances (at least in my family), not the brushed silver (aluminum) that is so fashionable today. Men wore polyester and nylon shirts with wide striped ties; carried briefcases not backpacks, drank soda instead of bottled water, and listened to the Air Supply and Firefall on the AM radio.  We wanted Peter Frampton to “show us the way” because we (most certainly) “felt like he did”.

Today, bottled water is everywhere.  You can go into a local 7-11 or similar store like circle-K and get a water.  It is cheap. However it is STILL more expensive than the water that I had when I was growing up. Water was free, and we drank from water fountains. Today you can easily buy a bottled water it is often less than a dollar. That wasn’t the case when I was growing up.

Water was free.

Quickie Marts and other fast stores…

In fact, we didn’t even have convenience stores.  When they first started to appear, everyone was making fun of them.  Why anyone would want to pay so much money for the snacks and sodas that they offered there, we asked. We soon found out that they would offer low prices for gasoline, and we could get our pictures developed by filling out special packages that were right there on the counter. It was most certainly a different life and a different time.

The local hardware store actually possessed a “cigar store Indian” statue. Which was pretty darn cool. I wonder where the Indian from “Cambells Hardware Store” is today. High schools taught firearms handling and safety. You could purchase these huge plump-tire motorcycle tricycles and everyone was driving them about (Until a Democrat had them banned.). We saved “Green Stamps”.  Schools taught FORTRAN. Calculators were just becoming available and our sliderules were starting to gather dust in our desk drawers. High school bands carried (fake) guns (painted white) when they marched.

Drugs in the late 1970s

Drugs hit mainstream America in the middle to late 1960s and was all the rage in the 1970s. Ecstasy (MDMA) and other so-called “designer drugs” did not make their appearance until the 1980’s.  During the 1970s the most popular drugs were weed (marijuana), LSD (blotter, and microdot), mescaline (or dried mushrooms), hash (processed marijuana), speed (tiny “white cross” pills) and Valium. (Cocaine did not hit the American culture until the 1980s.) All of this drug use (abuse) affected our culture.  All one would need do is view the television shows at that time to appreciate this fact.

Why is marijuana against the law?  It grows natural upon this planet.  Doesn't the idea of making nature against the law seem to you a bit...unnatural?  

- Bill Hicks

Now there are all kinds of theories as to WHY a common enough weed was made illegal in the United States. I have my own theories. Here are my opinions.

Ah. What began in the 1920s and 1930s as a technique to imprison non-Americans and lower-society tier African-Americans (as most “typical” Americans did not enjoy these substances at that time) fully blew up into a nightmare. Moreover, thus began the downward slide of our culture, way of life, and everything that we believed in.

You take away the idea that the police are “on your side”, you will forever become an outlaw. Which was, if you think about it, the theme of the 1960’s and 1970s.

When I was growing up marijuana was highly illegal. It seemed crazy to me then. It was a “harmless” drug, surrounded by more dangerous, but legal drugs.  I, like the rest of my generation, chalked it up to a stodgy previous generation. At that time, we all smoked it.

I would say that a full 80% of my High School class smoked the stuff.  Some were habitual.  Others were one-time users.  Indeed, the television show “That seventies show” routinely depicted the lifestyle of our generation.  There, they are shown sitting around a table and smoking marijuana. It was in every episode. However, for PC reasons, it was never shown where the smoke came from. I guess that there are some things that you cannot show on television…

This depiction is quite clear in the movie “Dazed and confused” as well.  Both video presentations accurately depicted what it was like growing up for my generation.

It took 40 years, but it seems that that ban on one of the most common plants in North America is beginning to crack.  I am not going to say whether or not the decision to do so is actually good or bad.  What people do in California or Colorado is none of my concern, as I live on the other side of the world.

What I will say is that people deserve FREEDOM.  That includes the freedom to stupefy yourself with drugs. My take is the decision to ban marijuana was a control method, put in place in the 1920s to make it easy to arrest and incarcerate blacks and Mexicans when other laws were not available.  Truth this.

The “War on Drugs” was in full swing in the 1960’s and the 1970’s, but you couldn’t tell it by participating in youth culture. A sizable percentage of teenagers participated in the culture. The older generations were oblivious to that fact.  In their minds, it was only a small minority of people who were smoking marijuana. They lived within their own bubble of reality. Much like many people do today about other things.

• Our Grandparents believed that only Negros and (illegal) Mexican “wet-backs” (What “illegal aliens” were called before they became an important part of the Democrat strategy to win elections.) smoked the deadly demon “weed”. They believed that eventually the users would end up in the “crazy house”; locked up for life as the deadly poison worked its way through their brains. First in the mouth, and then in the brain. Before you knew it you became a crazed sex fiend always doing whatever it took to get your “fix” from the local “pusher”.
• Our parents believed that only the rebels and the dregs of society smoked the illegal cigarettes. They felt that it was a given that the users would find themselves behind bars in jail. As this was characteristic of the behaviors of the misfits of society.

Well, what they failed to realize is that [1] you do NOT ban anything in a “free” society, and [2] times and people change.

What was just fine and dandy for the policing of Arizona in the 1920’s fell flat on its face during the 1960’s and 1970’s.  What only made things worse was that very powerful people, including those in government started to use the “drug issue” for everything. They capitalized on it, and used it as a resource.

“So some people want to smoke some pot once in a while in the land of the free.”

-knukles Karl Marxist Jan 5, 2018 5:21 PM 

Then, as now, older generations have problems understanding the youth that is slowing taking over their society. They just did not understand. (And, I must add, I can see why. Now that I am older, I too am having trouble with the youth of today. In short I find many terribly ignorant of history, devoid of basic work skills, interested in the most trivial of things, and basically very shallow.) Not everyone mind you. Just many of whom that I have come in contact with.

“The war on drugs to me is a war on liberty I concentrate on the issue of freedom of choice when doing things that are high risk. We permit high risk all the time. Generally we allow people to eat what they want. We do overly concentrate on what people put in their bodies,”

-Ron Paul

Indeed, how can we actually say the USA is “free” if we are told what we can and can’t do with our very own bodies?

Being told what you can and cannot do is NOT freedom. I don’t care what the excuse is.

This was a fundamental disconnect that our parent’s generation, and (most especially) our grandparent’s generation (Those idiots that thought up the 16^th amendment.) had with those people who founded America.

The belief structures of both our parents and our grandparents were not the same as those of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison.  They were something else entirely.  They, instead, possess a more “modern” and “progressive” point of view.  One where “the smartest men” in the nations had the power to tell YOU how to live your life.

"People should have the right or responsibility of dealing with what is dangerous. Once you get into this thing about government is going to protect us against ourselves, there's no protection of liberty."

-Ron Paul

You tell them, Ron.

Black People were a Minority

When I show these images of my life to young millennials today, I usually get a harsh response. They claim that it is nonsense, and that I am being racist for not having images of non-white people. Yeah. Really. WTF?

"Most foreigners are amazed there are not more blacks in the U.S. They assume there are black and brown people everywhere from watching our TV and commercials and that they are systematically kept down."

-Zero Hedge

At which I must remind everyone, that up until the 1980s, black African-Americans were a small MINORITY.  That means, that they represented a very, very small segment of the population. When I grew up, the first time I saw a African-American was when I attended college. I did not meet a SA (Spanish-American) until after I left the US Navy and was in California. My first class with an Asian-American was in college.

While they weren’t common anywhere near where we all lived, we certainly were familiar with them. When I was growing up, I did see people from other races on television. In fact, one of my favorite shows was “Soul Train”, and I would really enjoy watching the American Negros dance and jive. They sure had “the moves”.  I would try to get up and dance as well (as long as no one else was watching).  It must have looked so silly.  This gangly ten-year-old boy trying his moves to soul and disco music!

I have to admit the hair looked cool too.

Everyone was wearing “afros” which looked like a big ball on the top of their heads. Man, people had style back then. Some of the best dressed people were negro and they handled themselves with a way and manner that is rarely seen today.

In fact, one of my heroes of the Rat Pack; Sammy Davis Jr. was an absolutely AMAZING man. Let it be known that he would never allow his pants to fall down and show his butt-crack like some of the ethnic youth do today. He was cool, panache, and had real style.

When Disco started to become popular all of my friends hated it. But I actually loved it. I would try to do some of the fantastic dance moves that I learned from Soul Train, but I don’t think I was good enough. In any event, the girls liked the fact that I was brave enough to shake some body, and that was a good thing.

via GIPHY

Oh, and about all this nonsense about race…

I lived in the rural hills outside of Pittsburgh. We never, and I do mean NEVER, talked about “niggers”, and race.  We just did not. The closest I ever came to it was being called a “Pollack”. (A lot.) The “issue” about race is (today) a politically motivated narrative. And, as such, it was constructed over the last eight years or so with defined objectives. It’s a pile of manure that we are all expected to believe.

Frankly, I am pretty tired about hearing about it all. It’s NEVER been part of my life. To me, it just sounds like a bunch of wining babies complaining. Wahhh! Wahhhh!  It really does. It’s irritating.

Here I am in China. I am always and forever an outsider. I am ALWAYS called by racist names (weiguren or laowei) and I don’t complain and use it as excuses, and you shouldn’t either. It’s below us. It’s stuff that little children do when they don’t want to eat their spinach.

“Our rulers don’t seem to understand just how tired their white subjects are with this experiment. They don’t understand that white people aren’t out to get black people; they are just exhausted with them. They are exhausted by the social pathologies, the violence, the endless complaints, the blind racial solidarity, the bottomless pit of grievances, the excuses, the reflexive animosity. The elites explain everything with “racism,” and refuse to believe that white frustration could soon reach the boiling point.”

-FR comment

Listen up. Real men do not complain about their hardships. They keep quiet about it, and they fucking TAKE IT. If there is one thing that is attractive to women it is that men are strong and quiet. Remember the Johnny Fontane scene from the movie ‘The Godfather” when the singer was begging for the part in the movie and crying about it. Do you remember what the Godfather had to say about it?

via GIPHY

Crying and whimpering about stuff that happened to others long before you are born, and using that as an excuse is…

…pathetic.

Just because the urban areas are NOW dominated by non-whites does not mean that it was ALWAYS that way. What you see today is a result of the decimation of the African-American household structure  in the 1960s and the population explosion that resulted. Read.  Learn.  Understand. For goodness sake, read your history books.

And that’s all that I need to say about that.

Cruising in our “Rides”

We loved our cars.

My buddies cruised around in (decked out) “shag carpeted interior” Camaro’s, old Ford and Chevy pickup trucks (Usually with a cooler full of beer in the back and empty beer cans rolling about on the deck.), and a (periodically) roofless International Harvester Scout. We drove around in my decked out GTO known affectionately as “the goat” that we might race on “the flats”.

If the reader wants to know what it was like going to High School in that beast, watch the opening credits to the movie “Dazed and Confused”. Same. You’ll see my old car cruising into the High School parking lot. Otherwise listen to Kid Rock’s “First Kiss”.

Yeah, this was me…

My brother drove a Vega (the aluminum engine block nightmare) named the “solar boat” from a song of the same name by Ray Manzarek. He had the old engine removed and replaced it with a “sooped up” 360. I had friends who drove a Pinto (a plain but long lasting vehicle).  And when my GTO died of a car crash (an icy Pennsylvania bridge in March), I replaced it with a AMC Pacer (it was like riding around in a big epic glass greenhouse).  <smile>

It was a step sideways. Financially, I could only afford what I could buy with the insurance money. So, for a while I rode a Yamaha 250cc motorcycle (also orange!) and then got the pacer. (I needed money for college. It was a matter of priorities.)

Automobiles were a big part of our life back then.  In fact, unless you had your own car, it would be pretty difficult to get a date.  (It could happen, but it was much harder.)

We would typically work and use the money to buy a car and “fix it up”. Then, once the car was able to be driven, we would go “cruising”.  At that time, We would travel the back roads and highways of Western Pennsylvania and the mountains of West Virginia.

via GIPHY

Often we would do so with the music “cranked up” loud.

Perhaps the premium “cruising” music of the day was “Boston” (“More than a feeling”), Pink Floyd (“Another Brick in the Wall”, “Money“, and “Time”), Led Zeppelin (“Stairway to Heaven”) and Peter Frampton (“Do you feel like we do?”). The trunk was a mobile ice cooler. We would fill it with bags of ice, and put two or three cases of beer there. We drank anything that we could get our hands on. Most of my friends drank Miller (in eight-pack pony bottles), Budweiser, and Iron City Beer.

At the time I was in my Senior Year in High School, vans were just getting really popular. Here, we would fully deck out the interiors into these mobile party machines. They would have shag carpeting inside, red mood lighting, comfortable seats, a kick-ass stereo and a big cooler of beer. Dodge and Chevy vans were the most popular.

While movies might give the impression that, the youth of my generation went to discos all the time, and acted like John Travolta, that was not really the case.  (That was the case for many urban youth, but it was not at all representative of the whole.) We pretty much worked part time jobs to support our on-going obsession with our cars.  Each paycheck was devoted to a new “cherry bomb” muffler, or a custom carburetor, or some nice rims for our cars.  Then, all fixed up, we would cruse the roads.  We lived the life of the movie “Dazed and Confused”, as that was a very accurate portrayal of my generation.

This love of cars was not limited to white kids in the country. Everyone loved their cars.  In the cities, such as Syracuse and Pittsburgh, urban blacks would spend all their hard earnings to buy the best and biggest Lincoln or Cadillac available.  Then they would deck them out (or “pimp” them out) into the most elaborate super-cool riding coaches. They sure had style back then. Those were the days for certain.

Not to mention REAL music.

It was a time of funk. Let me tell you all, modern music just doesn’t have that kind of free wheeling happiness, and muscle moving music as the funk of the 1970s did. Indeed, it was a really sad day when people started to talk about the death of funk. Though there are those who somehow think that modern music is just an advanced style of funk. I happen to disagree.

And that is my opinion on this matter.

Guys and Gals

Role models for men included John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, Burt Reynolds and Sean Connery. Men who were MEN! Men were manly; they worked, fought when necessary, and provided for their families. (Yeah, we would ride around in these “sooped up beasts” and talk about our heroes on television. If we weren’t cruising around listening to “tunes”, we were in the weight room “pushing iron”.)

For me, I would lift weights in the High School gym.  There was a “Universal Gym” that I could use.  I wasn’t a member of the school football team as I had to work after school. Some of my friends owned real sets of “free weights”.  They would have a weight bench outside in the back yard, and I might go out and lift with them. My parents had bought me a cheap set of “free weights”. These consisted of weights, not out of cast iron or steel, but rather of plastic disks filled with cement.  They did not last as long as their more expensive steel counterparts, but they did do their purpose.

I kept them in our basement.  They sat alongside the furnace.  Next to it was my father’s old childhood shoebox (he used to go out and shine shoes for a buck or two when he was a boy). It still had his shoe polish, brushes, cloth and other tools of the trade. It was painted light green, for some reason now lost in the mists of time. On the top of it was a platform, tilted at a 45 degree angle, where the customer could place their shoe so that he can shine it.

Both my weights, and my father’s shoebox, sat in front of my great grandfather’s toolbox. He was a carpenter who would make furniture.  Back in the “old days”, he would haul the toolbox out to the countryside.  His potential customers would judge his skill at furniture making by looking at his toolbox.  They would note the condition and craftsmanship of his tools.  As such, if the tools were well maintained and clean, and the workmanship was of high quality, he would obtain work to make commissioned furniture.  Back in his generation, at that time, most of his work was custom furniture to fit the needs of the local townspeople in Germany and Poland in and around the Bug river area.

There in the basement were three generations of male tools and brick-a-brack. Our female companions never cared too much for the emotional value and labor that these items represented to us men.  They only appreciated the money that was derived from efforts using them. (And, for me, NOPE I just never became a famous body builder.)

“Beginning in the 1980s, American childhood changed. For a variety of reasons—including shifts in parenting norms, new academic expectations, increased regulation, technological advances, and especially a heightened fear of abduction (missing kids on milk cartons made it feel as if this exceedingly rare crime was rampant)—children largely lost the experience of having large swaths of unsupervised time to play, explore, and resolve conflicts on their own. 

This has left them more fragile, more easily offended, and more reliant on others. They have been taught to seek authority figures to solve their problems and shield them from discomfort, a condition sociologists call “moral dependency.”

-The Fragile Generation

Roles for us men were different than roles for women. Because, after all, we are quite different.

(Quick recap for those of you who didn’t learn this in first grade. There are two genders. They are boys and girls. If there is a mixture of genitalia on a person, they have a rare condition known as a hermaphrodite. The construction of other genders beside these precious few is not biologically sound, and is used as a political construct for greedy people to get power. If you follow their narrative, you will eventually get hurt.)

Men and Women

Men and women are different. That is a good thing. Different is wonderful.

Television role models for women were different.

Women had a different series of standards and interests.  At that time, women were regarded and cherished as “different” from men.  Men and women were not, never were, and never will be, equal. 

Heroines for women included Elly Mae, June Cleaver, Mary Anne, Anne Marie, Samantha, Lisa Douglas, and Jeannie. They were all women who acted like women and lived their lives on their own terms. From my discussions with women (Attribution below.), they all seem to agree that television promoted woman as strong leaders.

Consider Elly Mae from the television show The Beverly Hillbillies. She’s pretty but doesn’t know it and doesn’t care, can talk to animals and beat the living crap out of boys if she wants to.

Or, June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver. From what I hear, June Cleaver was the perfect woman. “How fabulous were her clothes? Her little suburban life? Her shiny appliances? Her squeaky clean kids? Her “hunkahunka” husband? Her cocktail hour and her perfect little dinners?”

Mary Anne, from Gilligan’s Island was wholesome, nice, pretty, athletic, fab body, smart, and loyal.

Samantha from Bewitched was beautiful, magical, so in love with Derwood that she’d give up everything that makes her special, could get anything she wanted by wiggling her nose.

Fun and Games

One hobby that we loved to do was go “dirt biking” which involved a specialized motorcycle that was specifically designed for “off road” use. It would not have a head light or turn signals, and would be lighter.  We would ride these “beasts” up and down all through the woods and the “boney dumps” (strip mined regions devoid of trees). Good times. We just “kicked it up in the sticks”. Why is everything so kid-safe today?

I had many friends who had pickup trucks.  Typically they were older vehicles with many dents, dings and rusty panels. At that time, CB Radios were very popular.  It would be on and we would listen for “Smokey Alerts” (Police Traps). Another fun activity was to go “mud slingin’”.  Here, we would often take a “beater” truck and run through the local bogs and swamps with it.  As one could expect, the truck would “sling mud” everywhere. We would often keep a cooler of beer in the back (Typically in cans.  Our parents drank from bottles.), and drink and party to loud rock music, or (yes) country music.

Here’s a plug for Donald Ray Williams who died on September 8, 2017.

Gas was cheap. Food was cheaper. A dollar could buy you five McDonalds hamburgers, while a music album would cost you $20 (though, it might only have eight songs on it).

Music and Television

Television was a big part of our life.

It is difficult for someone in this day and age to appreciate the grand influence of television had on society during the 1960’s and the 1970’s.  Today we realize that everything is tied, one way or the other, to the Internet.  Well, at that time period, everything (while not “tied”) was most certainly revolving around the television set.  Oh, it was a much simpler time because the government controlled the media, there were only a handful of media companies, and no one knew about the ties between the two. It was an open secret.

Music and televisions were big.

We watched Walter Cronkite on the evening news, enjoyed “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman”, “Three’s Company”, reruns of “It’s about time”, and weekly installments of “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island” on television.  Also included such classics as “The Gong Show”, Reruns of “Adam-12”, and “The Brady Bunch” / “The Partridge Family”, and other retro-1960’s shows like ‘The Mod Squad”, “Julia”, and “Maude” were still getting air time.  So we watched them along with other 1960’s and 1970’s era shows. Of course, we all loved The Three Stooges.

Honorable mention to television shows that influenced me personally at this time included “The Time Tunnel”, “Star Trek” (Of course), “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, “Supercar”, and “Fireball XL-5”.  Finally, “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits” defined our generation at that time.  The cold war influences were all blended together with the emerging post nuclear sciences that indeed really shaped our opinions and thoughts on life.

“I had a .22 Bolt Action Rifle and single shot .410 Shotgun when I was eight years old. I also rode my Schwinn Stingray without Wearing a Bike Helmet. I’m not even going to get into the many years my Parents drove me and my Brother around in a four wheeled death machine with no Seat Belts and a Dashboard made of steel. How I’ve lived to tell the tale is obviously a miracle.

Did I mention the Chemistry Set I got for Christmas when I was ten years old? Isn’t Mercury fun to play with?’

- 2/3/2018, 2:56:02 PM by Kickass Conservative

Television was a staple for my generation, but that was not the case for my parents’ generation. We absolutely lived off it.  They used it to augment their personal activities.  Whether it was knitting (my mother), or smoking a pipe and drinking a glass of red wine or cocktail (my father) my parents considered television to be a supplement to their lives.

Music was always playing and the televisions set was always on. My father would come home from work at the Steel Mill, and my mother would prepare him a cocktail while dinner was being made.  We would have the “late edition” of the Pittsburgh Press (newspaper) delivered, and he would read it in “his” chair (all men need to have “their” chair) as he drank his preferred beverage. We kids would watch the television.  When it was time to eat, we all would put what we were doing aside and go to the dining room. There we would have our daily meal together.

Yes, we collected albums, and listened to them on record players, or very expensive audio components known as “turntables”, “receivers”, “amplifiers”, and “tape decks”.  (We would even buy an album containing 10 lousy songs because we liked one track.)  Music, then as now, was a big part of our life.

Television was our primary source of entertainment. Everyone had one, and we all watched it.  Many households had the television  on most of the day. Though, for the most part, we only had access to from four to five channels of various quality. (This was before cable services.)

Is that a Chicago album I see? How many albums can you, the reader, identify? I see Alice Cooper’s Muscle of Love, Neil Young’s Harvest, and a Three Dog Night, a Boston with a BTO nearby.

Briefly, we had an “8 track” player installed in our family car.  Here we could switch between four (4) locations in the “album” so we could rapidly listen to a different song if we did not like the one that was playing.  We had a collection of these in the car.  As I recall, we had a “Jesus Christ Superstar”, and an “America”, and an “Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”.  The problem was that the inside of the car got hot, and the “8 track” tapes were made out of ABS plastic, so sometimes they would melt in the heat of the car If you left them on the dashboard.

Belief

At that time, we believed the media.  We believed what we saw.  We believed in the government, and we believed in the promises that were made to us.

We believed the Democrats when they told us that our social security money (taxes) went into a “lock box” (actual term as they used) and would never be “touched” (used for other purposes).  Then, right after they made those promises, they went around and started handing the money away to non-contributors like candy. Anyone could get it. Just like pensions. All gone. Bye bye.

WTF?

We believed that when we paid state taxes that they would go into fixing the terrible “pot holes” that littered Pennsylvania roads.

We believed that they would not go into the big unions of Philadelphia that operated like mob bosses of yore. But we were wrong.  We were really, really, wrong.

Instead, the fat mob bosses just got fatter.  The rich guys “on the Hill” (The Mayor and his toadies.) got richer, and our money seemed to get smaller and smaller. Every year the costs for things increased. Every year we were told that this was “normal” and we needed to accept things, but they “had a plan”.  Always, the plan turned out to take more money from our wallets, and put it into theirs.

My father, a staunch life-long Democrat strongly believed that once the entire state was controlled by Democrats that the world would be pure, easy and everything would be perfect. He really believed in what they promised. Even when it was found that they had stolen his pension. Even when it was found out that his 401(K) was looted. Even when he found out that they “lost” the monies that they promised to fix the roads with. He still believed.

Pennsylvania “pot holes” still never got fixed.

A Simpler Time

We might have been “simple”, but at least we possessed some “common sense”.  We at least knew what a boy was and what a girl was. That is unlike the confused children of today. (And, wow are they confused!)  We knew that if you possessed a penis you were a boy.  If you had a vagina, you were a girl.  If you couldn’t tell the difference you were confused.  Though at that time we would of simply called you a fucking idiot, and laughed at you until you ran home crying to your mother.

If you wore a mask to cover your face, you were a bad guy and doing something reprehensible.  (Something, I might add, that you are ashamed to associate with your face.)  This included Bank Robbers, Train Robbers, Stagecoach Robbers, the KKK, and the Black Panthers. They were not looked upon as righteous heroes such as what is being portrayed in the media today with the BLM, SWJ, and Antifa movements. They were considered criminals.

My First Job

I well remember the first time that I got a job.  I had just turned 14. It was in the local grocery store, and I was hired at minimum wage to stock shelves and bag groceries.  I used to wear a white short sleeved shirt and a red bow tie.  Over this, I wore an apron. My hair must be over my ears and not touch my collar. No face hair was permitted.

I was ready for my first job. However, before I could work, I needed to get a “social security” number.  Here is my experience about that event…

I asked my father, why do I need a social security number?  His response was, you need it because you need to save some money away for when you get old.  This will help you accomplish that.

We were riding in the car, and as we crossed over the East Brady bridge I looked at him, and asked him; “OK, I understand.  But, why does the United States government have to do this?  Can’t I just save the money on my own?”

He just shook his head.  “This is the way it is son.  You have to give part of your money away to the government.  They know better than you do, and they will take care of you when you get older…”

My trustworthy father told me the way things work in the United States. He said the United States government will take care of ME when I get older…

I AM older.  My government ain’t doin’ JACK SHIT.

It was my father’s generation, and his father’s generation that got us in the financial position that the United States is in today.  Reread his answer.  At the time… he really…REALLY believed what he told me. He was a life-long Democrat, and to the day he died he could not understand why, with all the taxes being collected, that the government could not (or would not) help the common citizen.

Back then, taxes were much lower than they are today. Yet, I well remember my surprise when I received my first paycheck.  I expected to be paid in full, and was surprised at the size of the amount deduced from my paycheck…

It didn’t matter what job I was doing, the taxes always had to be set aside. No matter what the media said, I just never was able to get any of the “freebies” (reference law#40 on the 48 Laws of Power)  and deductions that was promised to me.

I was 11 when I had my first job. Summer job working at a restaurant. I’d be out by 12:30pm and would head to the beach with my friends.

My first pay check was $236 for 40 hours. I’d figured around $280 and was expecting it. I took my paycheck to the manager. I explained to him there were several deductions on it which I felt deprived me of my due compensation for the work I’d done. He explained how it was normal and everyone had it on their paychecks. He even showed my his pay stub with much larger deductions. I was shocked. It was theft. How could all these people put up with this?

I concluded -who steals from an 11 year old?

This is the point at which I became a conservative.


-Justa on Free Republic

Later, when I worked in the coal mines, there was talk about credits for solar panels. Even President Jimmy Carter put solar panels in the White House. But, that credit was not for me.

Then, when I was working in the steel mills, our union steward told us that if we voted Democrat that we could pretty much guarantee a lifetime pension and a great future for ourselves and our families. That never materialized either. My father was particularly upset with this change of events. Sigh.

When we were on the Forest Fire Crew, we would discuss the “rebates” that were promised to us by (then President) Jimmy Carter.  Nah. They NEVER materialized. Maybe some privileged group or major Democrat voting block got some, but we never saw anything. I guess that we weren’t important enough, or maybe it was because we just didn’t complain loud enough.

When I watch the news today, I can well see why those in power don’t want the youth of today to read and know their history. They want to keep them fat, dumb and stupid.

As I get older, I can plainly see the same old “bag of tricks” being recycled for use on an ignorant public. Yeah… yeah…. Vote Democrat and we will fix everything this time. You can trust us! Yah… yeah…

If you speak out of line, or don’t follow the official script, you are “off the reservation“, and will be attacked. Look at what is going on with Kayne when he does not follow the script.

Oh, and the Republicans are just as bad. Don’t think that they are going to get a free pass from me. In my mind they are every bit as bad as the Democrats. But at least they are pretending to try. The fact is that both Republicans and Democrats are working from the exact same playbook; Rule # 31 & 32 of the 48 laws of power.

Families & Vices

In those days, parents were responsible for their children, and if a child misbehaves the entire family would lose face. Parents made sure that children behaved. This was before the coddling movements of the 1980’s where everyone gets a participation prize at school, and those that excel are punished.

The popular television shows reinforced this narrative. If you misbehave, your family would suffer.  Consider the television shows “The Brady Bunch”, “The Partridge Family”,  and Happy Days”.

Television commercials promoted both cigarettes and booze.  The hard liquor ban has been in effect since 1936 for radio and 1948 for television.  The ban on selling “soft liquor” (beer) has been a “darling child” of the progressive left since the days of Bill Clinton.  At the time of this writing the fight is still active.  Perhaps, by the time this gets read the liberal progressive Democrats will succeed in banning it.

The “vices” of the past were once considered unsavory habits. Today, they are considered to be serious crimes.  Indeed, it was just simply “fine” to smoke, drink and have a cocktail at lunch. Though there were limitations; for instance only Management and Sales could go for a “three martini lunch”, the rest of us had to limit it to one or two beers.

The phrases “I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” Or, “I’d rather fight than quit” were famous catch phrases for cigarette advertisements on television at that time.

Cartoon characters smoke, drank, fought and were very politically incorrect. Being homosexual was frowned upon, and there were absolutely NO portrayals of them in the media. No one knew what a LGBT person was, nor cared about it either. I ask the reader this; have you seen a gay person on “The Jetsons”, “The Flintstones”, “Deputy Dog”, “Captain Kangeroo”, “Lost in Space”, “Petticoat Junction”, “Hee Haw”, “F Troop”, or “Ba Ba Black Sheep”?

Now, today, you cannot find a single one without one. Even the science fiction staples such as “Star Trek” and “The Orville” all have multiple characters presented.

If you got pregnant before getting married, it was frowned upon, and while abortion was available, its use was discouraged. The social norms were reinforced by the media. They were not trying to redefine them.

The Three Martini Lunch

I suppose that some explanations are in order.

For there are many things that I grew up that were normal, that is considered outrageous today. One of them is the three martini lunch. The three-martini lunch is a term used in the United States to describe a “leisurely, indulgent lunch enjoyed by businesspeople”. Back in the day, this was a common enough practice. If you were in management, part of a sales team, or even a supervisor, these kinds of lunches were quite common. Indeed, many times, the boss would come back after 3:30pm from a long lunch and be quite “sauced”.

Now, according to Wikipedia, it is ONLY a perception.

“It refers to a common belief that many people in such professions have enough leisure time and wherewithal to consume more than one martini during the work day.”

Ah. Nope, my dear clueless millennial. It was not a perception. It was a reality. Drinking at work was commonplace. At least in the steel, coal, and appliance industries it was. I don’t know about the other industries.

Now, since business matters are usually discussed at them, three-martini lunches can be considered a business expense. Of course  (which includes travel, meals, etc.) and thus can qualify for a tax deduction. The people involved would remember to collect their receipts and turn them in at the end of the month for reimbursement. They would get money back, and the receipts were kept in a ledger to account for all the costs related to business expenses.

In those days, all managers, and of course sales staff, had an entertainment budget. The manager would have free latitude in determination of how to spend the money, and it was often considered a perk. The manager could spend it with employees to offer them incentives and to build up the working relationships, or use it for work related tasks with other companies and people.

Wikipedia does have it right in that the three-martini lunch is no longer common in the United States. However, it is, thankfully, quite common outside of it. Yeah! Baby!

“The three-martini lunch is no longer common practice for several reasons, including the implementation of "fitness for duty" programs by numerous companies, the decreased tolerance of alcohol use (Hum… speak for yourself), a general decrease in available leisure time for business executives, an increase in the size of the martini, and a decrease in the size of the tax deduction.”

America for the modern businessman certainly blows!

President John F. Kennedy (D) called for a crackdown on such tax breaks in 1961, but nothing was done at the time.

Then another democrat, Jimmy Carter (D)  condemned the practice during the 1976 presidential campaign. Carter portrayed it as part of the unfairness in the nation’s tax laws, claiming that the working class was subsidizing the “$50 martini lunch”. (Of course, use the “class struggle” to divide Americans. It’s a time-honored Democrat tactic. The theory is because a “rich businessman” could write off this type of lunch as a business expense.)

By the time Bill Clinton (D) came to office, there wasn’t much that still needed to be done.  So he concentrated in the elimination of all vices from the work environment (except for elected officials, of course) and the banning of cigarettes, and drinking proceeded apace.

Not to be outdone, Obama (D) started to tie health plans to tax breaks.

The only people who still had three-martini lunches were the “fat cats” in Washington, D.C.. They were “different” don’t ya know, and laws don’t apply to them. Most especially if they are Democrats.

Cigarettes

When I was a kid one of the most popular marketing brands was for Camel cigarettes. I can remember wanting to “walk a mile for a Camel” although I was too young to appreciate it’s meaning. This was a “dated” slogan, as it dated back to 1921.  Everyone smoked, except me. LOL!

There were cigarette vending machines everywhere including the high school. It sat right next to the Coke machine in the school cafeteria. The vending machine had a long lever that you pulled outwards to discharge a pack of cigarettes. Matches were common everywhere, and many stores and restaurants gave away free matches with their address on it.

In the 1990’s during the Bill Clinton presidency, it changed to the “Joe Camel” advertising promotion that became wildly popular.  (Since the Democrat party had no way to skim off some of the huge profits that the advertising promotion generated, they went ”full on” to ban it.  After all, if they couldn’t get their cut in the profits, no one could get anything.  Oh, they promoted the ban to help “the children”.  But of course, what we now know about the Clinton pay-for-play schemes, we know this to be painfully true. But, like everything else, this is just my opinion.)

I guess that I am full of “nonsense” opinions.  Right?  Well, look at this from my point of view then…

• In March 1992, the “Coalition on Smoking or Health” (a Democrat Progressive social-engineering platform) petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to ban Joe Camel.
• However in June 1994, the commission decided not to take action against R.J. Reynolds, because the record did not show that Joe was attracting kids to cigarettes. After all, if you want to ban something you have to show a reason behind it.
• This need; to find reasons to ban things, all ended during the presidency of Bill Clinton. (And look at the nonsense it hath wrought.) Bill Clinton implemented law #33 of the 48 Laws of Power.
• In May 1997, after a change in personnel (the Bill Clinton administration changed the staff at the FTC precisely because they did not do as he wished) but no change in the relevant evidence, the FTC reversed itself, voting to seek an order that would keep Joe out of children’s sight.

Yup, you throw out the people who are “not on the same team”, and put your guys in. This is true for all politicians, not just Democrats.

Though, President Trump is kind of slow in learning this political lesson…

Why did it get banned?  The evidence did not show a connection. The change in makeup of the FTC was changed by Bill Clinton, that is a fact.  Why?  To “save the children”, from what?  Where is the proof?  I am not, will not and cannot buy those excuses.  Especially related to a mega-rich uber-billionaire and his family who has no obvious sources of income except a presidential salary and well known for their famous “pay-me-money” for access and favors schemes.

Joe’s critics did not need evidence. Wasn’t it obvious that R.J. Reynolds was targeting children? Joe Camel was a cartoon, after all. To which R.J. Reynolds replied that Snoopy sells life insurance and the Pink Panther pitches fiberglass insulation, but no one assumes these products are aimed at kids. The company insisted that hip, irreverent Joe was designed to attract young adults who considered Camel an old man’s cigarette.

Find out on your own.  Take the time to find out why.

The demise of advertising for cigarettes on television, as well as banning cute advertisements aimed at youth (Joe Camel), was part of an anti-smoking initative initiated by the Democrat Party and specifically Bill Clinton (D) in the early 1990’s.  I suppose they wouldn’t have gone so aggressively against the “big” tobacco companies if they contributed more money to the Democrat party election coffers.  But that is a different subject for a different time.

The way this works is obvious to everyone. Especially today. If you want to keep the SJW, Antifa, BLM, and busybodies off your back, you pay them off.

In America you PAYOFF the busybodies.

Furniture

We had furniture that was made out of real hardwood.  The cheap softwood furniture started to replace the long-lasting and durable (and very beautiful) hardwoods in the 1970’s.  This lasted for a decade, and then the 1980’s hit. Everyone was trying to “make a buck”. As a result even cheaper furniture started to make it’s appearance.  This consisted of plywood furniture.  The plywood would have a laminated layer of nice attractive hardwood.

This lasted for about a decade, up until the decade of Bill Clinton. At that time, the uncontrolled spending by Congress reached new levels, and the resulting hit on the value of the worker’s dollar was substantial. Wal-Mart became very popular and powerful.  As it offered the cheapest products for families trying to maintain their standard of living while the value of the dollar collapsed.  This resulted in the cheap “sawdust and glue” furniture (Particleboard) that is so common today.

Lawyers didn’t yet advertise for class action law suits. Not until the Clinton presidency.  That presidency implemented so many social revisions that are too numerous to mention.  Some may argue that it was certainly for the best.  But, I argue the oppose.  All you need to do is look at what constitutes a playground in America today to see the fallout from this folly.  All you need to do is take a bite out of a tomato that tastes like a cardboard box filled with bland water. All you need to do is try to speak your mind today and see the vitriol and hatred directed back at you.

Indeed, restrictions on one’s ability to do what they please is a restriction on FREEDOM, and is tyrannical in nature and substance. No matter what the (stated) intention was..

Anyways, while there were many things changing over the years, one of the most notable was the phone sex hot lines that were all the rage during late-night commercials. These things were just a passing fad that made some people enormously wealthy in a very… very short period of time.

The networks were dominated by the big three; NBC, CBS, and ABC and they controlled everything that we saw and many things that we read. There was no Internet, if we wanted to watch something out of the ordinary we would watch Public Broadcasting, or one of the small local startups that tended to appear and disappear after a few months. (Thanks to them, instead of the dominant American networks, I was introduced to Bennie Hill, Monty Python, and belly-dancing.)

“If you’re over 40, chances are good that you had scads of free time as a child—after school, on weekends, over the summer. And chances are also good that, if you were asked about it now, you’d go on and on about playing in the woods and riding your bike until the streetlights came on.

Today many kids are raised like veal. Only 13 percent of them even walk to school. Many who take the bus wait at the stop with parents beside them like bodyguards. For a while, Rhode Island was considering a bill that would prohibit children from getting off the bus in the afternoon if there wasn’t an adult waiting to walk them home. This would have applied until seventh grade.”

-The Fragile Generation

Everything was different.

Politics

Politics have made America what it is today. Ugh!

All of the interns that I get from the United States are walking progressive robots. Which is fine, as long as they do their work. Just do you job, eh? The problem is that they have no idea what work is. They think it is talking about their feelings over coffee. What the fuck has happened to America?

Here is what work is;

• I tell you what to do, and you do it.
• You do it to the best of your ability.
• You ask questions if you are not sure.
• Once your assignment is completed, you have someone review your work.
• Then you ask for more work.
• Then you are paid or rewarded for your efforts.

Somehow, the young folk out of the United States never learned this. Their ideas about what work is looks more a scene from the television show “Friends”, or the inside of a coffee shop. Maybe they feel at ease parroting Ellen Degeneres. Many are totally useless at work. It’s their education.

You know, the entire reason for this post was due to a young intern. She had the gall to suggest that I (her supervisors boss’s boss) was in my role because I was “privileged” growing up. She had the fucking gall to tell me that I didn’t know about their “struggles”. Her “struggles”…. Give me a fucking break will you!

Well, I didn’t hold back in my response. I’ll tell you what. She probably has nightmares about me now. (Sigh). Look, life is full of good things and bad things. But life is what YOU experience. It is not what you hear about, read about, or watch in a movie. It is what you personally experience. Unless you have gone through what I had to endure to be where I am today, then SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Politics are both silly and dangerous. I wouldn’t be so fearful except that politics is used to change governments. Here is the basic recipe;

• They take a stable government and turn it into a “democracy”.
• Then, they obtain power by manipulation of the people. (This has many facets.)
• Finally, they devolve into tyrannical governments.
• Once in power, these governments then turn on their own people. They turn against them.
• The most important step towards tyranny; you disarm the people.
• Then you separate the people into groups; favored and unfavored.
• Then finally, you kill them in batches. Know your history.

Which is why, those of us who actually READ, support the second amendment.

Those that want to change the government are often well-meaning, but easily manipulated by tricksters. Those “tricksters” often manipulate their followers to obtain their ultimate goals of power, control, wealth and fame. Then, once they have obtained power, they kill their top leadership and their top followers. This happens each and every time. It happened in Germany, in China, in North Korea, and in Cuba. The techniques are well known and well documented. If the reader is interested in this, maybe you too want to control your own nation someday, you can read about it in the book the 28 laws of Power.

Politics never reflect reality.

Politics were black and white. Democrats supported the governments of Communist Russia, and Communist China.  (That is one of the reasons why all of the old symbols of the Democrats were red.)  Even the Democrat / Confederate “battle flag” was red with the crossed bars. The KKK was, and for the most part still is, a Democrat organization. Let’s not forget that the Grand Kleagle (LOL!) was Senator Robert Byrd Democrat from West Virginia! I’ll wager a bet that you all didn’t know that.

It’s one of top secrets of the DNC.

Secrets

There are many such secrets. Secrets abound, and it’s not just politically motivated secrets only. Consider the Clinton body count (terribly underestimated in size and scope). The secret about when President Trump exploded all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons under the mountains. Oh, and the Obama funding for the anti-White race war in South Africa. Oh, you haven’t heard about that one yet… well, you will…

You will…

My father, a life-long Democrat, constantly talked about how “one day” the Democrats will get in power and change things.  Yessur!  The people will rise up and the “little guy” (himself and all his white middle-class friends) would get a chance to “sit at the table”. Hah! Was he ever so disappointed in President Obama. I think it broke his heart. 

Now, even though he is long dead and buried, he still, to this day continues to vote Democrat…

Democrats were for free speech EVERYWHERE by EVERYONE.  (Speech was more than just talk, but included behavior.  Indeed, Democrats wanted to “let it all hang out”.) Yikes…! At that time, it helped further their agenda.

Which was, and still is, a phased plan to rewrite the Constitution.

• First step…claim that the Constitution is a “living document” subject to change. Make it so that the rules are constantly and easily bent.
• Second step… make changes to “improve” things. Put your own judicial interpeters in power. Have them implement rules to fit your narrative only.
• Third step… repeat the narrative over and over and over. So that everyone calls it a Democracy. You know that you are “over the hump” when elected officials start to parrot this.
• Then, fourth step… change a Democracy into a Social Democracy. Like the Nazi’s, or Communist China, or the Soviet Union.
• Fifth Step. Make it nice and “Progressive”. Say you are doing it for just causes. Limit speech. Have a nice long list of things that you cannot say or talk about. Reference law #32 of the 48 laws of Power.
• Sixth Step. Then the most important step… disarm the population. They can’t have their “pitchforks” and “torches” .  That’s right, get rid of all those guns (then see what happens).  Take every opportunity, get the children to march for it. Punish them if they don’t go along with the plan.
• Seventh Step. Finally,… setup a rulership of the 1% presiding over a disarmed ignorant mass. Make sure the police have the latest in military technology. Call them something different, like “protectors”, “guardians”, or “peace officers”. Make the names fierce like the SS, or IRS. Use the military against your own people. Even if you are not permitted to, do it anyways.
• Eighth and Final Step. Once you have control, you must RULE! Show everyone just who is Boss. Go full-on Negan!

Politics

Now politics is such a large part of American culture, that I just can’t leave it out.

Here’s the truth. It doesn’t matter if it is 1970 or 2010. Republicans were just sick and tired of all the political nonsense and wanted everyone to leave them alone and stop paying so much in taxes.  However, since the Democrats controlled the media they controlled popular culture.  No matter how one felt, the barrage of progressive indoctrination was incessant. Even the music that we enjoyed and listened to (at that time) was interspersed with progressive propaganda.

Democrats in the 1970’s followed time proved socialist techniques. They supported peaceful protests and “sit downs” for such things as labor unions (automotive, steel, government and education), and free access to the soft drink “Tab”. Republicans wanted to stop the apparently never-ending cycle of “walkouts”, “strikes” and “labor organization” (for substantial pay increases).

It was always attack, and Republicans defend.

Attack… defend.  Attack… defend.

Attack… defend.

By the mid-1980’s, a union steel worker (high school graduate, with no subsequent post-education) with ten years in the union, would be able to make almost two times the salary of a degreed engineer with ten years’ experience. It was really outrageous. (Yeah, but for my generation, it wasn’t so great. After they worked ten years or so and were laid off, they were fucked.)

Fucked over…big time.

Hey! You “I always vote Democrat because they will protect me and give me a pension”, how’s that working out for you? Now that non-Americans can get your jobs? It feel really good? It feels like your have been vindicated? Eh?

Anyways, all of this was pretty hard for industry at that time, where the production line could shut down at a moment’s notice on the most trivial of reasons, and the factory couldn’t do anything about it (that was until globalism…) The Democrats used the unions because they represented a huge voting block. They always manipulated huge blocks of people. Now, here today we know exactly just how far that utility lasts. So, the lesson here is that the Democrats turned their backs on the unions so that they could take more, in bigger bundles from foreign governments. It was all in the name of “Globalism”.

My father could NEVER get over that harsh reality.

Democrats wanted to burn bras (which was something even my mother did) and I never had a problem with it either, and have free love with everyone (and everything).  That also sounded good to me too. Who doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Who doesn’t like sex? Sex is fun.

Things were so different then. It was a different time indeed.

For today, if you are not from an urban ghetto, or a member of one of the (approved) “oppressed minorities” you are maligned. And, for the record, we all think it’s terrible inaccurate and very, very unfair. So when you are trying to label and box Trump supporters into such things as “uneducated, white males”, or “deplorables”, we all take particular offense at that.

We are not. So shut the fuck up.

 “The schools you send your kids to have been trying to inculcate your kids with all kinds of rotgut, perverted junk under the guise of enlightenment. And you’ve had to sit there and take it. 

You’ve had to sit there and listen to the never-ending, increasing profane rants and having all of this stuff pushed right in your face and down your throat. 

You’ve been forced to shut up. You’ve been forced to say nothing in reaction for fear of losing your job or being chastised, humiliated, or what have you, in social media.

You’ve been forced to accept the cultural rot that the American left has imposed on you and your kids. 

You have to sit around and listen to your religion be mocked. Your religion is laughed at, your religion is made fun of and criticized, openly and with malice, and it is done with impunity. People who mock and applaud and insult you and your religion are praised as brilliant artists. 

You are called hicks. You’re called white racists.

You’re called bigots. Sometimes they call you prudes. Sometimes they call you Bible thumpers. 

You’re an idiot. You’re small-minded. You’re a moral twit. 

And these are the people having a fit over Trump saying something? These people who have put themselves in charge of infiltrating crap throughout our culture and our society? These people who have been responsible for injecting drivel and bilge throughout our society claim to be upset and outraged and offended over the use of a word — slang for a toilet — by the president of the United States, in a private meeting?”

-Rush Limbaugh

Anyways, all the seeds of political unrest was planted during the 1970’s. The seeds are sprouting up today, and they aren’t pretty. It is sad.

It’s sad, but you know what, I no longer live in the USA so it’s not my problem.

You’ve got Democrats and you’ve got Republicans. They are both identical creatures with similar objectives. They pretend to be ideological, but they really aren’t. They just act that way. When it benefits them, they simply switch political parties. That way their objectives are maintained.

Yeah. It’s not my problem.

College

Then, college was where an intelligent and scholarly person would migrate to after high school. At that time, only a few people could afford to go to college, and they were very picky as to whom they would select.  At that time, the wealthiest, and the smartest went to college.  Then, after the implementation of the G.I. bill, room was made for those who earned their “place at the table” through merit (risking their lives in war). Thus, obtaining a college degree was significant and factored large in the overall standard of living that one could hope for.

That is totally the opposite of what college is today, where EVERYONE can get a college degree.  It is  where the content of the degree is so watered down as to become meaningless.  It is where those people whom graduate have to fight a flood of entry-level applicants for a scarce few positions. It hardly seems worth the time, and doesn’t seem to be worth the money, or the investment.

That is because, today, it just isn’t worth it. Looking at the big picture, it is almost like colleges and universities have become large institutions that turn young people into debt slaves – serfs. Unless they quickly obtain a high paying position, they might never leave that role.

Maybe that is the reason why President Obama made college so accessible… I wonder… Using it [1] as a propaganda machine, and [2] to turn the majority of the educated American masses into debt slaves.

For more links on this subject;

• The “Gig Economy” is the new term for Debt Serfdom.
• Property Taxes pave the way to Serfdom
• Are We Entering an Era of Postmodern Serfdom?
• Modern Serfdom
• Modern ‘Debt Serfdom’ vs. the Enviable Leisure Time of a Medieval Peasant
• Escaping Serfdom
• GM’s Cartoon Version of von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”
• The Road to Serfdom and Modern Liberalism
• Hayek – Road to Serfdom – Summary

I went to college, as that was what young upwardly mobile families did in the 1960’s and 1970’s. For me, I had always wanted to be an astronaut. My only way to become one was through hard discipline, a strong technical background, and a clear vision.

Leaving the Mines to Better Myself

I applied and came in second place for the Air Force Academy. My grades were outstanding, and our scores were tied. Exactly tied. However, my family apparently didn’t have enough political pull, I guess. So my friend Brian got the open slot. (You know, if you two take the same battery of tests every weekend for six months, you do eventually get to become friends.)

It was a disappointment. But, I picked myself up off the floor. Dusted myself off and went to plan “B”.

The reader should never take on the unrealistic belief that if they work hard, and be careful, and do everything right, and have everything go in their favor that things WILL work out to their advantage.  There are no guarantees. Truth is that there are always things and aspects of any particular given situation that is beyond one’s control. These aspects may or may not be in your favor.  Indeed it is quite possible to work hard, and make no mistakes and still lose.  That is life.

I had been saving all the money that I earned in the coalmines and at the steel mills so that I could be able to afford to go to college. I knew that I didn’t have enough for a full four years, but I did have enough for the first two. I had hoped that maybe I could supplement it by working part time while I attended university. My plan was to sell my car, buy a motorcycle and work part time to fund my education.

I applied to MIT and was accepted. I was going to enter their aeronautical engineering program, but at the last minute changed my mind and went to Syracuse University instead. They had an innovative aerospace engineering program that really appealed to me. They also offered to employ me part time as well (which was something that was not available to me at MIT). The program that I would eventually enter was a joint mechanical / aerospace engineering degree, which would specialize in the thermodynamic properties of rocket engines, and spacecraft design. So, I went to Syracuse. I went orange.

My dream was not dead. Just dormant.

My plan was to attend college, become a Rocket Scientist, and then enter another branch of service to obtain a flight slot. That way I could then eventually become an astronaut. It was a simple plan. All I needed to do was study hard classes, with a degree of persistence, all would work out. I would need to keep my focus clear and then with the skills, training and discipline, I would then enter one of the rare flight slots.

Conclusion

Well, I did attend university, and I actually did become a “Rocket Scientist”. I graduated on a sunny May day in 1981. My class was the first graduating class within the “big Syracuse marshmallow” (as opposed to the”big glowing green caterpillar”.)

The reader should know, that I also was accepted by, and joined the US Navy and trained as a Naval Aviator. (I passed the testing for a NFO, but my scores were so exceptional that they opened up a pilot slot for me. Woo Woo!) Indeed, shortly after I graduated, I found myself in the middle of training for a Naval Aviator down in NAS Pensacola, Florida.

All of my goals after years of hard work and labor started to finally pay off.

These are stories for another time. However, let it be known that opportunities to go into space DID present themselves to me. And I, well, I TOOK the opportunities presented to me. It was my dream, and I would never let anyone steal my dream away from me. So, yeah, I did get to explore the outer reaches, it’s just not at all what I expected…

And, as I have stated earlier, that will be a story for another day.

Take Aways

What can we learn from my experiences growing up?

• I have strong opinions based on my experiences.
• Growing up in the 1960s and the 1970s does not match the current narrative as promoted by the American media. Cherish the thought!
• People had more freedom than they do today.
• People ate better than they do today.
• People played better than they do today.
• Furniture was made out of higher quality materials than they are today.
• Water used to be free.
• Democrats and Republicans are identical. Don’t let their verbal “policy positions” distract you.
• I had a knife when I was six years old.
• I had long hair, had a white “choker collar”, wore bell-bottom jeans and drove a orange GTO in my Senior Year.
• I like pizza.

All this should indicate that my experiences are totally different from what young people experience today.

Which means that when I talk to an intern, I need to explain to them some basics that they should have learned while they were growing up. The fact that they did not learn them, and that the families and the schools have both failed them is a troublesome worry. For they are not equipped to compete globally for any work at all. Let alone basic janitorial work.

Outrageous Then.	Outrageous Now.
Being Gay, or LGBT.	Drinking cocktails at lunch.
Not working until you are thirty.	Working at 14 years old.
Getting ANY assistance from government.	Having a free glass of water with your meal.
Free condoms to students.	Cigarette vending machines in school.
Paid cable service.	Free Torrents.
Not having a Christmas Tree during Christmas.	Halloween costumes depicting black people.
Not punishing a child for screaming in a restaurant.	Punishing a child in public.
Paying more than $0.10 for a cup of coffee.	Paying less than $2.00 for a cup of coffee.
Not being a member of the local lodge.	Having your wife make you a cocktail after work.
Going to school on the first day of hunting season.	Smoking in a restaurant.
Having your parents watch you play.	Unsupervised play.
Pumping your own gas.	Full-service gas stations.
Manditory blood collections at work.	Refusing to carry a cell-phone on you.

Comments on Free Republic

In July 2018, this article was presented on Free Republic for comments. You can read the comments HERE.

FAQ

Q: Why is Senior Year important in High School?
A: Senior Year is the last year that you can be a child. You are nearly an adult. You might have a girlfriend or boyfriend. You might have a car, a job, and some money. You have well established friends, and a future of some sort mapped out for you. You are in peak health, and are just ready to begin a new stage in your life.

Q: What was High School like in the 1970s?
A: It was a blast. I would imagine that it was like school in other generations and at other times. The 1970’s, were boring we thought. However, looking back, we can see just how absolutely great they were. Someday, you too will write about your experiences in school like I have here.

Q: What are the differences between High School in the 1970s and today?
A: Freedom. We could smoke outside the classrooms. We could drive our cars to and from the school. We could carry knives. Lunches were ok. We had a main dish, with two sides, a dessert and a drink. I see what constitutes a Michelle Obama school meal and I end up shitting my pants. What the hell was she thinking? Oh, and the music was awesome.

We often complained, back then, that the High School students in France got to drink wine during lunch time. Paid for, of course, by the school. We, us poor Americans, had to wait until we got home before we could drink. Looking back, the differences between then and now are astounding.

Q: What was segregation like in the 1970s?
A: I just don’t know. No one was segregated in the counties where I lived. I heard that there was still some “unofficial” or underground segregation going on in the deep south. But, in my neck of the woods, it was unheard of.

Q: Did everyone in high school drive cool cars?
A: Yes. I drove an orange 1970 Pontiac GTO. Many of my friends rode cool cars. My friend Clyde drove a Chevelle SS. Like the movie “Dazed and Confused”, where Wooderson drives a big-block Chevelle nicknamed “Melba Toast.” He had an Edelbrock intake on his 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS 454. Ohhh the 454, now that was an engine. Other cars included a Ford Mustang convertible, a Ford MACH 1, and a Plymouth Duster driven by the “Brackey Boys”. Heh heh.

Q: What was elementary school like in the 1960s and 1970s?
A: We would play outside before school started. We would play hopscotch on the sidewalk. We would mark out the numbered blocks with a stone and scratch it into the cement. Then we would file in. First thing after roll call was the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we would have a pretty much typical class.

Though there was often some education about the upcoming Global Cooling that would change the earth into a solid ice cube.

We would then go out on organized field trips to collect donations for the cause, and help clean up the local streams and countryside. I don’t know who got to pocket all the money we collected. All I remember is that we used to raise buckets of money for the cause. Literally, they were buckets and boxes of money. Afterwards, the teacher would sing on the guitar with some songs typical of that era, like “If I Had a Hammer”, and “Kumbaya”.

Posts Regarding Life and Contentment

Here are some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society within communist China. As there are some really stark differences between the two.

More Posts about Life

I have broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little different, in subtle ways.

Stories that Inspired Me

Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come and enjoy a read or two as well.

Articles & Links

• You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
• You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
• You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
• You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Notes

1. Drafted 21MAR18.
2. Edited by request 24MAR18.
3. Edited by request 25MAR18.
4. Edited by request 4APR18.
5. Edited by request 6APR18.
6. Edited by request 12APR18.
7. Edited by request 15APR18.
8. Ready for internet 21APR18.
9. SEO prep 2MAY18.
10. Pre-launch checklist completed 3MAY18.