Lost In Time: A Population Of People Happily Stuck In The 1950s

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Not so strange...

I've always wanted to live in the '40's

Had my old apartment decked out entirely
with period antique furniture, appliances.
Even the kitchen cupboards were stocked with
old product packaging. Put milk in milk bottles...
 
I guess I'm somewhat thankful to have grown up in the 50's/60's but as an adult I realize it was a time of intense bigotry, racism/Jim Crow laws & homophobia. Kids born on 'the other side of the tracks' got a huge heaping plateful of bad from everyone else.  I can't even believe now, that there was segregation then in my lifetime. So a large part of me says good riddance.


 


Sweet & sour decade for sure....but it was also a time of space exploration and what boy didn't dream about traveling the stars back then? Look at all the vacuum designs that were influenced by the 'atomic age' and 'space age'....lol.


 


Kevin
 
Get a time machine!

And IM GONE!! I would LOVE to go back in time, I would gladly go back in the closet to get to live when America was IT!
 
Yeah.....

if there was some way to cherry pick the good stuff. Be hard for me to ignore the bad....living in the closet just erodes your soul. I'd wanna fix every injustice I saw and that's impossible....even dangerously life-threatening back then.


 


Kevin
 
My dad has a friend who chooses to use vintage cars for his daily drivers. For a number of years, he drove a '57 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, which he eventually retired in favor of his mother's '66 Cadillac Fleetwood. In most other respects, he lives in the present day.
 
Looking back, it ALL can seem great

The innocence, the extravagance, opulence, etc. But, don't forget oppression, segregation, was, etc.
It's like now. True, if you could only cherry pick. But, we can't. Imagine, (for instance), how different things would be is Dallas, November 22, 1963 hadn't happened? As I mentioned before, I LOVE cars from the 50s and 60s, swing music from the 40s, etc. But, it wasn't ALL great.
 
Those were the days! You didn't have to worry about busting someone in the head and have to worry about them being a biological weapon. Oh well, I guess we all must live in hell's new creation.
 
Actually, the crime statistics show that the level of violence like murder, rape, assaults etc 'nationwide' has gone down per capita since my generation has aged out. It would seem we weren't all about peace, love and pot, but more about hypocrisy.


 


Kevin
 
I LOATHE it!

People cant do anything without some sort of electronic device to help them, no one can even make change!!! You cant buy a shirt or anything else made here out of good materials,all new appliances and cars and about anything else are BORING look alike stuff...We are trillions in debt and really have no prestige in the world like we once did,in 1955 the US made 2/3 of ALL GOODS PRODUCED, EVERYONE had a job and prices for quality goods were reasonable...Hell yes I would go back...Buy me a modern house with pink tile bathrooms, a steel kitchen, and put a new Desoto in the garage and mow my yard with a Lawn Boy 2 cycle mower, and heat with 15 cent a gallon oil!!and watch good programs on my Sylvania Halo Lite TV, have leaders in Washington who were honest and knew how to balance a budget...Ike!...Oh yes I would drop everything and GO!
 
But, Hans!!

Don't hold back........ really, how do you REALLY feel? lol Sorry.... HAD to do it.
Agreed, so much was different, and some of it was so much better.
I remember our '58 Oldsmobile (88), our Westinghouse "Laundromat", and our new Hoover Convertible, model 67.But, than, my father's Cancer could not be treated like it could now. My cousin had Tuberculosis...spent time in a sanatorium. She did recover, though.
To quote Sonny and Cher, "History has turned a page, uhuh".
 
15-cent-a-gallon heating oil: When you adjust for inflation, the price really isn't all that much less than it is today.

The U.S. made 2/3 of all goods produced: The simple reason for that is our manufacturing infrastructure remained 100 percent intact after WWII while most of the rest of the world was still rebuilding and recovering decades after the atomic bombs were dropped. We supplied 2/3 of the world's manufactured goods because we could and we capitalized on it while we could. The sad truth is U.S. manufacturers had pretty much fallen into a false sense of complacency by 1970 and by the early '90s had pretty much let the rest of the world pass us by. Now, we're the ones playing catch-up and the tired refrain of 'well, we won WWII for ya, what more do you want?' has worn thin with the rest of the world. Face it. We're an empire in decline and we did it to ourselves.
 
I think what happened is the mindset of the masses and how they buy products. They expect a deal, a sale, a discount....even from people in the trades. What that has forced industry to do is contract work done abroad and set up factories abroad. The US companies said we can build you anything you want, but our employees are trying to make living wages, raise families and you'll pay more than Asian/Middle East made product. And so here we are buying and using China made products for the most part.


 


So yeah, we did it to ourselves but it was the 'let's step over dollars to save pennies' mentality. And you can't just blame the mass consumer either because salaries haven't increased over the last decade or so as they did previously. Much of our incomes are being absorbed now with rent/mortagages, health insurance and food costs which have gone up & up. 


 


Kevin
 
Jimmy Hoffa had nothing to do with it.

Some folks wish they ever made that kind of money. Middle class incomes created trickle up for the economy. The more they made, the more they spent back in.
My Grandfather came from Italy with 2 dollars to his name. He worked his way up to foreman in the steel mill. He told me it was near poverty level wages before the union. Those higher union wages found their way to to other trades.
So times have changed. Now you need an education to make that kind of money.
Coal miners do not gross $80,000.oo per year, just like unskilled auto workers don't anymore.

Such doom and gloom. Some blame others for their own failures just like I won't even say who. Who happens to own part of the national Enquirer. No fake news there, not at all.
 

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