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PrintBy MIKE VINSON
First off I declare much of the following column was taken from a hard-copy essay I read titled "Silent Generation." The target audience are those who fall into the teenager - early 50s bracket. Currently confined to a world riddled with wars, pestilences, earthquakes, illiteracy, and addictions to both modern technology and heroin, the following, hopefully, will provide a reality check.
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The Silent Generation was born (in America) sometime in the 1930s through the early 1940s. They were the last generation to feel the effects of the Great Depression, which lasted from approximately 1929 until the late 1930s. As the title implies, bare essentials were scarce during the Great Depression. A popular mode of travel was walking. Supper might have been a soup line. Cash money was hard to come by, save for bank robbers such as Public Enemy Number 1 John Dillinger.
If the Great Depression wasn't enough, World War II kicked off in September 1939. The Silent Generation is the last generation to remember "ration books," which were issued to American families during World War II. A short explanation for ration books is: A household (family unit) was allowed limited consumer goods such as sugar, coffee, shoes and even household appliances.
However, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would come over the radio and give assurances of American victory in World War II. And listen to President Roosevelt on the radio they did for they were the last generation to grow up without television. Some contend the downside to not having television sets in the home was they had little understanding of what the "real world" was like.
During hellishly hot summer months, country kids cooled off by walking to the nearest creek and taking a swim. City kids turned on fire hydrants and ran through the spray. No swimming pools? Maybe in Hollywood!
Many, of the Silent Generation, remember Japan surrendering to America aboard the battleship USS Missouri on August 2, 1945, officially ending World War II. Still, some recall August 15, 1945, known as "V-J Day," short for "Victory over Japan Day." On that historically distinguished day, parades were held all across America, and hope and jubilation supplanted years of worry and despair!
Although the war had ceased, and improvements were on the rise, America was still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression and the war. If kids were lucky enough, they maybe got to go to the theater on Saturday afternoons. At the theater, they watched movies featuring cartoons and westerns, with newsreels of the war and the holocaust wedged in-between.
For the most part, landline telephones were one to a house. "Galaxy" was still a large system of stars somewhere in outer space, or so said the local science teacher. Talking about secondary school, most homework was completed with paper and pencil. Some of the lucky ones, though, had access to old-school, "bang-and-peck" typewriters, where the keys were driven by pounding fingers. Regarding homework back then, research came from five sources: newspapers, magazines, books, reliable witnesses, and first-hand accounts--they had to dig it out for themselves! Yahoo and Google ... are you crazy?!
The early 1950s ushered in a more secure sense of order: Radio networks expanded. Telephones became a more common means of communication. The G.I. Bill gave returning war veterans an opportunity to get an education and explore career possibilities that paid more than slavish manual labor. Some say this was the birth of the "Middle Class."
Nonetheless, the early-mid 1950s were not without peril. The Korean War was a stark reality. President Dwight Eisenhower sent the first American advisors to Vietnam. The "Cold War" between America and Russia was growing icy. Revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were laying the groundwork to oust Dictator Fulgencio Batista and take over Cuba.
Of a lighter note, a good-lookin' cat from Tupelo, Mississippi, named Elvis Presley, appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on September 9, 1956. During that performance, Presley gyrated his hips so suggestively he was not shown "from the waist down" to television audiences.
Alas, in the year 2016, we have pop singer Beyonce shakin' and quakin', performing moves that categorize Elvis as harmlessly conservative. We've gone from landlines and walking to smart-phones and foreign-made sport cars that travel in excess of 200 mph. A Cuban cigar is no longer illegal in the U.S. We don't make friends at local dances; we make friends on Facebook. Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to know more about American politics than does FOX News host Bill O'Reilly ... and, please, don't tell me you don't own a Samsung, 85-inch, Ultra High Definition, flat-screen TV set?! Ohhh, nooo, anybody got an Oxy'?!
OK, so, what is my point, the "reality check"? Were Americans better off in 1946 than in 2016? Better yet, are we going down the tube while remaining glued to the tube . . . surfing on YouTube?
And you were born in what generation?
