The line: ' It was the best of time, it was the worse of time' comes to mind.

So many of the 'good times' have been spun an sold into out collective memories. The 40s and WW2 were so good. Not necesarily so.

Look up the "Zoot suit riots in LA" or the "West coast longshoreman's strike" that happened during the war. Or the murder of black servicemen during the war in Louisiana and Mississippi. Or how the merchant marine was treated. They took some of the worse casualties by percentage and conditions but, until very recently, were denied benefits.

Bike gangs had their origin in servicemen coming home from the war and finding that what they were fighting for failed to live up to our ideals. The USA has never quite lived up to its ideals in freedom, equality of opportunity, race relations or classlessness.

We were an industrial powerhouse after WW2. But it wasn't so much because we were necessarily better at it. It had a lot to do with all the other industrialist nations having been crippled by the war. We rode this economic advantage and momentum through the 60s and squandered the last of it in the 70s.

"Father Knows Best" and other media creations project a false calm and certainty onto what were uncertain and conflicted time. People who think all was right and good at some time prior have chosen to overlook the larger picture.

IMO the only consistent thing you can say about the past was that it was a little slower and far more local. Things and people and situations all moved more slowly. A commute of twenty miles to a job was considered 'long' and it was relatively rare. People often worked one job their entire working life. The majority of people were born, grew up, lived and died in one spot.

After WWI the saying was: 'Once they have seen Paris, how do you keep them down on the farm?'. It wasn't that hard. Economics and lack of transportation kept most on the farm well enough. After WW2 the improved economic situation and cheap transportation were no longer an obstacle. The interstate highways were built in the 50s and early 60s made us a nation of travelers.

They made suburbs and long commutes possible. They also made loneliness in a crowd and isolation in a community a way of life.

We just moved into a new neighborhood and just about every night we meet up in one of the yards and let the kids play so that hasn't changed you just have to be in a decent place.

Be careful liking the past better, its easy to fall into the trap of being stuck in the past, my in laws for example, they don't need no education, kids should sit quietly in front of the tv or in a playpen, not be allowed to explore, they don't need no seat belts or turn signals, smoking doesn't hurt anyone, etc.

alwright guees my pawpaw was wright opions are like as-holes every one got one an most of them stink .. good an bad in what every we choose to make out of it .i still would like to take my 2 girls an move back in time to when i was a kid .good an bad .what i didnt know didnt hurt me a bit ,i learn how to work for a living .hard work is not a sin builds a boy into a man .

In my neighborhood we've found out who the "nice" neighbors are, and we hang out with them a fair ammount when we can, so that's sort of like the "good ol' days".

Then my dad reminds me of his "good ol' days" staring down the barrel of the Vietnam draft. Then on my 22nd birthday, my grandfather told me how by the time he was my age he'd gone to college, joined the army, gone to war, bombed cities, been shot down, and had to evade the enemy. While evading he was eating raw potatos and cutting the maggots out of raw pork so he could eat it.

There will always be bad times, but what makes our good times so much worse than the good times of the good ol' days?

During my senior year of engineering I had to fulfill a 3 credit humanties elective, so I took a course called "Technology and Man". Keep in mind this was back in the mid '80's, so the internet, cd's, dvd's, and a whole bunch of other conveniences had not yet been developed.

The entire course centered around how products designed to make life easier for people would actually make things tougher in the long run. I pretty much dismissed the prof as a Kashi-eating liberal, but did all the homework assignments, aced all the tests, and graduated. I had not thought very much about anything the prof had lectured on for many years, but it finally dawned on me a few years ago -- he was not that far off.

Granted, mobile phones, voice mail, email, tele-conferencing, etc. were all heralded as items to allow increased productivity with less work. Initially that seemed to be the case -- instead of driving to the library and spending hours researching a subject, we could now type a few search words into Google and have the data virtually instantly.

That said, it is rare that I'm not in the office by 7:30am, and I usually don't eat dinner until 7:30pm, or later if my wife is running errands. More often than not, I'm answering emails or paying bills electronically in the evening, and am lucky to get six hours of sleep.

Thinking back to the late 60's and early 70's as I was growing up, my Father left for the office at 8:45am, and was always (always!) home by 5:10pm, with dinner promptly at 6:00pm. Everyone was generally in bed by 10:00pm (maybe 11:00pm on a weekend) and New Years Eve was the one night a year that any of us actually stayed up until midnight.

It now appears to me that my humanities prof actually knew what he was talking about. Despite all the modern conveniences (or pehaps because of them) it seems that we all work twice as hard as our parents ever did, and yet there just isn't enough time left over to do the "extra" things, that in fact are probably the things that really matter.

Jim

It seems that we all work twice as hard as our parents ever did, and yet there just isn't enough time left over to do the "extra" things, that in fact are probably the things that really matter.



That’s because we have so many more “Must Have” things today then we did in the past. Kids that are 8-years old have cell phones. They have I-Pods, they have a computer and a Play station and a portable Nintendo with 20 games that cost $30.00 and up. Most kid’s bedrooms look like a toy store blew up in there. We are teaching our kids to value items, the more the better.

Our society is built on consumption, buy it, use it up and cast it aside and buy another.


We pay $80.00 to $100.00 a month to be able to watch 100 channels of TV, when we use to get by with 3-channels. Cable and satellite companies have turned watching TV into another utility bill.

We don’t repair things any more, we buy new. If a DVD player breaks, we toss it and buy new, not have it repaired.


Al this buying sucks up more money then ever. And rather then cutting back we work more so we can keep buying. Kids don’t need a cell phone, Heck it’s only been a few years that adults have had them with them all the time. No one needs 100-channels of TV.

You can still teach all these values without going back in time. Just wishing you could go back in time will do nothing but make you depressed (just look at my MIL). You want to pass on some old fashioned values, hard work, etc.

My son has his own set of toy tools at 2 years old and is always trying to takes screws out of something since he watches me do it. He was just past a year old when goes in the garage, grabs the air hose and starts bumping it on the wheel trying to put air in the tire like I did. he gets up from the table and puts his plate in the sink, etc. He's already starting to learn about hard work.

My point is don't sit around saying the past is better because this and that. Bring the this and that into te present and future.

Simplify. Our cell phones both have the capability of playing music so we don't have to fall into the ipod fad. My kids will get a computer and if they want to play games it will be on the computer and only if they install them themselves. I pay $100 a month for cable, internet and telephone combined into one service.

Of course, nowadays many people make more money than entire countries used to run on...

Is that before or after inflation and the devalued US dollar are taken into account.

I was told that things haven't really changed much:
A hours pay gets you a meal.
Half a days pay a simple night out or date.
Two weeks pay a suit.
A years wage a car.
Ten years pay a house.

Rounding off a bit it still holds true, mostly.