We really have no suitable category for the following piece but  I wanted to share it with all of you. Hope you enjoy reading about the children of the greatest generation as much as I did.

CHILDREN OF THE GREATEST GENERATION

Born in the 1930’s to the early 1940’s, we exist as a very special age group.

We boast the smallest group of children born since the early 1900’s.

As the last generation climbing out of the depression, we can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.

We are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.

We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.

We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available.

We can remember milk being delivered to our house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.

We are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.

We saw the ‘boys’ home from the war, build their little houses.

As the last generation to spend childhood without television, we imagined what we heard on the radio.

Childhood Was Spent Outside

As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood “playing outside”.

Little League did not exist. There was no city playground for kids. Soccer did not exist in the U.S. A lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like.

On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave us newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons that were at least a week old..

Telephones came one to a house, often shared (party Lines) and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).

Computers called calculators were hand cranked; typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon.

Life before the Internet

The terms, ‘INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE,’ did not exist.

Newspapers and magazines wrote for adults and radio broadcasts, hosted in the evening by Paul Harvey, kept us informed.

As we grew up, the country exploded with growth.

The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.

VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent up demand coupled with new Installment payment plans opened many factories for work.

New highways brought jobs and mobility. New cars averaged $2,000 full price.

The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.

The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.

Families Raised Independent Children

Our parents became suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.

They did not neglect us, but we grew up without today’s all-consuming family focus.

Parents encouraged us to play by ourselves until the street lights came on or Mom called us for supper.

They stayed busy discovering the post-war world.

We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we felt welcome, enjoyed ourselves and grew up secure in our future.  But we well-remembered the poverty of deep depression.

Polio still loomed as a crippler. We came of age in the 50s and 60s.

The Korean War was a dark passage in the early 50s and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks for Air-Raid training.

Russia built the “Iron Curtain” and China became Red China.

Eisenhower sent the first ‘Army Advisers’ to Vietnam.

Castro took over in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power in Russia.

The Last Generation of No War

We are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland. The war had ended and the cold war, Muslim terrorism, “global warming”, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.

Only our generation can remember both a time of great war, and a time when our world felt secure and full of bright promise and plenty; we lived through both.

We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better not worse.

We are “The Last Ones”.

With more than 99 % of us either retired or deceased, we feel privileged to have “lived in the best of times”!