SamKat: 02/23/17

This is us!

Children of the 30s & 40s are

“The Last Ones”

A Short Memoir...

Born in the 1930s and early 40s, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the “last ones.” We are the last, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the war itself with fathers and uncles going off to fight for us. We are the last to remember ration books for everything from sugar to shoes to stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans for the war effort. We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available. We collected all the scrap iron we could for the war effort. We even collected "silk" from plants which we were told was used to make parachutes Mothers delivered milk in horse-drawn carts.

We heard the air raid sirens and learned to take cover in case there was a real air raid. We closed our blinds, turned out the lights, and hid under furniture, just in case it was the real thing. We are among the last who heard Roosevelt’s radio assurances and to see gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors who lost a husband, father, or son. We can also remember the parades on August 15, 1945 -- VJ Day.

We saw the ‘boys’ come home from the war and build their Cape Cod style houses, some pouring the cellar, tar papering it over and living in those basements until they could afford the time and money to build it out.

We are the last who spent our childhood without television; instead imagining what we heard on the radio. As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhoods playing outside until the street lights came on. Yes, we surely did play outside and we did play on our own. There was no little league in those days.

The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like. Our Saturday afternoons, if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the holocaust sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons. Newspapers and magazines were written for adults. We are the last who had to find out for ourselves.

As we grew up, the country was exploding 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 put factories to work. New highways would bring jobs and mobility. Veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics. In the late 40s and early 50’s the country seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order as it gave birth to its new middle class. Our parents understandably became absorbed with their own new lives. They were free from the confines of the depression and the war. They threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.

We weren’t neglected, but we weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus. Parents were glad we played by ourselves until the street lights came on. They were busy themselves discovering the post war world. They could again think of taking vacations and seeking some fun in their lives.

In those days most of us youngsters had no life plan, but with the unexpected virtue of ignorance and an economic rising tide we simply stepped into the world and went to find out. We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we were welcomed. Based on our naïve belief that there was plenty more where this came from, we shaped our lives as we went.

We enjoyed some luxury; we felt secure in our future. Of course, just as today, not all Americans shared in this experience. Depression-era poverty was deep rooted. The atomic bomb scare continued. Polio was still a crippler. The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 50s and by mid-decade school children were again ducking under desks. China became Red China. Eisenhower sent the first ‘advisors’ to Vietnam. Castro set up camp in Cuba, and Khrushchev came to power in Russia.

We are the last to experience that interlude when there were no direct existential threats to our homeland. We came of age in the late 40s and early 50s. The big world war was over and the cold war, terrorism, climate change, technological upheaval and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with insistent unease. But, for a time, life was very good.

Only we can remember both a time of apocalyptic war and a time when our world was pretty secure and full of bright promise and plenty. We experienced both, bad and good.

We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better, not worse. But now, the tides have again changed this country and this world.

We are the ‘last ones’ to know peace and prosperity in its purist forms.

Wonder what the next generation will be like? Hopefully no WWIII.