I, like others of my generation, (in my pre-teens) usually wore a hat when we went outside. (The same was true for the ladies and the girls of that time.)

There was even an entire set of rules and behaviors associated with these hats.
The church pews even had these little spring-loaded contraptions to hold the hats in place when in church.

 
(This pretty much fell into disuse in the early 1970’s, along with eating fish on Fridays.) Coat racks in offices, dental offices, and insurance offices all had a shelf along the top of the rack to place your hats on.
For standing racks, there were also “pins” for holding one’s hat.

When I was young, we all played together.  Boys and girls played together. Boys would tend to want to play “army” or “sports”.  Girls would tend to want to play “Barbie” or “house”. I really don’t think it was due to the way that we were raised. It was our interests at the time.

Anyways, we grew up normally. At that time, it was considered normal for boys to like girls, and girls to be interested in boys.  But, apparently today, that view is not shared.  Today there is a “zero tolerance” for anything deemed sexual harassment in young children.
Which means that boys just cannot tell a girl he likes her. Today it is deemed “sexual harassment”. Sigh.

Please, why can’t you just let children be children?

My childhood is a tale of coffee. Coffee was the cheapest thing that you could buy in America. As such, everyone had a coffee pot, and we all drank it 24-7.
We would cook it in percolators, and the smell of coffee and the sound of percolating coffee was the way most American woke up to in the mornings. There was even a television commercial that had a jingle that sounded like a percolating coffee pot.

As a child, I didn’t really drink coffee. It wasn’t until I was around 12 or so when I started to share a cup with my parents. That was two full years before I started to work.  It started to “put hair on my chest”.

The coffee was so cheap. In the movie, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” the main character is down on his luck in Mexico. To underline just how poor he was, he asks a passing stranger “Hey can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee”. That’s pretty down.
Coffee was offered freely throughout the USA and Mexico. I’ll bet that the significance on that statement was pretty much lost on the reader when you watched the movie, eh?

I well remember the time when the coffee suppliers began to jack up their prices. It was insane. I was working as a stock clerk in a grocery store at the time, and the prices just getting higher and higher. It kept going up…up… and up. First, it was 20%. Then another 20%.
Then another 50%. Then 200%. Then 1000%. There was no stopping it.

The customers were angry. Then frustrated. Then crying. Nevertheless, still they bought the coffee. By then, the entire United States was addicted to it. The coffee plantations in Columbia, and Venezuela, and Mexico saw profits, and just took advantage of it. Wow!
With all the billions and billions of earnings that the companies (and owners) raked in, you would think that the nations would now be rich paradises. You would think…

I wonder why not…

Maybe it’s because they are all progressive socialist democracies, and only the rich get the money. Yup. We all know how that all works out. Look at all the wealthy and successful people in Cuba. Look at all the successful and wealthy people in Kenya.
Look at all the wealthy and successful people in North Korea. Yuppur! Those progressive socialist paradises really know how to do things, now don’t they?

We lived in a very safe neighborhood. I grew up in a small town. The town was big enough to have an elementary and a high school. Though, it was too small to have a middle school. It was a great place to grow up in.

Oh, we heard about the crime in the urban areas of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but that was a world that was way beyond our experience. We didn’t lock our house doors.  No one did. In fact, the front door lock was often stubborn from disuse. That went for the cars as well.
We left the car keys in the ignition. Everyone knew everyone else. All the mothers knew each other.

All of the men knew each other. Maybe they did not work together, but they were all members of the various social clubs like the Rotary, the Elks, and the Moose. (As well as the Polish Falcons.) There would be a meeting or two at the lodge each month and my father would attend. Because everyone knew everyone else, no one was trying to take from each other.

For us kids growing up, the entire town was like one big playground. It was most certainly like a scene out of Mayberry RFD. If you want to know what it was really like then read “The Mad Scientist’s Club”.  It was exactly like that.

We would say “Hi” to our neighbors and play with their kids.  “Hi, Mr. Baley.”, or “Hi, Miss Cambell.”. We all played baseball in the neighborhood ballpark, and rode our bikes all over the town.
If someone bought a new appliance, then we would make “forts” out of the cardboard boxes it came in, and play with that.

I always carried a pocket knife with me, and used it to cut small branches and to chew on twigs from a birch tree (it tastes like root beer). It was a blue Cub Scout knife with three blades. I carried it everywhere. My father bought it for me when I was six years old. Ah, it was a male rite of passage.

One of the things that has surprised me is that NONE of the male interns that have worked for me (from the United States) ever owned their own pocketknife. Most have heard about it, and knew what it was, but none had ever owned one. It really stuns me.
My male interns from France, England, and Germany all have owned pocketknives. I just cannot get over the fact how retarded that American boys have become. It is almost like they have turned into girls.

Anyways…

I was very shy with girls, and not so great at sports.  However, I was a fantastic swimmer, an average golfer, and an active tennis player. I was a member of the cub scouts, and rode a gold Schwinn “banana seat” bike with “high bars” and a “drag strip” (non-tread) rear tire.
Every one of my friends owned a bicycle. My sister had one with a white plastic basket in the front. My bike had these long streamers of plastic that plugged into the handles. I eventually tore those things off.
But I would put a card (from a deck of cards) and attach it to the bicycle with a wooden clothes pin. That way my bicycle would make some “cool” sounds when I rode fast. It had a huge red circular red reflector on the back, right under the white “banana seat”.
Like the GTO I would later drive when I was in High School, the bicycle was an orange color.

My bike was a personal selection. When my father took me to a store to pick it out, I chose a really simple and rugged model. There were no front or rear brakes on the handlebars. To brake, you would just use the pedals. There also weren’t any gears. There was one gear only.
It came with a rear view mirror, that soon broke off, and that was about it. My friends all had more complicated bicycles, and over the years, they were perpetually repairing their bikes and trying to fix them. For me, I never had that problem.

Every Spring I would help my father take down the “storm doors” and put up the “summer doors”. These doors had mosquito mesh instead of glass. It allowed fresh air to get inside the house, but kept the bugs out. To swap the doors was an easy chore.
All you needed was a large screwdriver. Once I proved my mastery of that task, my father made sure that I did it every spring and fall. (Whoops! Roped in to another chore again!)

We ate “soft serve” ice cream from the local Dairy Queen stand, or had banana malt milk shakes.  My father would always take us out for a ride on Sundays after dinner.
(Sunday dinner was the most important dinner of the week, and the most elaborate.) We all would hop into the car and ride over to the local Dairy Queen stand. There I would get a large vanilla (soft serve) ice-cream cone. Everyone got one. Even our dog Belle who was a husky.
She would get hers’ in a little plastic dish.

We ate plump, real ground beef hamburgers and bacon-wrapped hotdogs.  We would eat a fine can of pork and beans, and let’s not forget the buttered corn on the cob, potato salad, and the macaroni salad as sides.
Us kids would have an iced cooler full of all the soda we could drink and the parents drank all the beer they could muster. (Typically, Iron City, Bud, PBR, and Michelob.)

I would watch the news reluctantly. For me it was pretty boring.

However, I did follow the news about space. You couldn’t miss it. Everyone was talking about space, and the moon. That is all you heard aboout as a child of the 1960’s. The television shows also helped to maintain this theme.

As the news that played on the radio concerned our exploration of space and the Vietnam War.  Of course I didn’t know what was going on. It was a takeover of the United States government by dark forces embedded deep inside the United States government. When JFK was shot, my father insisted that I watch the television. He kept telling me that this was the most important thing to happen to the United States since the Civil War.
He was a lifelong Democrat and he had real concerns that there was more to the story than what the government was saying. Later, after he died and President Trump released the transcripts, it turned out that my father was right after all.

The “Deep State” murdered our President.

On Sunday we watched Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”, and “The FBI” (Starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr) after the Walt Disney hour. If I wasn’t watching television, I was building plastic scale models, or experimenting on my Gilbert chemistry (and electrical) sets.

I, like my contemporaries, had my little treasures. Some of my friends collected baseball cards. Others, collected Indian arrowheads, and still others collected comic books. I had one friend with quite an impressive collection of comic books, and Doc Savage paperback books.
I ended up buying his entire collection for $10 when he moved out of state.

I owned (but rarely wore) a “mood ring” that I found in an old “mason jar” filled with old “Indian head” pennies, marbles, and campaign pins (I picked it up at a yard sale for twenty five cents.).  I also wore a catholic ring of Saint Christopher that I picked up at a church sale on “Polish Hill” in Pittsburgh.

I was pretty stylish. I wore “Beatles style” hair with bangs that were always covering my forehead and falling in front of my eyes. My parents absolutely hated it.

My favorite thing to do when I was around eight or nine would be to go “bottle collecting”. Here I would go into the local “woods” to dig for “old bottles” (in long disused trash dumps, often 100 years old) that I would then clean and collect.
We had a couple of “dumps” that we frequented. One of the best, with the most impressive bottles, was near the river next to an old railroad spur. It was the home of many a “whittle marked” bottle, old time bitters, and about a hundred thousand Lydia Pinkham bottles. (I guess that the local woman folk must have had a lot of “womanly” problems.)

Our parents let us kids go out and play.

Ah. My bedroom was a collection of old colorful bottles, scale models of tanks on shelves (and planes hanging from strings from the ceiling), as well as a quite a large collection of paperback books and comics. I had stacks and stacks of magazines. Magazines included “Lost Treasure magazine”, “Men’s Adventure”, “The Good Old Days”, “Mechanics Illustrated”,  “Popular Science”, “Popular Mechanics”, “Mad Magazine” and “Analog”. In fact, the upstairs bathroom had a closet, and the bottom two shelves were devoted to all sorts of magazines and comic books.

Things were cheaper then.

In fact, most things could be paid for using coins.  If you ate at a restaurant, you would rarely need to use any bills.  Just a handful of coins (from a coin purse) was all you would need. Indeed, my father carried a coin purse and a money clip.
Wallets didn’t really become popular until the 1970’s. (When inflation had jacked up food prices to obscene levels.)

I would fill up the air in my bicycle tires with air from the local gas station.  (For free.
Paying for air didn’t become vogue until the 1980’s.) It was a white building with two (gas) pumps outside, and an open garage bay where the owner would typically be fixing the cars of the local townspeople.
Inside were dusty pin-up photos of sexy girls taken from magazines (like playboy, the “open spread” foldout format was well suited to wall-poster applications.) and industry calendars which always had a picture of a topless chick (or nearly topless) holding a wrench or hammer.

I drank from a lawn hose in the summer when I was thirsty. It tasted like warm plastic.

If I was off away on a farm, or near a dirt road we would stop at a well and get a drink of spring water. At sometime in the 1960s all wells in Pennsylvania had to be covered up (so that no one would fall into them).
Instead the placed these large iron hand-pumps (often painted red of green) that you could pump the water up and drink. The water was free to whomever needed it. Which is so unlike today where even common tap water is bottled by Walmart for a profit.

I was typical, and not a “bad boy” at all. When my friends started to smoke cigarettes, I refused. When I started to work, and was offered beer by the older boys, I drank and soon discovered that I was a “light weight” and numerous embarrassing events ensued. My friends chewed tobacco and often had a can of “chew” in the back pocket of their jeans (often creating a round circle of wear). I didn’t do this.  For the most part, my serious engagement of vices occurred much later… after my retirement.

Television was rather primitive.

While we did have a color television, we still needed to walk across the room to change the channel. Imagine that! Remote controls were not available until the mid-1970’s. On top of it were “rabbit ears” until we were able to subscribe to cable in the late 1970’s. My grandmother had her “rabbit ears” with aluminum foil wrapped around it. She said that it improved her reception. Maybe it did.
I don’t know, her reception really sucked, so it must have been really, really terrible.

My favorite after-school show was “The Flintstones”. All of my classmates watched it. There were many shows that I watched when I was growing up. It went from the black and white “Diver Dan” series, to the Fireball XL-5, Supercar, and included such staples as Gilligans Island, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E..

I had full toy replica M-14 with “action sound” back in the day. We would go around the neighborhood playing war with the other kids with their (own) toy guns.
Let’s see, I had a toy M1, a tommy gun, a grease gun, a Beretta that shot projectiles with a suction cup at the end, and a large collection of cap guns and water pistols. Not one parent had an issue.  Not one snowflake triggered.  Not one police call.  Even the girls loved it.

Talking about selling lemonade, it was a method that introduced business techniques to children. The schools didn’t have any courses on how to start and run your own business. The boy scouts taught self-initiative and independence.
If you wanted to know how to start your own business, and the basics on how it worked, your parents would teach you by allowing you to sell lemonade. It was a method by which a child could learn the basics of business management, and production.

Of course, during the Obama administration, this was forbidden.  Moreover, a war on young children, their lemonade stands, and the parents who would teach children about work began.
The result was a decimation of the understanding of the basics of industry to an entire generation of children. Read about some of the thousands of instances here;

We ate formal meals.

That is to say, that we ate in the “dining room” with a fully laid-out table with tablecloth (and undercloth), china dishes and silverware. My father sat at the “head” of the table, and my mother sat at the other end.  Us kids, sat in the middle. Household meals always had a meat or a fish with sides of mashed potatoes, a salad, cooked vegetables and bread. Meats would include pot roasts, pork chops, Salisbury steaks, roast chicken, and ham. We ate fish on Fridays. We only ate pizza or hamburgers when we ate outside or at a restaurant. (We rarely ever ate pizza, or “junk food” at home.  We ate “real” “sit down” formal meals.) With an intact family-centered life, we ate far better than Americans do today.

We acted like kids, and participated in the activities normal for that time. Most of our time was divided between school and play.

Of that, we enjoyed playing the most.  With our days filled with outdoor activities (such as hiking and bike riding) followed by evening television viewing. Whether it was “the Rat Patrol”, or “Chilly Billy Car dilly” on “Channel 11” showing low-grade “B” horror flicks, we watched them all.

In fact, I must say that I was a big “Ultraman” fan “in the day”.  But, overall, I was  Vincent Price fan.

I really liked all of the Vincent Price movies.  These were often B-grade flicks made in the 1970’s which you would watch on a cold and snowy winter weekend afternoon. In fact, I would say that my all-time favorite movies are the Doctor Phibes series.  I don’t know why that is.  Maybe it’s because of the mechanical gadgets.  Maybe it’s because of the tales of creative revenge.  Or, maybe it’s because I always had a crush on his beautiful assistant(s).  LOL!

I was a good kid, though a bit “nerdy” compared to my classmates.

I had other interests, which tended to be on the nerdy side. For instance…

I played Panzer Blitz and Squad Leader board games.  (But only with the handful of friends who actually knew how to play the complex games and enjoyed strategy.) Board games were popular, and it took the entire computer industry to demolish the stranglehold that strategy games held.
Games would last hours, even an entire day.

I also was very interested in the “computer revolution” that was just getting started. I had taken some basic programming classes, and excelled in them. However, my father thought that there would not be any kind of future in computers.
So he STRONGLY recommended that I take something practical. He suggested that I go to university to study something that had potential. Engineering most certainly, but not anything related to computers. He felt that it was a passing fad that would soon go away.

We had a nice long “sit down” chat about my future, and he believed that I would be best served if I went to a military academy to reach my dream of being a spaceman. I believed in it. While it might sound crazy today, it was a reality during the 1960s. and 1970s.
I tended to agree with him, and with that in mind I took High School classes that would be beneficial for me to attend the Air Force academy.

There were no cell phones; indeed most phones hung on the wall, and fully 50% of them had dials instead of push buttons.  Our home had two phones. One was an old Bakelite black phone from the 1920’s hidden away in the basement. I loved the feeling of it.
There was a weight to it that you just couldn’t get during the 1970’s. We also had a “main” phone in the kitchen. It had an extra-long cord. My sister was always “hogging it up”. So one year they bought her a phone for her room.
She still spent most of her time on the phone, it’s just that she wasn’t talking in the kitchen all day.

In the house we wore “house clothes” also known as PJ’s, with a robe.
Mother would make sure that there was always a pot of coffee brewing, and us kids would always fight over who would get to read the comics section of the paper first.  Of course, our dogs and cats merrily participated in the morning ritual.
Picture above is not the ideal, it was the actual.

I was pretty much a typical boy, and got dirty a lot. When the clothes were dirty, we threw them into fashionable “hampers”, not the large super cheap polypropylene baskets that are sold in Wal-Mart today.
In fact, we have seem many things go the same way as the “hamper migration” of the last few decades.

In regards to the function and design of the hampers.  I suggest that the reader pay attention that there was a migration in overall quality, utility, and appearance over time. Indeed, this also translated into longevity as well.
The older products were better made, lasted longer, and were designed for function AND appearance.  Somehow, and we all know why, American products became obsessed with cost savings at the expense of everything else.  Why? It was NEVER this way before.

The answer is simple.

It all is because of the passage of the Income tax and the Federal Reserve. Before the Federal Reserve was established, Americans ate quality food, bought quality clothes, furniture and housing.
After the Federal Reserve was established there was a sudden drop in the value of the US dollar. This affected everything. Most notably the purchase power of American citizens.

With non-Americans controlling the American money supply, they could use it as they deemed fit.  They ran the value of the US dollar into the ground. As a consequence, both parents needed to work.  Families became dysfunctional.  People could only afford the cheapest food.
Butter became expensive, and so people bought margarine. As a result, people got fatter.  Greed ruined the core of what made America great.

Inflation ensued.

As the US dollar lost its worth, people could no longer afford what they once could.  Thus, stores that provided the cheapest products and solutions to home management dominated the industry.
(Such as Wal-Mart, and the Dollar Store.) The devastation of the value of the dollar can be traced back to one and only one sole cause. That is one of the many consequences of the imposition of the income tax and establishment of the Federal Reserve…

Ah, but I digress (yet again.)

The interns that I employ act as if everyone has a smartphone and it is a requirement to own one. Heck, it wasn’t until the 1990’s that companies started requiring their employees to have a phone. When I was growing up in rural Pennsylvania, many people shared a phone line.
This was known as a “party line”. When you picked up the phone, if someone was using it, you would have to wait until they got off before you could use the phone. Seriously, that is the way it was.

Things are so different now.

The problem, as I see it, is that Americans only know what they know. Since many have never experienced furniture made out of real hardwoods, and real solid metals, they don’t think anything of it.
They think that just because Walmart is popular today, that it has always been popular. They think that because they need to buy water at a supermarket today they you always needed to buy water at a supermarket.
And, finally, they think that just because coffee at Starbucks is expensive that it always was expensive.

No it wasn’t. In fact, until coffee was monetized, coffee was THE cheapest thing that you could buy in America.

This trend towards higher prices and cheaper products is not a random occurrence. It is systematic and has been going on for a long time now. It’s just that you don’t really see it unless you have lived for a while. Then you can see the differences.
You can see things changing and then you can compare your experiences with the changes and come up with conclusions.

I blame the Federal Reserve.

As the value of the dollar decreased, both parents needed to work to support the family. Children no longer had parental guidance, and problems came about as a result. The dollar’s value continued to plummet. So people could only afford the cheapest products.
Still, that was not enough. The dollar still continued to plummet. Soon, people had to purchase things in credit to just get their basic needs met.

But don’t believe me. Look at the graph yourself. It is obvious whoever is running the American monetary supply is doing a FUCKING PISS POOR JOB at it. This is an obvious fact.
It means that the entire system must be scrapped and replaced with one that maintains it’s value over time. If our elected officials were actually doing their job, they would have noticed a problem at the very start of this fiasco.

The Value of the US Dollar since the establishment of the Federal Reserve. The performance of the first ten years should have told everyone what a huge fucking mistake that they made. The truth is for the last 90 years, the value of the USD has had an unstoppable downward vector.

It was a time when door to door salesmen would sell young couples a huge multi-volume encyclopedia that would take months to pay off. (One can come across the huge collections in yard sales and estate sales.  Maybe on eBay.
Perhaps one of the greatest influences of my childhood was an illustrated encyclopedia for children that I would spend hours perusing.) My father saw what an interest the illustrated encyclopedia had on me that he considered it to be a great idea to get a full “adult” set.
This was a great set, however it wasn’t for elementary children to read. As such, I really didn’t touch it or have any interest in it until I hit my teens.

Today is so different.

Back then we could play in parks.  We could climb trees there.  We could play games on the “monkey bars”, and slide down the slide.  We could ride on the “see-saw”, and splash in the pond. That was what their purpose was.  It was for fun. Yet, today it is something else entirely.
Today “playgrounds” are no longer about play, they are about being safe. They should be called “safegrounds”, or even better “safe spaces”.

It was a time of innocence. I wore a tee-shirt that had a big yellow smily icon, and the words “have a Nice Day” under it. My sister had a baton that she would practice twilling all day. (She also had a “Hula Hoop”. I could never get the hang of that thing.
I guess that I just didn’t have the hips for it.

In the rural sections of the nation, porch lights were used to show “openness” to visitors. If you were lonely or just wanted to meet up with someone and talk, it would be pretty hard to do in the country. There just wasn’t any restaurants open, or places to gather around others.
The roads were desolate and empty of cars at night. You could walk down them in total silence. It could be a little depressing.

So what people would do, if they wanted to be with someone else, is to turn on their porch light.

The porch light being on signified on of two things. Either [1] you were waiting for someone to arrive, or [2] you were open for visitors.  It was a way to keep everyone in a closed-knit community together with face-to-face communication rather than relying on telephones.
Of course, the first thing you would do, when a person knocked on your door, was to lead them into the kitchen and put a fresh pot of coffee on. It was the neighborly thing to do.

In a small community, everyone knew each other. It was a great way to meet up, make friends, and renew friendships and just chat. Other ways to do so included church, the various fraternities and clubs, and of course, the Scouts.

Cars had cigarette lighters and ashtrays.  In fact, even airplanes had ashtrays built into the armrests of the seats.  (This all began to disappear during the Bill Clinton Presidency.) My grandparents both had standalone ashtrays that were their own piece of furniture.
They consisted of a large glass ashtray on a metal pedestal that sat next to the “Man’s chair” in the living room. In my family, as well as the families of all my friends, the father always had “his” chair that he sat in.
While us kids might manage to use it, we would always get off of it and defer to our father once we walked into the room.

By the way, if you are dating a girl who says that she does not see the need for a man to have his own chair, run like the wind. I once dated a girl like this. Man, did she have father issues.
She eventually dyed her hair a bright sickly pink-orange, shaved the left side of her head, put a nose ring that belonged in an ox’s nose, and went full-on militant feminazi.

Everyone in a household should have their own “space”.

It might be a bathroom that is “hers”. It might be a chair that is “his”. It might a dog that might have his own “special” toy.
When you meet someone who believes that everything is equal, and that there are no differences, and no privacy, then you know that the person is mentally ill. Everyone needs and deserves some privacy. Everyone.
If you are with someone who does not understand this most basic human needs, then you must avoid them. Avoid them.

I had a poster of Farah Faucett on my wall. She was smiling with this amazing smile, and her huge hair. We all had a crush on her. That, Loni Anderson and Rachael Welch as well.

I had numerous posters on my wall. One was the mandatory “black light” poster on velvet. (It glowed under UV light.) One was a picture of Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple) performing a guitar solo. (I had super imposed a F-14 on it for combined imagery. After all, space and high-performance aircraft and rock n’ roll was my dream.) One was a Roger Dean poster (anyone remember the group “Yes”?).

What? Do I feel a bitching sesson coming on…

All my classmates owned guns, and many hunted. My father was a very liberal Democrat, and he forbade me from learning how to shoot.
(Of course, today he would be considered a Right-Wing Conservative.) The attempts at disarming the American people dates way back, but it wasn’t until the very successful efforts in the 1990’s did Americans start to FEEL the repression of the Federal Government.

The second amendment was considered important. Mass shootings using firearms DID NOT occur until government started campaigns to take away guns.  There are those who think that this is not really a coincidence. I, for one, KNOW that there is no such thing as coincidence.
“Coincidences” are simply pre-positioned “signs” by others who have constructed elements of our fated existence. But then again, that is just MAJestic speaking.

Anyways… Know your history. Americans are being dumbed down to become cattle. (And you do DO know what happens to cattle, don’t you?)

Ah, television then was geared towards “most” Americans.  (When I refer to “most” Americans, I am actually referring to the MAJORITY of people.

It was not focused on capturing a minority.) That is to say that this was prior to the reorientation of television programing in the 1970’s. The reorientation changed what was presented on television, and marketed directly to the black urban communities.
Before that, television shows were about straight white males and reflected the world at that time. (As America was, and still is, a Caucasian majority nation.)

Shows about black people were limited to “Stanford and Son”, and “The Jefferson’s”.

The shows we watched were funnier than what you see on television today.  And, maybe, just maybe a little more innocent. “The Bob Newhart Show” was typical.
The humor involved day to day situations and NEVER mentioned race (compare that to today), and had a real twisted surrealistic sense of humor. Consider “Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman”, or “Green Acres”. You can find out more here.

Ah, you’ve got to hear about the three yokel brothers in the (very surrealistic) 80’s “The Bob Newhart show”. I loved these guys. They might have been the highlight of the show. Heck, they could have had their own show (hint. Hint.)

Larry was the spokesman. Darryl and Darryl never spoke except in the classic final episode. No matter how many times Larry met you, he always started off by saying “Hello. I’m Larry. This is my brother Darryl and this is my other brother Darryl.“

They were quite good hearted, and obviously lived a strange, strange life. Afterall, clubbed weasel was their idea of good eatin’. Larry’s totally deadpan delivery of some very bizarre lines was always a highlight of any Newhart episode. “We went to the bakery ’cause they were advertising ‘bear claws’, but it turned out to just be a come-on.“

Ah. Good times. Good times.

Movies and television portrayed westerns (with “white men” taming the wilderness), war adventures (mostly involving world war II fighting the evil Nazi army), space exploration (such as Lost in Space, Star Trek, Fireball XL-5, Thunderbirds are Go and Land of the Giants), and Spy Adventures (against the Soviet Union or against fictional organizations such as T.H.R.U.S.H.).

Kitchens had olive colored (baked porcelain steel sheet) appliances (at least in my family), not the brushed silver (aluminum) that is so fashionable today.
Men wore polyester and nylon shirts with wide striped ties; carried briefcases not backpacks, drank soda instead of bottled water, and listened to the Air Supply and Firefall on the AM radio.  We wanted Peter Frampton to “show us the way” because we (most certainly) “felt like he did”.

Today, bottled water is everywhere.  You can go into a local 7-11 or similar store like circle-K and get a water.  It is cheap. However it is STILL more expensive than the water that I had when I was growing up. Water was free, and we drank from water fountains.
Today you can easily buy a bottled water it is often less than a dollar. That wasn’t the case when I was growing up.

Water was free.

In fact, we didn’t even have convenience stores.  When they first started to appear, everyone was making fun of them.  Why anyone would want to pay so much money for the snacks and sodas that they offered there, we asked.
We soon found out that they would offer low prices for gasoline, and we could get our pictures developed by filling out special packages that were right there on the counter. It was most certainly a different life and a different time.

The local hardware store actually possessed a “cigar store Indian” statue. Which was pretty darn cool. I wonder where the Indian from “Cambells Hardware Store” is today. High schools taught firearms handling and safety.
You could purchase these huge plump-tire motorcycle tricycles and everyone was driving them about (Until a Democrat had them banned.). We saved “Green Stamps”.  Schools taught FORTRAN. Calculators were just becoming available and our sliderules were starting to gather dust in our desk drawers. High school bands carried (fake) guns (painted white) when they marched.

Drugs hit mainstream America in the middle to late 1960s and was all the rage in the 1970s. Ecstasy (MDMA) and other so-called “designer drugs” did not make their appearance until the 1980’s.  During the 1970s the most popular drugs were weed (marijuana), LSD (blotter, and microdot), mescaline (or dried mushrooms), hash (processed marijuana), speed (tiny “white cross” pills) and Valium. (Cocaine did not hit the American culture until the 1980s.) All of this drug use (abuse) affected our culture.  All one would need do is view the television shows at that time to appreciate this fact.

Now there are all kinds of theories as to WHY a common enough weed was made illegal in the United States. I have my own theories. Here are my opinions.

Ah. What began in the 1920s and 1930s as a technique to imprison non-Americans and lower-society tier African-Americans (as most “typical” Americans did not enjoy these substances at that time) fully blew up into a nightmare.
Moreover, thus began the downward slide of our culture, way of life, and everything that we believed in.

You take away the idea that the police are “on your side”, you will forever become an outlaw. Which was, if you think about it, the theme of the 1960’s and 1970s.

When I was growing up marijuana was highly illegal. It seemed crazy to me then. It was a “harmless” drug, surrounded by more dangerous, but legal drugs.  I, like the rest of my generation, chalked it up to a stodgy previous generation. At that time, we all smoked it.

I would say that a full 80% of my High School class smoked the stuff.  Some were habitual.  Others were one-time users.  Indeed, the television show “That seventies show” routinely depicted the lifestyle of our generation.  There, they are shown sitting around a table and smoking marijuana. It was in every episode. However, for PC reasons, it was never shown where the smoke came from.
I guess that there are some things that you cannot show on television…

This depiction is quite clear in the movie “Dazed and confused” as well.  Both video presentations accurately depicted what it was like growing up for my generation.

It took 40 years, but it seems that that ban on one of the most common plants in North America is beginning to crack.  I am not going to say whether or not the decision to do so is actually good or bad.
What people do in California or Colorado is none of my concern, as I live on the other side of the world.

What I will say is that people deserve FREEDOM.  That includes the freedom to stupefy yourself with drugs.
My take is the decision to ban marijuana was a control method, put in place in the 1920s to make it easy to arrest and incarcerate blacks and Mexicans when other laws were not available.  Truth this.

The “War on Drugs” was in full swing in the 1960’s and the 1970’s, but you couldn’t tell it by participating in youth culture. A sizable percentage of teenagers participated in the culture. The older generations were oblivious to that fact.

In their minds, it was only a small minority of people who were smoking marijuana. They lived within their own bubble of reality. Much like many people do today about other things.

Well, what they failed to realize is that [1] you do NOT ban anything in a “free” society, and [2] times and people change.

What was just fine and dandy for the policing of Arizona in the 1920’s fell flat on its face during the 1960’s and 1970’s.  What only made things worse was that very powerful people, including those in government started to use the “drug issue” for everything.
They capitalized on it, and used it as a resource.

Then, as now, older generations have problems understanding the youth that is slowing taking over their society. They just did not understand. (And, I must add, I can see why. Now that I am older, I too am having trouble with the youth of today.
In short I find many terribly ignorant of history, devoid of basic work skills, interested in the most trivial of things, and basically very shallow.) Not everyone mind you. Just many of whom that I have come in contact with.

Indeed, how can we actually say the USA is “free” if we are told what we can and can’t do with our very own bodies?

This was a fundamental disconnect that our parent’s generation, and (most especially) our grandparent’s generation (Those idiots that thought up the 16th amendment.) had with those people who founded America.

The belief structures of both our parents and our grandparents were not the same as those of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison.  They were something else entirely.  They, instead, possess a more “modern” and “progressive” point of view.
One where “the smartest men” in the nations had the power to tell YOU how to live your life.

You tell them, Ron.

When I show these images of my life to young millennials today, I usually get a harsh response. They claim that it is nonsense, and that I am being racist for not having images of non-white people. Yeah. Really. WTF?

At which I must remind everyone, that up until the 1980s, black African-Americans were a small MINORITY.  That means, that they represented a very, very small segment of the population. When I grew up, the first time I saw a African-American was when I attended college.
I did not meet a SA (Spanish-American) until after I left the US Navy and was in California. My first class with an Asian-American was in college.

While they weren’t common anywhere near where we all lived, we certainly were familiar with them. When I was growing up, I did see people from other races on television. In fact, one of my favorite shows was “Soul Train”, and I would really enjoy watching the American Negros dance and jive. They sure had “the moves”.  I would try to get up and dance as well (as long as no one else was watching).  It must have looked so silly.  This gangly ten-year-old boy trying his moves to soul and disco music!

I have to admit the hair looked cool too.

Everyone was wearing “afros” which looked like a big ball on the top of their heads. Man, people had style back then. Some of the best dressed people were negro and they handled themselves with a way and manner that is rarely seen today.

In fact, one of my heroes of the Rat Pack; Sammy Davis Jr. was an absolutely AMAZING man. Let it be known that he would never allow his pants to fall down and show his butt-crack like some of the ethnic youth do today. He was cool, panache, and had real style.

When Disco started to become popular all of my friends hated it. But I actually loved it. I would try to do some of the fantastic dance moves that I learned from Soul Train, but I don’t think I was good enough. In any event, the girls liked the fact that I was brave enough to shake some body, and that was a good thing.

I lived in the rural hills outside of Pittsburgh. We never, and I do mean NEVER, talked about “niggers”, and race.  We just did not. The closest I ever came to it was being called a “Pollack”. (A lot.) The “issue” about race is (today) a politically motivated narrative.
And, as such, it was constructed over the last eight years or so with defined objectives. It’s a pile of manure that we are all expected to believe.

Frankly, I am pretty tired about hearing about it all. It’s NEVER been part of my life. To me, it just sounds like a bunch of wining babies complaining. Wahhh! Wahhhh!  It really does. It’s irritating.

Here I am in China. I am always and forever an outsider. I am ALWAYS called by racist names (weiguren or laowei) and I don’t complain and use it as excuses, and you shouldn’t either. It’s below us. It’s stuff that little children do when they don’t want to eat their spinach.

Listen up. Real men do not complain about their hardships. They keep quiet about it, and they fucking TAKE IT. If there is one thing that is attractive to women it is that men are strong and quiet. Remember the Johnny Fontane scene from the movie ‘The Godfather” when the singer was begging for the part in the movie and crying about it. Do you remember what the Godfather had to say about it?

Crying and whimpering about stuff that happened to others long before you are born, and using that as an excuse is…

…pathetic.

Just because the urban areas are NOW dominated by non-whites does not mean that it was ALWAYS that way. What you see today is a result of the decimation of the African-American household structure  in the 1960s and the population explosion that resulted. Read.  Learn.
Understand. For goodness sake, read your history books.

And that’s all that I need to say about that.

Role models for men included John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, Burt Reynolds and Sean Connery. Men who were MEN! Men were manly; they worked, fought when necessary, and provided for their families.
(Yeah, we would ride around in these “sooped up beasts” and talk about our heroes on television. If we weren’t cruising around listening to “tunes”, we were in the weight room “pushing iron”.)

For me, I would lift weights in the High School gym.  There was a “Universal Gym” that I could use.  I wasn’t a member of the school football team as I had to work after school. Some of my friends owned real sets of “free weights”.

 
They would have a weight bench outside in the back yard, and I might go out and lift with them. My parents had bought me a cheap set of “free weights”. These consisted of weights, not out of cast iron or steel, but rather of plastic disks filled with cement.
They did not last as long as their more expensive steel counterparts, but they did do their purpose.

I kept them in our basement.  They sat alongside the furnace.  Next to it was my father’s old childhood shoebox (he used to go out and shine shoes for a buck or two when he was a boy). It still had his shoe polish, brushes, cloth and other tools of the trade.
It was painted light green, for some reason now lost in the mists of time. On the top of it was a platform, tilted at a 45 degree angle, where the customer could place their shoe so that he can shine it.

Both my weights, and my father’s shoebox, sat in front of my great grandfather’s toolbox. He was a carpenter who would make furniture.  Back in the “old days”, he would haul the toolbox out to the countryside.
His potential customers would judge his skill at furniture making by looking at his toolbox.  They would note the condition and craftsmanship of his tools.

As such, if the tools were well maintained and clean, and the workmanship was of high quality, he would obtain work to make commissioned furniture.
Back in his generation, at that time, most of his work was custom furniture to fit the needs of the local townspeople in Germany and Poland in and around the Bug river area.

There in the basement were three generations of male tools and brick-a-brack. Our female companions never cared too much for the emotional value and labor that these items represented to us men.  They only appreciated the money that was derived from efforts using them.
(And, for me, NOPE I just never became a famous body builder.)

Roles for us men were different than roles for women. Because, after all, we are quite different.

(Quick recap for those of you who didn’t learn this in first grade. There are two genders. They are boys and girls. If there is a mixture of genitalia on a person, they have a rare condition known as a hermaphrodite.
The construction of other genders beside these precious few is not biologically sound, and is used as a political construct for greedy people to get power. If you follow their narrative, you will eventually get hurt.)

Men and women are different. That is a good thing. Different is wonderful.

Television role models for women were different.

Women had a different series of standards and interests.  At that time, women were regarded and cherished as “different” from men.  Men and women were not, never were, and never will be, equal.

Heroines for women included Elly Mae, June Cleaver, Mary Anne, Anne Marie, Samantha, Lisa Douglas, and Jeannie.
They were all women who acted like women and lived their lives on their own terms. From my discussions with women (Attribution below.), they all seem to agree that television promoted woman as strong leaders.

Consider Elly Mae from the television show The Beverly Hillbillies. She’s pretty but doesn’t know it and doesn’t care, can talk to animals and beat the living crap out of boys if she wants to.

Or, June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver. From what I hear, June Cleaver was the perfect woman. “How fabulous were her clothes? Her little suburban life? Her shiny appliances? Her squeaky clean kids? Her “hunkahunka” husband? Her cocktail hour and her perfect little dinners?”

Mary Anne, from Gilligan’s Island was wholesome, nice, pretty, athletic, fab body, smart, and loyal.

Samantha from Bewitched was beautiful, magical, so in love with Derwood that she’d give up everything that makes her special, could get anything she wanted by wiggling her nose.

Television was a big part of our life.

It is difficult for someone in this day and age to appreciate the grand influence of television had on society during the 1960’s and the 1970’s.  Today we realize that everything is tied, one way or the other, to the Internet.
Well, at that time period, everything (while not “tied”) was most certainly revolving around the television set.
Oh, it was a much simpler time because the government controlled the media, there were only a handful of media companies, and no one knew about the ties between the two. It was an open secret.

Music and televisions were big.

We watched Walter Cronkite on the evening news, enjoyed “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman”, “Three’s Company”, reruns of “It’s about time”, and weekly installments of “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island” on television.  Also included such classics as “The Gong Show”, Reruns of “Adam-12”, and “The Brady Bunch” / “The Partridge Family”, and other retro-1960’s shows like ‘The Mod Squad”, “Julia”, and “Maude” were still getting air time.  So we watched them along with other 1960’s and 1970’s era shows. Of course, we all loved The Three Stooges.

Honorable mention to television shows that influenced me personally at this time included “The Time Tunnel”, “Star Trek” (Of course), “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, “Supercar”, and “Fireball XL-5”.  Finally, “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits” defined our generation at that time.  The cold war influences were all blended together with the emerging post nuclear sciences that indeed really shaped our opinions and thoughts on life.

Television was a staple for my generation, but that was not the case for my parents’ generation. We absolutely lived off it.  They used it to augment their personal activities.

Whether it was knitting (my mother), or smoking a pipe and drinking a glass of red wine or cocktail (my father) my parents considered television to be a supplement to their lives.

Music was always playing and the televisions set was always on. My father would come home from work at the Steel Mill, and my mother would prepare him a cocktail while dinner was being made.

We would have the “late edition” of the Pittsburgh Press (newspaper) delivered, and he would read it in “his” chair (all men need to have “their” chair) as he drank his preferred beverage. We kids would watch the television.

When it was time to eat, we all would put what we were doing aside and go to the dining room. There we would have our daily meal together.

Yes, we collected albums, and listened to them on record players, or very expensive audio components known as “turntables”, “receivers”, “amplifiers”, and “tape decks”.
(We would even buy an album containing 10 lousy songs because we liked one track.)  Music, then as now, was a big part of our life.

Television was our primary source of entertainment. Everyone had one, and we all watched it.  Many households had the television  on most of the day. Though, for the most part, we only had access to from four to five channels of various quality. (This was before cable services.)

Is that a Chicago album I see? How many albums can you, the reader, identify? I see Alice Cooper’s Muscle of Love, Neil Young’s Harvest, and a Three Dog Night, a Boston with a BTO nearby.

Briefly, we had an “8 track” player installed in our family car.  Here we could switch between four (4) locations in the “album” so we could rapidly listen to a different song if we did not like the one that was playing.  We had a collection of these in the car.
As I recall, we had a “Jesus Christ Superstar”, and an “America”, and an “Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”.
The problem was that the inside of the car got hot, and the “8 track” tapes were made out of ABS plastic, so sometimes they would melt in the heat of the car If you left them on the dashboard.

At that time, we believed the media.  We believed what we saw.  We believed in the government, and we believed in the promises that were made to us.

We believed the Democrats when they told us that our social security money (taxes) went into a “lock box” (actual term as they used) and would never be “touched” (used for other purposes).  Then, right after they made those promises, they went around and started handing the money away to non-contributors like candy. Anyone could get it. Just like pensions. All gone. Bye bye.

WTF?

We believed that when we paid state taxes that they would go into fixing the terrible “pot holes” that littered Pennsylvania roads.

We believed that they would not go into the big unions of Philadelphia that operated like mob bosses of yore. But we were wrong.  We were really, really, wrong.

Instead, the fat mob bosses just got fatter.  The rich guys “on the Hill” (The Mayor and his toadies.) got richer, and our money seemed to get smaller and smaller. Every year the costs for things increased.
Every year we were told that this was “normal” and we needed to accept things, but they “had a plan”.  Always, the plan turned out to take more money from our wallets, and put it into theirs.

My father, a staunch life-long Democrat strongly believed that once the entire state was controlled by Democrats that the world would be pure, easy and everything would be perfect. He really believed in what they promised. Even when it was found that they had stolen his pension.
Even when it was found out that his 401(K) was looted. Even when he found out that they “lost” the monies that they promised to fix the roads with. He still believed.

Pennsylvania “pot holes” still never got fixed.

We might have been “simple”, but at least we possessed some “common sense”.  We at least knew what a boy was and what a girl was. That is unlike the confused children of today. (And, wow are they confused!)  We knew that if you possessed a penis you were a boy.
If you had a vagina, you were a girl.  If you couldn’t tell the difference you were confused.  Though at that time we would of simply called you a fucking idiot, and laughed at you until you ran home crying to your mother.

If you wore a mask to cover your face, you were a bad guy and doing something reprehensible.  (Something, I might add, that you are ashamed to associate with your face.)  This included Bank Robbers, Train Robbers, Stagecoach Robbers, the KKK, and the Black Panthers.
They were not looked upon as righteous heroes such as what is being portrayed in the media today with the BLM, SWJ, and Antifa movements. They were considered criminals.

In those days, parents were responsible for their children, and if a child misbehaves the entire family would lose face. Parents made sure that children behaved.
This was before the coddling movements of the 1980’s where everyone gets a participation prize at school, and those that excel are punished.

The popular television shows reinforced this narrative. If you misbehave, your family would suffer.  Consider the television shows “The Brady Bunch”, “The Partridge Family”,  and Happy Days”.

Television commercials promoted both cigarettes and booze.  The hard liquor ban has been in effect since 1936 for radio and 1948 for television.  The ban on selling “soft liquor” (beer) has been a “darling child” of the progressive left since the days of Bill Clinton.  At the time of this writing the fight is still active.
Perhaps, by the time this gets read the liberal progressive Democrats will succeed in banning it.

The “vices” of the past were once considered unsavory habits. Today, they are considered to be serious crimes.  Indeed, it was just simply “fine” to smoke, drink and have a cocktail at lunch.
Though there were limitations; for instance only Management and Sales could go for a “three martini lunch”, the rest of us had to limit it to one or two beers.

The phrases “I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” Or, “I’d rather fight than quit” were famous catch phrases for cigarette advertisements on television at that time.

Cartoon characters smoke, drank, fought and were very politically incorrect. Being homosexual was frowned upon, and there were absolutely NO portrayals of them in the media. No one knew what a LGBT person was, nor cared about it either.
I ask the reader this; have you seen a gay person on “The Jetsons”, “The Flintstones”, “Deputy Dog”, “Captain Kangeroo”, “Lost in Space”, “Petticoat Junction”, “Hee Haw”, “F Troop”, or “Ba Ba Black Sheep”?

Now, today, you cannot find a single one without one. Even the science fiction staples such as “Star Trek” and “The Orville” all have multiple characters presented.

If you got pregnant before getting married, it was frowned upon, and while abortion was available, its use was discouraged. The social norms were reinforced by the media. They were not trying to redefine them.

I suppose that some explanations are in order.

For there are many things that I grew up that were normal, that is considered outrageous today. One of them is the three martini lunch. The three-martini lunch is a term used in the United States to describe a “leisurely, indulgent lunch enjoyed by businesspeople”.
Back in the day, this was a common enough practice. If you were in management, part of a sales team, or even a supervisor, these kinds of lunches were quite common. Indeed, many times, the boss would come back after 3:30pm from a long lunch and be quite “sauced”.

Now, according to Wikipedia, it is ONLY a perception.

Ah. Nope, my dear clueless millennial. It was not a perception. It was a reality. Drinking at work was commonplace. At least in the steel, coal, and appliance industries it was. I don’t know about the other industries.

Now, since business matters are usually discussed at them, three-martini lunches can be considered a business expense. Of course  (which includes travel, meals, etc.) and thus can qualify for a tax deduction.
The people involved would remember to collect their receipts and turn them in at the end of the month for reimbursement. They would get money back, and the receipts were kept in a ledger to account for all the costs related to business expenses.

In those days, all managers, and of course sales staff, had an entertainment budget. The manager would have free latitude in determination of how to spend the money, and it was often considered a perk.
The manager could spend it with employees to offer them incentives and to build up the working relationships, or use it for work related tasks with other companies and people.

Wikipedia does have it right in that the three-martini lunch is no longer common in the United States. However, it is, thankfully, quite common outside of it. Yeah! Baby!

America for the modern businessman certainly blows!

President John F. Kennedy (D) called for a crackdown on such tax breaks in 1961, but nothing was done at the time.

Then another democrat, Jimmy Carter (D)  condemned the practice during the 1976 presidential campaign. Carter portrayed it as part of the unfairness in the nation’s tax laws, claiming that the working class was subsidizing the “$50 martini lunch”.
(Of course, use the “class struggle” to divide Americans. It’s a time-honored Democrat tactic. The theory is because a “rich businessman” could write off this type of lunch as a business expense.)

By the time Bill Clinton (D) came to office, there wasn’t much that still needed to be done.  So he concentrated in the elimination of all vices from the work environment (except for elected officials, of course) and the banning of cigarettes, and drinking proceeded apace.

Not to be outdone, Obama (D) started to tie health plans to tax breaks.

The only people who still had three-martini lunches were the “fat cats” in Washington, D.C.. They were “different” don’t ya know, and laws don’t apply to them. Most especially if they are Democrats.

When I was a kid one of the most popular marketing brands was for Camel cigarettes. I can remember wanting to “walk a mile for a Camel” although I was too young to appreciate it’s meaning. This was a “dated” slogan, as it dated back to 1921.  Everyone smoked, except me. LOL!

There were cigarette vending machines everywhere including the high school. It sat right next to the Coke machine in the school cafeteria. The vending machine had a long lever that you pulled outwards to discharge a pack of cigarettes.
Matches were common everywhere, and many stores and restaurants gave away free matches with their address on it.

In the 1990’s during the Bill Clinton presidency, it changed to the “Joe Camel” advertising promotion that became wildly popular.  (Since the Democrat party had no way to skim off some of the huge profits that the advertising promotion generated, they went ”full on” to ban it.
After all, if they couldn’t get their cut in the profits, no one could get anything.  Oh, they promoted the ban to help “the children”.  But of course, what we now know about the Clinton pay-for-play schemes, we know this to be painfully true.
But, like everything else, this is just my opinion.)

I guess that I am full of “nonsense” opinions.  Right?  Well, look at this from my point of view then…

Yup, you throw out the people who are “not on the same team”, and put your guys in. This is true for all politicians, not just Democrats.

Though, President Trump is kind of slow in learning this political lesson…

Why did it get banned?  The evidence did not show a connection. The change in makeup of the FTC was changed by Bill Clinton, that is a fact.  Why?  To “save the children”, from what?  Where is the proof?  I am not, will not and cannot buy those excuses.
Especially related to a mega-rich uber-billionaire and his family who has no obvious sources of income except a presidential salary and well known for their famous “pay-me-money” for access and favors schemes.

Joe’s critics did not need evidence. Wasn’t it obvious that R.J. Reynolds was targeting children? Joe Camel was a cartoon, after all.
To which R.J. Reynolds replied that Snoopy sells life insurance and the Pink Panther pitches fiberglass insulation, but no one assumes these products are aimed at kids.
The company insisted that hip, irreverent Joe was designed to attract young adults who considered Camel an old man’s cigarette.

Find out on your own.  Take the time to find out why.

The demise of advertising for cigarettes on television, as well as banning cute advertisements aimed at youth (Joe Camel), was part of an anti-smoking initative initiated by the Democrat Party and specifically Bill Clinton (D) in the early 1990’s.
I suppose they wouldn’t have gone so aggressively against the “big” tobacco companies if they contributed more money to the Democrat party election coffers.  But that is a different subject for a different time.

The way this works is obvious to everyone. Especially today. If you want to keep the SJW, Antifa, BLM, and busybodies off your back, you pay them off.

In America you PAYOFF the busybodies.

We had furniture that was made out of real hardwood.  The cheap softwood furniture started to replace the long-lasting and durable (and very beautiful) hardwoods in the 1970’s.  This lasted for a decade, and then the 1980’s hit. Everyone was trying to “make a buck”.
As a result even cheaper furniture started to make it’s appearance.  This consisted of plywood furniture.  The plywood would have a laminated layer of nice attractive hardwood.

This lasted for about a decade, up until the decade of Bill Clinton. At that time, the uncontrolled spending by Congress reached new levels, and the resulting hit on the value of the worker’s dollar was substantial. Wal-Mart became very popular and powerful.
As it offered the cheapest products for families trying to maintain their standard of living while the value of the dollar collapsed.  This resulted in the cheap “sawdust and glue” furniture (Particleboard) that is so common today.

Lawyers didn’t yet advertise for class action law suits. Not until the Clinton presidency.  That presidency implemented so many social revisions that are too numerous to mention.  Some may argue that it was certainly for the best.  But, I argue the oppose.  All you need to do is look at what constitutes a playground in America today to see the fallout from this folly.
All you need to do is take a bite out of a tomato that tastes like a cardboard box filled with bland water. All you need to do is try to speak your mind today and see the vitriol and hatred directed back at you.

Indeed, restrictions on one’s ability to do what they please is a restriction on FREEDOM, and is tyrannical in nature and substance. No matter what the (stated) intention was..

Anyways, while there were many things changing over the years, one of the most notable was the phone sex hot lines that were all the rage during late-night commercials. These things were just a passing fad that made some people enormously wealthy in a very… very short period of time.

The networks were dominated by the big three; NBC, CBS, and ABC and they controlled everything that we saw and many things that we read.
There was no Internet, if we wanted to watch something out of the ordinary we would watch Public Broadcasting, or one of the small local startups that tended to appear and disappear after a few months.
(Thanks to them, instead of the dominant American networks, I was introduced to Bennie Hill, Monty Python, and belly-dancing.)

Politics have made America what it is today. Ugh!

All of the interns that I get from the United States are walking progressive robots. Which is fine, as long as they do their work. Just do you job, eh? The problem is that they have no idea what work is. They think it is talking about their feelings over coffee.
What the fuck has happened to America?

Here is what work is;

Somehow, the young folk out of the United States never learned this. Their ideas about what work is looks more a scene from the television show “Friends”, or the inside of a coffee shop. Maybe they feel at ease parroting Ellen Degeneres. Many are totally useless at work. It’s their education.

You know, the entire reason for this post was due to a young intern. She had the gall to suggest that I (her supervisors boss’s boss) was in my role because I was “privileged” growing up. She had the fucking gall to tell me that I didn’t know about their “struggles”.
Her “struggles”…. Give me a fucking break will you!

Well, I didn’t hold back in my response. I’ll tell you what. She probably has nightmares about me now. (Sigh). Look, life is full of good things and bad things. But life is what YOU experience. It is not what you hear about, read about, or watch in a movie.
It is what you personally experience. Unless you have gone through what I had to endure to be where I am today, then SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Politics are both silly and dangerous. I wouldn’t be so fearful except that politics is used to change governments. Here is the basic recipe;

Which is why, those of us who actually READ, support the second amendment.

Those that want to change the government are often well-meaning, but easily manipulated by tricksters. Those “tricksters” often manipulate their followers to obtain their ultimate goals of power, control, wealth and fame.
Then, once they have obtained power, they kill their top leadership and their top followers. This happens each and every time. It happened in Germany, in China, in North Korea, and in Cuba. The techniques are well known and well documented. If the reader is interested in this, maybe you too want to control your own nation someday, you can read about it in the book the 28 laws of Power.

Politics never reflect reality.

Politics were black and white. Democrats supported the governments of Communist Russia, and Communist China.  (That is one of the reasons why all of the old symbols of the Democrats were red.)  Even the Democrat / Confederate “battle flag” was red with the crossed bars. The KKK was, and for the most part still is, a Democrat organization.
Let’s not forget that the Grand Kleagle (LOL!) was Senator Robert Byrd Democrat from West Virginia! I’ll wager a bet that you all didn’t know that.

It’s one of top secrets of the DNC.

Now politics is such a large part of American culture, that I just can’t leave it out.

Here’s the truth. It doesn’t matter if it is 1970 or 2010. Republicans were just sick and tired of all the political nonsense and wanted everyone to leave them alone and stop paying so much in taxes.

However, since the Democrats controlled the media they controlled popular culture.  No matter how one felt, the barrage of progressive indoctrination was incessant. Even the music that we enjoyed and listened to (at that time) was interspersed with progressive propaganda.

Democrats in the 1970’s followed time proved socialist techniques. They supported peaceful protests and “sit downs” for such things as labor unions (automotive, steel, government and education), and free access to the soft drink “Tab”.
Republicans wanted to stop the apparently never-ending cycle of “walkouts”, “strikes” and “labor organization” (for substantial pay increases).

It was always attack, and Republicans defend.

Attack… defend.  Attack… defend.

Attack… defend.

By the mid-1980’s, a union steel worker (high school graduate, with no subsequent post-education) with ten years in the union, would be able to make almost two times the salary of a degreed engineer with ten years’ experience. It was really outrageous.
(Yeah, but for my generation, it wasn’t so great. After they worked ten years or so and were laid off, they were fucked.)

Fucked over…big time.

Hey! You “I always vote Democrat because they will protect me and give me a pension”, how’s that working out for you? Now that non-Americans can get your jobs? It feel really good? It feels like your have been vindicated? Eh?

Anyways, all of this was pretty hard for industry at that time, where the production line could shut down at a moment’s notice on the most trivial of reasons, and the factory couldn’t do anything about it (that was until globalism…) The Democrats used the unions because they represented a huge voting block.
They always manipulated huge blocks of people. Now, here today we know exactly just how far that utility lasts. So, the lesson here is that the Democrats turned their backs on the unions so that they could take more, in bigger bundles from foreign governments.
It was all in the name of “Globalism”.

My father could NEVER get over that harsh reality.

Democrats wanted to burn bras (which was something even my mother did) and I never had a problem with it either, and have free love with everyone (and everything).  That also sounded good to me too. Who doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Who doesn’t like sex? Sex is fun.

Things were so different then. It was a different time indeed.

For today, if you are not from an urban ghetto, or a member of one of the (approved) “oppressed minorities” you are maligned. And, for the record, we all think it’s terrible inaccurate and very, very unfair.
So when you are trying to label and box Trump supporters into such things as “uneducated, white males”, or “deplorables”, we all take particular offense at that.

We are not. So shut the fuck up.

Anyways, all the seeds of political unrest was planted during the 1970’s. The seeds are sprouting up today, and they aren’t pretty. It is sad.

It’s sad, but you know what, I no longer live in the USA so it’s not my problem.

You’ve got Democrats and you’ve got Republicans. They are both identical creatures with similar objectives. They pretend to be ideological, but they really aren’t. They just act that way. When it benefits them, they simply switch political parties. That way their objectives are maintained.

Yeah. It’s not my problem.

There are many such secrets. Secrets abound, and it’s not just politically motivated secrets only. Consider the Clinton body count (terribly underestimated in size and scope). The secret about when President Trump exploded all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons under the mountains. Oh, and the Obama funding for the anti-White race war in South Africa. Oh, you haven’t heard about that one yet… well, you will…

You will…

My father, a life-long Democrat, constantly talked about how “one day” the Democrats will get in power and change things.  Yessur!  The people will rise up and the “little guy” (himself and all his white middle-class friends) would get a chance to “sit at the table”. Hah!
Was he ever so disappointed in President Obama. I think it broke his heart. 

Now, even though he is long dead and buried, he still, to this day continues to vote Democrat…

Democrats were for free speech EVERYWHERE by EVERYONE.  (Speech was more than just talk, but included behavior.  Indeed, Democrats wanted to “let it all hang out”.) Yikes…! At that time, it helped further their agenda.

Which was, and still is, a phased plan to rewrite the Constitution.

What can we learn from my experiences growing up?

All this should indicate that my experiences are totally different from what young people experience today.

Which means that when I talk to an intern, I need to explain to them some basics that they should have learned while they were growing up. The fact that they did not learn them, and that the families and the schools have both failed them is a troublesome worry. For they are not equipped to compete globally for any work at all. Let alone basic janitorial work.

Q: Why is Senior Year important in High School?
A: Senior Year is the last year that you can be a child. You are nearly an adult. You might have a girlfriend or boyfriend. You might have a car, a job, and some money. You have well established friends, and a future of some sort mapped out for you.
You are in peak health, and are just ready to begin a new stage in your life.

Q: What was High School like in the 1970s?
A: It was a blast. I would imagine that it was like school in other generations and at other times. The 1970’s, were boring we thought. However, looking back, we can see just how absolutely great they were.
Someday, you too will write about your experiences in school like I have here.

Q: What are the differences between High School in the 1970s and today?
A: Freedom. We could smoke outside the classrooms. We could drive our cars to and from the school. We could carry knives. Lunches were ok. We had a main dish, with two sides, a dessert and a drink. I see what constitutes a Michelle Obama school meal and I end up shitting my pants. What the hell was she thinking? Oh, and the music was awesome.

We often complained, back then, that the High School students in France got to drink wine during lunch time. Paid for, of course, by the school. We, us poor Americans, had to wait until we got home before we could drink.
Looking back, the differences between then and now are astounding.

Q: What was segregation like in the 1970s?
A: I just don’t know. No one was segregated in the counties where I lived. I heard that there was still some “unofficial” or underground segregation going on in the deep south. But, in my neck of the woods, it was unheard of.

Q: Did everyone in high school drive cool cars?
A: Yes. I drove an orange 1970 Pontiac GTO. Many of my friends rode cool cars. My friend Clyde drove a Chevelle SS.
Like the movie “Dazed and Confused”, where Wooderson drives a big-block Chevelle nicknamed “Melba Toast.” He had an Edelbrock intake on his 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS 454. Ohhh the 454, now that was an engine.
Other cars included a Ford Mustang convertible, a Ford MACH 1, and a Plymouth Duster driven by the “Brackey Boys”. Heh heh.

Q: What was elementary school like in the 1960s and 1970s?
A: We would play outside before school started. We would play hopscotch on the sidewalk. We would mark out the numbered blocks with a stone and scratch it into the cement. Then we would file in. First thing after roll call was the Pledge of Allegiance.
Then we would have a pretty much typical class.

Though there was often some education about the upcoming Global Cooling that would change the earth into a solid ice cube.

We would then go out on organized field trips to collect donations for the cause, and help clean up the local streams and countryside. I don’t know who got to pocket all the money we collected. All I remember is that we used to raise buckets of money for the cause.
Literally, they were buckets and boxes of money. Afterwards, the teacher would sing on the guitar with some songs typical of that era, like “If I Had a Hammer”, and “Kumbaya”.