I was born in 1949, so I did grow up on Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, and I Love Lucy.
Those are the memories I cherish.
But of course there’s more, folks.
When I was very young, we had two sources of news: newspapers and the 6 o’clock news.
There was no cable television, no cell phones, and no Blackberries.
And no internet, of course.
At my house we got morning and afternoon newspapers, and we watched Walter Cronkite in the evening.
Things started changing the day that President Kennedy was assassinated.
For four days, television networks televised the ongoing story of Kennedy’s murder, including his funeral.
As the years went by, we watched the horror of the Kent State shootings, Viet Nam, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, then Robert Kennedy’s murder.
My parents were blue collar workers, and they owned a home, had a new car every few years, and furnished us with 3 square meals a day.
A visit to the doctor cost a few bucks.
On Sunday, after a nice dinner, we (me, my brother, and our parents) got in the car and took a ride out to “the country” where we enjoyed the scenery. During the summer, we stopped at fruit stands, then got an ice cream cone before going home to bath and bed.
The pipeline of news and information was slower and not always in living color.
It was a different time, and I think that as humans we were able to live, work, and love with a marvelous sense of detachment from the horrors that life can inflict.
Things like wars and reports of missing children always happened to “other people,” or so we told ourselves.
Being a Baby Boomer is about more than being born after World War II and watching Howdy Doody.
It’s about growing up in a world that has changed with a speed that is at times exciting (when considering technology), and at times absolutely frightening (e.g., watching an airplane fly, on purpose, into buildings occupied by thousands of people).
This is it in a nutshell, it was in essence a different world.
Wish I could still get a zero candy bar and chocolate milk for a dime.
Nehi soda was great also and we could take the bottles back to the store and get a lot of our money back, 15 cents for the soda and 5 cents back, those were the days.
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[...] It’s bigger than Howdy DoodyAs the years went by, we watched the horror of the Kent State shootings, Viet Nam, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, then Robert Kennedy’s murder. My parents were blue collar workers, and they owned a home, had a new car every few … [...]
Thanks, Floyd! I used to take empty pop bottles back to the store for my nickel. Thanks.
Well, I was born in 1943. I used to be a Boomer baby, too, but someone went and moved the goal posts. Now I’m in the advance guard, although full SS doesn’t kick in until I’m 66.
I’m so old, I remember the days before television, sitting in the kitchen loving the “Buster Brown Show” (I thought his dog’s name was “Tide”), “Stella Dallas”, and “One Man’s Family”. The latter two were my mother’s soap operas.
Although WWII was still very close to us because my mother’s two brothers served, no one ever told me about The Holocaust or the internment of the Japanese in the U.S. I’ve had to grow up and grow old to find out that the idyllic times of that family romance were quite less than ideal. Sort of like Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe … the wheel just turns and everything comes around again.
I was going to start a blog called “Boomer Girls”, just for us, Girl, but the woman who owns the unused domain name refused to even discuss selling it! I guess the days of “playing nice” are as gone as leaving our doors unlocked!
Rock on!
Thanks, Georganna. I’m sorry it took me a few days to approve your comment. I was lazy over the weekend!
Georganna, thanks for giving me, all of us, your perspective on being a Boomer–in my book you are, and always will be a Baby Boomer! And I mean that as a compliment!