TheBanyanTree: Cheated

[Scott Daniels]

Yes, indeed Tobie, the things you describe are certainly so. A family member at the time of the Great Depression once dropped two hairpins to the floor, where they fell between the floor boards, never to be seen again. She cried at the small loss, because their wasn't a single cent to be had to replace them. Especially in Dust Bowl Nebraska.
Believe me, I am painfully aware of the dark underbelly that coexisted with the era I speak of. My father fought on his belly from just after Normandy through VE Day. His entire generation was robbed of its youth, first by the Depression and then by the demands of war. Then? Straight to work.
I have myself been to Dachau and stood in the "showers" - a nauseating, chilling, wrenching experience beyond description.
My grandmother, though out in the workforce making munitions during the war, was plopped right back into her role as sit-down, shutup wife when the war ended.
Aside from familial and personal experience, this is a period about which I have read extensively. Along with the romance was plenty of ugliness. It was, after all, the bloodiest century in history. I don't mean too minimize or ignore the bad of the time. I most certainly wasn't saying that we should bring back Nazism, Jim Crow, coughing poverty or even unreliable carburetion.

But these are not the things of which I spoke, and were not the point of my piece. Adults are no longer in charge, few people behave as grownups, and our culture seems entirely geared to the tastes of the average 17 year old boy. One who smokes cigarettes after school, at that. In my area, the promise of my own fantasy of what being a grownup would be has not been realized, and I think it's OK to mourn that. I also know for certain that the good stuff did exist at the same time, and that is what I miss. Better clothes, less coarseness in manners, and no 5000db sound systems in cars.

I'm probably simply not up to my topic. I think Joseph Epstein says it better:  http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/825grtdi.asp?pg=1

Thanks for the post!

Scott