Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire who remembers when the country was right?

I'm in the same camp.

Spanish American War right?

I don’t know if the country was “right” but the 50’s and early 60’s were a good time to be white in America and an amazing time to be growing up white in America.

Maybe it depends on what right means? There was poverty, always has been, but as noted it seems to me even poor folks had pride, some had downright fierce pride about not accepting any handouts.

Maybe ignorance is bliss, there were certainly child molesters in the 50’s and 60’s, murders, prostitution and drugs but you just didn’t hear about that. Random murders really were rare (at least it seems like it – certainly not the random slaughter we see in Chicago and Detroit and elsewhere) and murderers usually got the chair or gas chamber. There were robberies in town but they were generally so rare most of them made the paper. Now you have to rob a half billion dollars and/or kill 10 people in the process for it to even be noticed.

Suburbia had just begun to eat up farms and forests. Even in a medium sized town open spaces weren't too far away, cars made it easy to get to and permissions either were easy to get or weren't even needed in many places.

Politicians were corrupt, always had been, but maybe we just overlooked that. At least we and they pretended to be honorable people, we didn’t have the total scorn for them that is so prevalent today – and which they fully earn today. The military-industrial complex was just getting started, drug money wasn’t in the billions of dollars yet and those things hadn’t spread their corruption as deeply as they have today. Corruption that widespread, from street cops to Congress, had ended in 1932 with the end of prohibition.

Overall the country was incredibly prosperous, more prosperous than it had ever been. We were a new world power – THE world power, fresh out of victory in WWII with pockets full of money and good paying, lifelong jobs available to just about anyone who wanted to work. A working man in a one income family could afford a nice house, a car and with a little planning send his kids to college without incurring crushing debt. Business was booming and confidence in America was high, we could do anything. There was a chicken in every pot and there were two cars in many if not most garages.

A good argument could be made that those two decades were the apex of the American Empire and times before and times after just aren’t going to measure up.

Whatever it was, I’m sure glad I got to live through it.

Or had parents who tried like hell to hide or shield their kids from that stuff, for better or worse. My mom grew up in SE Missouri in what would appear to be a proper, god-fearing, well bred family whose manners and decorum were impeccable almost to a fault at times. My dad grew up in Queens NY to a loud, everything-out-on-the-table family of first-generation Lithuanians. From the outside you would think my Dad's family was crazy with all kinds of drama and problems. But my mom has just as many stories of skeletons and dirty laundry as my dads family, it's just that her parents generation never talked about and tried a lot harder to keep it in the closet. As a father to two young girls I can understand the appeal of my mom's family's approach, but as I get older I lean more towards my Dad's family because I've realized that hiding problems or pretending they don't exist doesn't make them go away.

The world seems to have spun off its axis in 1964-65 to me. There was a lot of rot hidden but popular culture seemed much more sane then. DigDan is correct that the politics changed between WW2 and Korea and we haven't fought a war to win since WW2. That is the watershed of the rise of socialist trained govt. folks who went thru college after Wilson became Pres.
We are at the far end of 100 +/- years of Progressive destruction of the American culture. Lots of rot out there.

Worth pondering.

lot's of pain, suffering & poverty in appalachia in those days. not everybody had access to a good paying job. thus here came kennedy on his white horse, and after he got shot off of it, then johnson brought us the Great Society, guns & butter both. and the draft, and vietnam.

and beyond that there was the golden age of the pension for a fortunate some (or few). then the pension era came to a screeching halt. no more pensions for the current generations, by and large. sure, they can save for old age, like folks use to do, or depend upon family, or slowly starve from lack of food, and disease.

not all things are improving, but the back era after wwii was anything but golden for many. it was work or starve (which isn't a bad philosophy). even the Zen Buddhists accept that great truth.

where are we headed? it's been well described for us already: it's a flat, hot, crowded, competitive world that our Grands are going to inherit.

I'm a bit younger than you but we're on the same page. I've seen a lot of change in my 52 years and not much of it for the better.

Nothing to do with good, bad, or otherwise, but the vast majority of people now dress much differently than they did before. I mean folks didnt dress fancy then but they wore more than a t-shirt, flip flops, and a pair of shorts that seem to be the norm now just about everywhere.

Just my observation.

if devolution continues at the rate some are suggesting is occurring, then we should be thankful for t-shirts, & shorts. because further along the trail, we might be down to grape leaves to cover certain aspects of the body. but, thankfully we're not there yet. if we do get there, i hope there's at least some that resemble Barbie.

June 2, 1865 is when the decline really kicked in.

After the supreme court ruling organized prayer no longer existed in school. As regards being forced to pray, no one stood over you with a gun. You just did not want to do it, no different that those "taking a knee" today. The "greatest generation" certainly never had a problem with praying in school. None of them were harmed in any way by having prayed in school, nor showing our flag and National Anthem due respect. They worked and fought and did what was right for their families and their country, they didn't have time for any kind of protest and that was part of what made them great.

I didn’t know if the country was right growing up; born in 43 and lived on a farm,we moved to a small town and I could hunt,fish and trap anywhere I could walk to no question asked.Every youngster in town either bag groceries,worked at the gas station,delivered papers or bucked bales.

About 1960 a couple of new words surfaced; Haight Ashbury, a little to-do in S.E.A. And a letter from Uncle Sam changed our Country,so yes I do remember when our country was right.

There has been one "War" in my lifetime. Those who lived though it know which one we mean.

I am about 4 years older than you and we are in agreement, I lived as you described and so did everyone else I knew and most of us turned out pretty well. This 60's generation was the first one raised by the Dr. Spock methods and IMO it didn't work out well. Not only was their generation screwed up but they have passed it on to successive generations.
Most days I am glad that I am as old as I am because I don't think I will like what the future holds.

drover

"Raised by the Dr. Spock methods"

I always heard best thing to do with that book is whup the kids azz with it.

think of how much time you will need with a shovel to clean the crap out of the yard

I do not ever remember it being right, or even close to it. I was born after WWII. By the time the fifties got here we had McCarthy and near continuous nuke testing. We had Ssonic booms from training runs. We had junk cars that were designed to fall apart from the time they left the factory. The sixties brought us Viet Nam and killed a lot of the kids I went to school with. The seventies brought us a president and vice president criminal enough that they had to go and inflation that ate your pay check down to the bone. It just got worse year after year and we wonder why?

Not trying to live in the past, just reflecting on when a person was responsible for his actions, and there was consequence if you screwed up, it was the normal that you had to work for what you had, You were poor but did not know it, you would not ask anyone for assistance for anything, let alone expect it,except you could ask to hunt or fish anywhere and have no problem getting access

19 cent fuel and 21 cents for box 22 shorts!

The Hippie Era p hucked everything up!