I'm pretty solidly a Gen-X fella. I appreciate and embrace being Gen-X because I'm pretty sure Tide-pods taste like crap. And no one is giving us any crap for anything. It's all "Boomer this" and "Boomer that".

My dad would disagree. He was born in 1930, and he said he grew up “camping “ in a one room house with no electricity or running water. He often woke up with frost on his bed. To get a drink of water he had to light a fire in the stove to warm up the water pitcher.

In the summer it was 100+ degree temperature outside and like an attic in the house.

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Back before I became Flatty


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How many here HAD to work their way through college as I did?

If being born at "3rd and a half base" means working 11PM to 7 AM for years and attending college during the day, then I'm guilty as charged.

It sounds a lot like your dad and I grew up similarly...but I do not understand why your dad would disagree with my post. Did he not enjoy the 80s?

I worked my way through elementary school.

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Baz, nice try.

Awesome...thanks, Paul.

Anyone wanting to post negativity.....feel free to frequent our "Pet Peeves" thread! :p

We're having fun here!

I have two older brothers. One only 11 months older! He and I, while still in high school, came down to Florida in January 1970 after Mom got re-married.

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SmileWavy

It took me six years to get an engineering degree. But I had some interesting jobs that may have served me better than the degree. I was an appliance repairman, fabricator in a race car shop, welder, owned my own foreign car repair shop, and before I graduated I worked for GM.

I'm not sure exactly how his post was intended either. You said you liked the 80s, and then it sounded like Glenn was saying that his dad didn't like the 30s/40s with no power, plumbing, central HVAC, etc...

Definitely 70's for me.

Did everything but sleep. Worked nights. Went to college starting at 7:30 am. Water ski (lived at the lake) and snow ski (mostly Taos). Dirt bikes. Most rock concerts in OKC, Tulsa, DFW, and Amarillo. Booze and drugs and then more booze and drugs. Date nights sprinkled throughout.

Growing up on a small farm, there was lots to do. Strawberries needed to be picked in late June and early July. Dad sold them to stores in town. As soon as that was finished, we started haying. We kept a small dairy herd so each summer a couple of thousand bales of hay went into the barns. Blueberries were next. In about 10 days in mid August it was not unusual to scoop around a ton. The money earned scooping blueberries bought my clothes for school.
After I got my driver's license, dad had me take on the job of delivering the strawberries to the stores, two trips per day.
Dad had retired at about that time, so in college years, I worked for a BIL on his farm, including the year off from studies. One good thing about that, working in the woods at -25°F made a really good case for returning to university and actually working.

Best
Les

I had a good time in the 60s and 70s too, but some parts of the country were crushed by unemployment and inflation. Neither my parents nor I and my wife were able to find a good job and get ahead until the 80s. It was almost impossible to even find a minimum wage job in the 70s where I lived. Decent work is still pretty hard to find there.

I worked 70hrs each week in fast food (starting at $1.60hr) to provide for my wife and me. In the 80s, I worked three jobs at the same time, all while going to college. We had ending up in Denver (after joining and relocating a couple of times with the military) and opportunity was everywhere. All three jobs paid better than minimum wage. My wife found better work as well. I managed to work my way through college, but it was really slow going. I was finishing up my final term before graduation when I got a short notice overseas assignment. I did not get back to finish school/graduate for 3 years (no internet/internet classes then). Grad school was much easier.

In the 80s, I got my first real taste of the American dream! In a few short years was able to buy my first home, a TV, my first camera, a motorcycle and multiple decent cars. I also was able to buy a CD player and some CDs (generally of 60s/70s music). I really could not afford to buy records before that. Like many, I relied in the radio.

Lots of folks didn't have houses wired for electricity, indoor plumbing, etc. in the 60s and 70s where I grew up. Things had not changed since the 30s. Even the school library had few books published after the 30s. We burned wood that we cut (supplemented with kerosene). I would not have known what central HVAC or AC was. I can well remember my first exposure to AC....and I was not a young child. I don't think I was ever even inside of a home with AC until the late 80s. Neither my schools (nor my college) had AC. They had windows.

Just remembered one summer when I was about 12, dad was having problems with the knotter on one side of the old Massey Ferguson baler. Maybe every second or third bale would have a knot slip after it was tied. I was placed straddling the bale chamber and each time the baler knotted the strings, I would test them. If they slipped, I would holler,"Whoa", quickly tie a square knot in the offending twine and give the OK to continue.
What a hot, dusty GD job, until the knotter was repaired.

Best
Les

My neighborhood (two houses away from me). The photos are from the 60s, but nothing changed in the 70s. Nice folks, but poor.


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Born in '55. Lived the 60's in the school yard where I got an "education". Came of age in the '70s got married, bought a house, had a child 81/82 and never regretted a second. Boomers were lucky enough to enjoy analog life when walking around with a toy rifle was the norm for a boy.

Thank you for sharing.

Any time you want to talk about where you grew up and that life, I'll be here to listen. It's terribly interesting, and not something that I can really imagine. When I was a kid, dad was a cop and mom was a nurse. They were buying a home, and that home was my first memory. THen dad went back into the Navy (enlisted) and stayed there until he retired a few years after I graduated HS, so we were never rich, but my life was far different from yours. We were rich by comparison.

We were rich compared to these folks. My mother had an entry-level clerical job in the city and drove our old truck there each day. The photographs above were from an article written about the rural poor. The photojournalists bought them some new clothes and bedlinens for the photos and then filmed them wearing their new "finery." The article was not kind. They did not realize that they were being put down. If they did, the city folks would be buried on the ridge behind them.

I was in the 5th grade with one of the boys in this photo. He was already about 15 or 16, about 6 ft tall and had a 5 o'clock shadow. A nice kid. I was 10. He could have bullied us but didn't. He played on my intramural basketball team that year. I remember well because he did not have any sneakers and had to play in socks. We beat everyone up to the 7th/8th grade travelling team because he towered over the rest and could jump...but really had no shooting or dribbling skills. I was able to do the rest. They did not pass kids unless they completed the requirements, and he missed a lot of school. That may have been his last year. I don't recall him in any higher grades. Even us poor folks looked down a bit on those that were even poorer and made fu of them a bit behind their back. I am ashamed of that now. I did not realize we were poor until I went to high school and spent my time with folks more like the photos posted here.

The neighbor on the other side of us had a two-room cabin made of rough sawn boards, (not logs) sawn on site in the 30s, but similar otherwise. No insulation. They burned wood and had water that came in through a window (a pipe) that simply ran all the time into a sink in the kitchen that drained outside. They also had no toilet/bathroom/shower/tub. Just an outhouse.

I was born when I was very young.