BABY BOOMERS and CHANGE

narrative by Dr. Caroline
Living through the 60's

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, good morning or good evening whenever you're listening. This is Caroline Mullred. We're going to talk about the 60s. And I know you want to hear this because you tapped on it to listen, baby boomers. The generation is a very interesting generation of which I'm one of them. Now, why? Either you have lived through that era, or you have a parent that lived through that era, or perhaps even a grandparent who lived through that era. So it makes it so interesting. Well, it was a big age of change. I think change is the biggest word for me that I think of. We grew up in families, most mothers did not work. We grew up with families with one car. We certainly did not have any electronics 33s that played on a record player. We actually had tape recorders. It was a great simple time. We weren't asked to call people back because we didn't have answering machines in the beginning. When you call someone, you're supposed to call them back. They're not supposed to call you back. Well, that's great in an era where women were home or one of the members of the family were home all day. But I missed that time, and I'll tell you why I miss it. I missed that there was time for me. They weren't always having earbuds in their ears. When it was quiet, we actually got to be bored. We would go outside and play with our neighbors because it was safer then. Another point. At least where I lived, it was safer. In fact, I lived in a small town, we didn't even lock our door. Or our car door. And we were just in shock when somebody finally stole a car. You understand it's different. Believe me, it's a few generations. It's just not much. And in that time, we went from learning what the Vietnam War was like. Of course, we grew up with World War II parents, and the World War II parents were frugal. The mothers, a lot of them did go back to work. Of course, they ended up going back to the home, most of them that I have read about. But mothers did go to work, even part-time to support the family while their husbands were at war or working with the war. If you didn't want to go to war, you could get an exclusion by going to college. And then the draft came out. And being a woman, I was appalled because I was 50 out of hundreds and hundreds, and I would have been at war. And it made me realize what that meant, even at the time. Because remember, this is the 70s. Now we're 60s and 70s, but the 60s brought us into the 70s. Fun, so fun. We'd go to dances. I loved listening to my parents talk with friends. We ate never out because there weren't the restaurants. We had a local pizza place. Parents made food. We ate locally. We knew the grocer. We knew them. We knew the mailman. We knew people because life was slower. It wasn't boring. It was just slower. And in doing so, we had time to think. You had time to think when you did the dishes, maybe for your mother at that time. Because there wasn't maybe she had the radio on, but there wasn't the podcasting and the music and the TVs in every room. So it was quieter. Now what changed for us? So that I think it was the Vietnam War. I think hugely it was the Vietnam War. Because going overseas and fighting a battle that was difficult to see your enemy in. I mean, the uh the Vietnamese were not wearing uniforms, put a whole different slant on things. Also with Vietnam came a lot of drugs. So the servicemen came back and they had a lot of marijuana, etc., etc. So that led us into the drug era. We lived by a set of rules. If you followed the rules, then you were successful. And success meant having a steady job. It meant bringing in an income, supporting a family, being home for dinner. There were a lot of middle class family values that seemed to hold a lot of people together. It was also reinforced through churches or other groups. What changed was women went to work. People came home and the mothers weren't there. They were the new lech key kids. And we had to wear a skirt. We couldn't wear pants. In fact, the pantyhose, I mean, the pantyhose had to be the best invention of all. I think the biggest issue for me was environmental. Birds, I like to, I used to walk and love listening to the birds sing. The birds stopped singing. And that's strange. We didn't hear them. There weren't any birds. And DDT was quoted as the cause of killing birds. What happened is eggshells became too thin, so they never got where they were supposed to. I would walk and it would be quiet and I'd actually see dead birds on the ground. It's very frustrating. Because now we're going from a very quiet place where everything seemed to be okay outside of maybe some social, mental, or emotional issues with friends, and that's just humanity, and it's general no matter what era we're in. I don't think that changes. The ability to find your brain, to think about things, to have time to contemplate. You weren't rushed through making a meal, you weren't rushed having dishes. You didn't have tons to do so you could get to the certain movie and your choice of movies. We had three stations you could choose. And that was all fine and good because it was easy. It was really easy. And we talked with each other. Sometimes we didn't like what we said to each other, but we talked to each other. We played games with the family. The neighbors came over and had a cup of coffee and left. We didn't meet at restaurants. And maybe some of you still do that today. How lucky you are to find the people to have coffee in the middle of the day. How lucky you are to have neighbors that you trust to come over. I missed those times, but what happened is the ability to change the survival word for our generation. If you wonder why a lot of older people are very adamant about why this country is wrong and what's wrong with the world, and what's wrong with the food, and what's wrong with the air, there is a definite reason why. And the reason why is because it's not good. We remember when it was better, when it was so much better, and we were healthier and we lived really well. The quality of life was there. The bands became too loud. The digital era brought in incredible sound, incredible noise, and an invasion of my nervous system and my hearing. But we met in public and we had a band and we had dances. But the eggs, let's go back to the eggs. That bothered me. That bothered me more than anything, and I still have problems with that. And so I read a book at that time, Rachel Carlson, Silent Spring. All of a sudden, I didn't feel so obedient. I didn't feel like I wanted to listen to what anybody had to say, really, because I was angry. And you know what? That anger has produced more change for me than anything else. And when you rise above certain things and you find out what you really believe when you have all these choices, I think we're blessed. So welcome to new eras and um welcome, all you baby boomers. I wish you health. I wish you lots of love and lots of peace.