BOOMER GENERATION MEMORIES

Generations  Podcast from 2019
Calling all Baby Boomer Generation! What a life time of change and adjustment and fun. We remember when...now...and what is missed.

Transcript

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Hello, boomers! Enjoy the music. I'll be back at the end of it! Hi, Boomers! It's Dr. Caroline, and I'm very excited to be talking with my peer group. In fact, if anybody is not a boomer, you are welcome to listen because maybe you will understand us a little better. We are a generation that went through tremendous change. And every generation does, but ours has a different kind of change socially, emotionally. But let's get started. I just want to give you some memories. I talk with many of us, and we're just, as you probably have heard, we were kind of missed some of the old days. And boy, I heard that from my dad. He thought the world was going to, you know, what? In the handbag, is what he said. And he was so much older. So he's been around for he was around for a long time when he said that. But this is a little different. I'm really, really glad that I have been through this era and continue to be through this era because I think we bring a set of values that are different from other generations. And if we've instilled those in our children, our children are bringing those forward too, although they definitely have a different environment to work through through social media, et cetera. But let's talk about our memories. And I'll talk about my memories because I think through the memories, we understand our generation. And you'll have yours, but these are mine. I remember growing up in a small town in Michigan. And if you've ever lived in a small town, everybody knows everybody else's business, which has its benefits, but it actually is not necessarily the best thing that you want to have. But the woman across the street, she started having work done in her house. She was building, we found out, a bomb shelter. And I'm thinking, a bomb shelter. Well, this is in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and all of a sudden we're talking about the possibility of being bombed with an atom bomb. Well, that scared us. We were pretty obedient because that's our generation. We started out being extremely obedient because we followed the rules like our parents did. You know, our parents' generation were called the silent generation. I mean, my parents weren't silent, but the generation might have been because they probably followed and felt compelled to keep with the social um so social mores. Our parents, and when I was growing up, you didn't have the cell phone that went across the waters. I mean, you were lucky you got to call the neighbor within the area. It wasn't like communication was free and available unless you had a corded phone. You had to wait because I don't know about you, but I do remember when the answering machine came in, it all of a sudden your lives changed because you could go out and not wait for a phone call and you could receive that message. But we didn't have to wait. And to me, that's a big part of our baby boomer generation of understanding that we used to have to wait and we used to have patience and we maybe not liked it. But um compared to our generations today, we have instant gratification. We have it in so many ways. Many of us that I've spoken to and with, we realized the power of waiting for something. So changes for me came in college. Because I was an earlier boomer, we were not allowed to wear pants. I mean, women didn't wear pants. We could wear jeans and that type of thing. I think it was a, you know, it was the sixties thing, 50s thing, and that's what we grew up with, but you would never ever go to school or church or even on an airplane unless you wore your nylons and your straight skirt and your sweater and your pearls. That was the code of dress. I I didn't ever like the nylons. I don't know about you ladies that are our age, but oh my gosh, when eggs brought out the pantyhose, weren't we uh weren't we just blessed? It was so wonderful, but we still had to wear a skirt. So what happened is going to college and I was on a very big campus in Michigan, I remember my eight o'clock class and it would have a huge snowstorm and you had to go. And so we had our boots, and we also had our nylons and our our skirts and a coat, and hopefully they plowed the snow away. It's just something we did. We just weren't allowed to wear pants. Then the Vietnam War took hold. Even though for me it started in high school, it really came forward when I was in college. And when I graduated, I was wearing bell bottoms and had hair down to my waist, and I thought I was a conservative compared to most people that I saw. I mean, we actually went just having normal food to all of a sudden it was fast food. And we always stayed home and we didn't go out. It was very unabnormal. I mean, there were very few restaurants. I remember the pizza place, it was always a treat. We would go get the pizza from a local pizza place, but first a couple number of McDonald's, and then all of a sudden the fast food began. We remembered how nice it was not to have to wait for something to be cooked. And it was a family night out when we all went to McDonald's. It was a very cool time. So with the introduction during the college years of going from Pantyhose to Bellbottom's, we also had the introduction of drugs, marijuana. We also were taught disobedience. So many people were disobeying the rules and regulations. I mean, our our friends were in Vietnam and being killed in what we felt was a senseless war. And I'm sure there's many social historians that have a lot to add to this. But as far as a person who lived through it, we went from romance with Doris Day to free love, and that wasn't really free. You know, just the whole attitude of what was expected of us changed in a very, very short period of time. And we had to adapt. And even though we're pretty good at changing, we also might not have always liked it. It may have lost something in that translation of freedom. And that we I always felt free. I mean, I don't know why I didn't think I was free. It's just that there were certain expectations in our society that you you did. And a lot of it had to do with dress and food and how we lived. And with the one car, you had to be patient, you had to wait. You had to wait till your dad got home in order to go anywhere. There was a lot more family communication, there was a lot more times around the dinner table. There was a lot more eating exactly what mother put on the plate because guess what? There were no fast foods, you couldn't go out and be independent, and she was gonna cook four different things. Technology changed, and with uh with that, we had a change. But what it I think everyone needs to hear what I've heard and what I agree with is that we've lost something in the translation. We have lost the art of caring deeply and we miss it. And now we have parents, some people have parents that are still alive and they're caring for them as they pass, but they also are taking care of the ch the grandchildren because their son or daughter is now single and has to work. That didn't happen before. Divorce wasn't wasn't thought of as an appropriate solution to a problem. The Cold War and Cuban missiles also did something else. That bunker across the street and the air sirens in our small community. How can something so small be so powerful that it could kill us? That we have to go underground and take our food with us. So, yes, it's kind of common knowledge today, but then it wasn't. And our feelings of security and safety were it just seemed to to shift a lot. And if you get a chance, you might enjoy reading or listening to my DDT and Silent Spring. It was with Rachel Carlson with Silent Spring, her first book that made a huge difference in our environmental awareness of what uh toxins were being put on our food and and what was happening to our our animals and our birds. But this is how our generation has been characterized. We are experimental, we are individualized, we believe in individualism, we are free spirited, which is a really great trait, isn't it? And that we believe in a social cause. I find this a very cool generation. Thank you for joining me. Many blessings and God bless.