Blog 150 This Stands Alone

All of us fit into the 1% The 1% Age Group

This special group was born between 1930 & 1946 = 16 years.

In 2022, the age range is between 76 & 92.

You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900’s.

You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can

   remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled   

   the structure of our daily lives for years.

You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar

   to shoes to stoves.

You saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into tin cans.

You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning

   and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.

You are the last generation who spent childhood without television;

  instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio.

With no TV until the 1950s, you spent your childhood “playing outside.”

There was no Little League.

There was no city playground for kids.

The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real

    understanding of what the world was like.

Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines), and hung on

   The wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).

Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked.

Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and

   changing the ribbon.

‘INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.

Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was

    broadcast on your radio in the evening.

New highways would bring jobs and mobility.

The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.

Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and

   the war, and they threw themselves into working hard to make a living  

   for Their families.

You weren’t neglected, but you weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus.

They were glad you played by yourselves.

They were busy discovering the postwar world.

You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where

   you were welcomed and felt secure in your future although the

   depression poverty was deeply remembered.

Polio was still a crippler.

You came of age in the ’50s and ’60.

You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no

   threats to our homeland.

The second world war was over and the cold war, terrorism, global

   warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with   

   unease.

Only your generation can remember both a time of great war and a time

   When our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.

You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting

   better.

You are “The Last Ones.”

More than 99% of you are retired, and you feel privileged to have “lived in

   the best of times!”

                                           Amen!