Hippies Do Not Define Us

Children of The Great Depression don't have a "Gen D" designation and so, are very, very different from the Boomers who followed us.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

When your parents survived the Great Depression, then threw themselves against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan, you ended up with a wholly different world view from the generation that followed. “Never throw that away,” was their dogma since scraping by during the 1930’s meant re-use and re-purposing what you had was gospel. Those same people then were forced into wartime rationing. “Never throw that away,” was the ethos imprinted on our character.

• Babies born from about 1934 until 1954 are often lumped in with The Baby Boomer generation, but, we are not the same.

Gen D (my invention for this essay) is often sub-divided into three groups: children born in the mid-to-late 1930’s; war babies; and post-war babies. All of us were born to parents who were old enough to understand the struggle of eking out a living during the Great Depression. Many of those parents were unable to finish high school because their families needed them to work, to help out. Being short on education does not equal “uneducated.” Even if, as in my own parents’ cases, they only made it through 10th Grade, they still had reading and math skills enough to thrive.

Indeed, today’s high school graduates wouldn’t hold a candle to these folks. They were avid readers of books from the library or the Book of the Month Club, and this thirst for knowledge was imprinted on us, their children. They made banking a central part of their civic life by putting cash into a Savings account every payday. They rarely incurred debt, other than to buy a house. Savings determined the price range for a new, or, newer car. Not the monthly payment.

Savings determined their acquisition of any luxury item, such as a television, perhaps. Or, an electric toaster. Or. an electric refrigerator to replace that old ice box. As Dave Ramsey now states, “Cash is King!” Understand, a new Chevy could be had for about $900. You would save up for two years to buy it. A two-year-old Chevy might fetch $250, very much in reach of a 10th Grade educated father trying to provide for his growing family, Except, in my Dad’s case, it had to be a Dodge.

We in Gen D didn’t grow up with 45 RPM records. Ours were 78 RPM, and if they were from the 1930’s, they were glass and cracked if you mis-handled them, or shattered if you dropped them. Either way, Mom or Dad was very upset if their irresponsible kid had been touching their records, unsupervised, as a flying disc for example.

Boomer kids got it all, and got it handed to them. We are not Boomers.

We had paper routes or babysitting gigs in order to spend 5 cents for a Coke at the soda fountain. If you had an additional quarter, you could get a hot fudge sundae. There were days when you were lucky to find a couple of milk bottles and maybe a few beer bottles, too, and your haul from redeeming the deposit on them would allow you to join your friends at the soda shop after school.

• The library had free books, but, don’t bring them back late! Two-cents-a-day late fees were real money.

We used tools to fix things. Often those were Dad’s tools and he got truly steamed if he found them lying wet, in the grass, after a rain. But, we could get a rusty, old bike running again. Hammer out that bent-up fender. Oil up the chain. Patch the inner tubes. Tighten the handle bars. Adjust the seat. Then, talk your Dad out of a can of spray paint to cover the rusty bits. One could be proud of having the sweetest ride in the neighborhood.

Even better, raid the new home being built across the road, grabbing discarded bits of lumber, a fistful of nails, four wheels off a discarded baby carriage and build a racecar. No better memory than four boys bending a hundred nails around a baby carriage axle so it would stay attached to a hunk of 2 by 4.

I’ve put a good light on this, but, in fact, we stole those nails and swiped the plank that workers used to get from dry land to cross up into the incomplete house. Later, in our quest for speed, we swapped the carriage wheels for shopping cart rear wheels which had ball bearings. Sometimes people would push their shopping cart home from the grocery store, then leave the cart in the vacant lot near us. We just pulled the cotter pins off the ends of the cart’s axle to harvest two truly fine, new wheels.

Every week or so, the grocer would have someone with a truck cruise through the surrounding neighborhoods to collect its abandoned carts. After replacing dozens of wheels (what? did you think we were the only boys swiping wheels? who did you think we were racing?), the grocer hired someone to weld the wheels in place. That, then, elevated our criminal minds, using Dad’s hacksaw to liberate the axle from the cart, thereby harvesting the wheels.

We are not Boomers. Buying stuff isn’t our thing. Fixing stuff is.

It’s because of us that cars have large plates protecting the engine from its owner. It’s because of us that televisions don’t have access to the tubes and volume controls any more. It’s because of us that sardines come in tins with peel-off lids, I think.

Our parents didn’t give us toys when it wasn’t Christmas or our birthday. Or, an allowance that wasn’t tied to chores like washing dishes, watching the baby, washing the car, or cleaning the house. You want to go bowling with your friends? Earn it. Play outside, instead, until Dad whistled you all to come home. Settle your differences yourself. If someone got punched, it had better be you with the bruise to explain, or Dad would explain it to you with a belt.

Nope. Nobody gave us stuff. We earned it, made it or saved up for it.

---

Why am I on Substack?

Other platforms are driven by “clicks” and algorithm-driven ads. You, your clicks and your searches are the product they sell to the highest bidder. With Substack, you are the patron not the product; your interests and activity are not sold to create revenue for the host.

Here are a few of my more nostalgic essays. Click the links to enjoy. Paid subscribers may be able to read them all. Free subscribers may read any I have written within the past 10 months.