TP2000
Well-Known Member
Love bringing out this old gem whenever a Boomer starts complaining about millennials. *Cue angry Boomers typing furiously with two fingers*
While that's clever and witty, it's also viewing the past through rose colored blinders that are not at all accurate.
I know, because I was around in the mid to late 20th century. This guy is even younger than me, judging by his Disco haircut at age 25.
He didn't "buy" a house at age 22. He got a 30 year mortgage for a 3 bedroom/1.5 bath house that had no central AC, no dishwasher, a clothes line instead of a clothes dryer, and cheap polyester carpet and vinyl fake wood paneling. The house was full of products that not even a Home Depot clearance sale would sell today, and no Millennial would be caught dead owning or Instagramming.
Ignore the live baby bear, look how cheap and tacky those drapes are!
We used margarine not because it was healthy, which it turned out it wasn't, but because it was much cheaper than butter.
We kept an old Folger's can in the kitchen to collect nails and tacks and staples not because we were "sustainable", but because those metal things could be reused and would be cheaper than buying new ones made in China from Home Depot.
We drank Tang not because the Astronauts drank it, but because it was dramatically cheaper than real orange juice. Which back then was sold in frozen tubes that you mixed up yourself, which is much cheaper than a carton of OJ today, but back then Tang was even cheaper than the frozen tube. You got to buy the frozen OJ tubes once or twice a year, often at Christmas or when family came to visit.
Ladies always wore nice dresses and two-piece casual separates out in public to Disneyland not because they were fancy rich folks, but because that's what they could afford to sew themselves from Butterick patterns. A ladies closet circa 1965 had only a couple of trendy dresses bought off the rack at a department store, which she kept for years and adjusted the hemline upward as the style changed, while the majority of her wardrobe was hand made from a 59 cent pattern and a Singer that your grandma passed down or they got as a wedding gift. Men wore slacks and buttoned shirts out in public not because they were formal, but because that's the only type of clothing they had and it took them from their workday on Tuesday to their big trip to Disneyland on Saturday. Yes, the result was a classier and more attractive audience at Disneyland, but it was all because it was much cheaper for them and that's what they could afford.
These men at Disneyland aren't wearing suits because they are fancy rich guys, but because suits are the only clothing they have to wear beyond the bedroom. The women likely made these casual separates themselves on their sewing machine. They couldn't afford to buy this stuff off the rack all the time.
You bought a big American car on credit, and it looked great. But it didn't have air conditioning; it had venti-pane windows instead. It had an AM radio with one speaker in the dash if you paid for that upgrade, or an AM/FM radio with a second speaker behind the rear seats if you were a wealthy doctor who bought a Buick or a Lincoln. You had to pay extra to get a rear view mirror on the passenger side. Most cars were dowdy four door sedans, with vinyl bench seats that weren't comfortable. Even fancy Buicks had roll down windows instead of electric switches. It was big, but it was hot and sticky and loud. Seriously, those vinyl seats were sticky!
