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zatoman wrote:

Abraham wrote:Ruark,

Sorry ole chum, but those were great days, for some...

I too am a product of the fifties and while I miss some of the positives, I don't miss any of the negatives of which the list is quite long.

Mayberry RFD never really existed.

Mayberry existed for many. Me included. Doors never locked. Fishing and hunting whenever we wanted to. Our town had one cop who would let you get away with mischief as long as you weren't causing any real trouble. I tell people that my childhood was idyllic, and I also tell them that for my children, growing up in the highly regulated suburbs (near necessary employment centers) with zero tolerance brain-dead schools was not healthy.

Same here. Shows like Andy Griffith, Lassie, Leave it to Beaver, etc. are views into my early years. "The America Norman Rockwell painted." Gone forever.

Abraham wrote:Ruark,

Sorry ole chum, but those were great days, for some...

I too am a product of the fifties and while I miss some of the positives, I don't miss any of the negatives of which the list is quite long.

Mayberry RFD never really existed.

Actually Mayberry still exists. It's called Mount Airy, NC. http://www.visitmayberry.com/

Well, I'm not a "young man" anymore, but I'm a bit younger than some of y'all, and I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I seem to remember some saying about a fat lady singing...she may be doing some warm-ups, but the opera ain't started yet.

Edited to add:

The 300 didn't give up at Thermopylae in the face of the might of the Persian Empire, and neither did the Texians at the Alamo give up in the face of an overwhelming Mexican army. Yeah, it cost 'em their lives, but they went down fighting, and thank goodness they did or we might not be here now. I'd guess AndyC would agree with me.

socialists and their ilk have depressed a lot of folks in recent years here in the U.S.A.

Back to Mayberry for a moment, a lot of you, in fact, I guess most of you missed my point altogether.

Yeah, yeah, I remember milkmen, heck, even ice men, and not locking your door and so on, but it wasn't like that for each and every one of us who lived during those times.

There was a lot of accepted evil during those times: Driving drunk was more or less approved, beating your wife was more or less approved, child molestation was kept hush-hush, being black/brown was a horror for many, police brutality was common and on and on.

Yes, the fifties were great, but not completely...

K.Mooneyham wrote:Well, I'm not a "young man" anymore, but I'm a bit younger than some of y'all, and I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I seem to remember some saying about a fat lady singing...she may be doing some warm-ups, but the opera ain't started yet.

Edited to add:

The 300 didn't give up at Thermopylae in the face of the might of the Persian Empire, and neither did the Texians at the Alamo give up in the face of an overwhelming Mexican army. Yeah, it cost 'em their lives, but they went down fighting, and thank goodness they did or we might not be here now. I'd guess AndyC would agree with me.

When things get sporty we need to have more San Jacintos, not more Alamos.

Abraham wrote:socialists and their ilk have depressed a lot of folks in recent years here in the U.S.A.

Back to Mayberry for a moment, a lot of you, in fact, I guess most of you missed my point altogether.

Yeah, yeah, I remember milkmen, heck, even ice men, and not locking your door and so on, but it wasn't like that for each and every one of us who lived during those times.

There was a lot of accepted evil during those times: Driving drunk was more or less approved, beating your wife was more or less approved, child molestation was kept hush-hush, being black/brown was a horror for many, police brutality was common and on and on.

Yes, the fifties were great, but not completely...

The fifties were definitely a far less regulated era (i.e. more free), and people were allowed to make mistakes. I think society could have corrected those problems without selling our souls to the Feds. I trust my neighbors more than I trust the government.

I hear all of this talk of locking doors and such, and My family never locked the doors in the town I grew up in. I'm only 22 but I never locked a single thing until I had all of my tools stolen out of my toolbox my first week of college. Heck I left my keys in the ignition almost 24/7.

So, naïveté is a virtue?

Psssst, the world is filled with bad people.