If you went back to the Golden Era, what would you notice first?

GHT · Nov 27, 2013

Baron Kurtz said:
Smog, Slums and Manufacturing, the glorious trifecta of a late Industrial UK inner city.

In the 1940's we would have been dodging all that Hitler could throw at us, wartime aside though, the first thing that I would notice is the trolley buses. Electric buses, powered by an overhead cable. Cars built on a chassis, Steam trains, the fact that the world and his dog smoked. What else?
Men had a sense of attire etiquette, as of course, did the ladies. Telephones were retricted to landlines, you also had to dial the operator for long distance calls. All small boys wore short trousers, whatever the weather. Despite being smoke filled and despite all the bomb dodging, buses ran on time, trains ran on time, people were polite and we all moaned about the weather.

Hang on, we still moan about the weather. Is this the 1940's?

LizzieMaine · Nov 28, 2013

HoosierDaddy said:
Nothing wrong with living alone...but why would that scare any man since he isn't required to live with them..??
HD

What scares them is the idea that there are women who aren't dependent on men to provide for them For a lot of -- ah -- insecure gents, this is a thought too terrible to be contemplated, too much of a threat to their own view of themselves. If they have to compete, not just against other men, but also against, god forbid, women for their place in society, well, that's just too much to handle.

This insecurity had a lot to do with the desperate need the Boys From Marketing had, especially during the postwar years, of *always* depicting The Little Woman content to mop the floors and light the old man's pipe, and pushing all the domestic doodads of the moment as good ways to keep Wifey submissive and content in her appointed role. After the determined independence of many thirties women, the blackjack-swinging militant women of the prewar labor movement, and the overall-wearing no-nonsense Rosies of the forties, marketing had to reassure the insecure American Male that these were just aberrations caused by the war and the Depression, and if they'd just plonk down the down payment on that dishwasher, all would be well again and they'd be Kings Of Their Castle, and Masters of Their Women.

They were selling an illusion, as marketers always do, appealing to the most basic, fundamental insecurity of the American Male. Nowadays they just sell Viagra.

HoosierDaddy · Nov 28, 2013

Insecurity of the American male..? Sounds more like some women despising the American male.
HD

LizzieMaine · Nov 28, 2013

Actually, the first writer to discuss the marketing angles I mentioned was a man named Vance Packard, who wrote about them at length in "The Hidden Persuaders," a study of motivational research written in 1960. It's the book that changed the way I look at advertising, and first introduced me to what the Boys from Marketing were really up to. Had nothing to do with "feminism."

Another man who discussed such matters was John Keats -- not the poet -- in his study of the postwar automotive industry, "The Insolent Chariots," in 1958. Those protruding round bumps and high soaring pointy fins weren't just there for looks.

sheeplady · Nov 28, 2013

HoosierDaddy said:
Insecurity of the American male..? Sounds more like some women despising the American male.
HD

What else would you call the people that prevented women from voting? There was absolutely no rational reason to keep women from voting- what these men and women feared was losing their own power. Insecure people are the only ones who fear they will lose their own personal power by allowing someone else to have personal autonomy.

Foxer55 · Nov 28, 2013

HoosierDaddy,

Insecurity of the American male..? Sounds more like some women despising the American male.
HD

Uh-huh. And there are threads everywhere here bemoaning the change of civilized culture from the past when we now have every victim class you can imagine with chips on their shoulders looking to blame and complain and despise and foment as much dissent as they can to anyone and anything that doesn't embrace the victim culture. Oh, poor me, the world was such a terrible place then and today I'm such a victim of all those terrible injustices of evolution and ignorance. Move on fer Christ's sake. Using the ongoing victim culture model I guess people like me should be upset because the Romans in all likelihood tortured and murdered my likely Christian ancestors and I should go postal and want to kill Italians but I'm not sure what that would prove other than I'm another victim of my own choosing. What this issue does beg is, where does all this anger and hostility come from and I believe that is what was not there in the past. People weren't filled with all this hate and anger that I recall.

LizzieMaine · Nov 28, 2013

The only thing I bemoan is that modern people sit and wring their hands and write pencil-necked academic papers nobody will ever read about injustice rather than hitting the streets to fight it.

The Spirit Of The Golden Era in action. Those ladies in the overseas caps were members of the UAW Women's Emergency Brigade, and each one carried a automotive u-joint stitched into a leather casing, with strap handles to swing it by. They weren't used for breaking eggs.

The thirties were the sixties with better music.

AtomicEraTom · Nov 28, 2013

Well, if I was in the exact location I'm in now, in 1940, I would be outside. I'd be about 40 feet from a farm house (the foundation and remains still stand just outside our current house). There would be no other houses for a couple miles. The road would be dirt.

If I went to town, downtown would be bustling. Woolworth's, Montgomery Wards (I believe were here in 1940 already), numerous taverns, cafe's, grocery stores, filling stations, and a successful shoe factory, and woollen mills, and a Ford Dealership right at the edge of downtown.

Portage was a lot smaller, then, about half the size, maybe even smaller than it is today. Cars would have fenders and running boards. Men and women would be dressed much better than today.

Edward · Nov 28, 2013

Baron Kurtz said:
Smog, Slums and Manufacturing, the glorious trifecta of a late Industrial UK inner city.

Yip. That and, depending what end of the forties I hit, the location of my current home (completed in the early 50s would either be a row of houses, a pile or rubble, or a cleared bombsite. I'd have to find somewhere else to live. If the absence of my flat, the clothes, cars, difference in ethnicity of the average folks on the street weren't a giveaway, the high chance of me being refused service in a lot of pubs round here might be a giveaway I was no longer in Kansas.

Shangas · Nov 28, 2013

I don't KNOW what my EXACT location would look like in the 1940s.

The house I have now was built in 1965. But based on the surviving houses in my immediate neighbourhood, it would probably be a one or two-story Californian bungalow or Art Deco sort of house. They were popular around here back in the early 20th century. It could be an older Victorian or Federation-Style house from the turn of the last century.

dh66 · Nov 28, 2013

Foxer55 said:
People weren't filled with all this hate and anger that I recall.

While I certainly agree with your comments about the culture of victimhood that exists today, I don't think there would have been any shortage of hate and anger. Here in Alabama old Jim Crow would have been an ominous presence and economic inequality would have been at a level not seen since, well...today - I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sent from my SGH-T959V using Tapatalk 2

HoosierDaddy · Nov 28, 2013

LizzieMaine · Nov 28, 2013

And from the looks of her uniform, she appears to be hired help -- a working-class woman earning a paycheck by filling the gullets of her upper-middle-class employers. I hope she has as satisfying a meal at home.

HoosierDaddy · Nov 28, 2013

Even with your bitterness and resentment..I hope that you can manage to have a nice one too,Lizzie.
HD

Stanley Doble · Nov 28, 2013

Recently read one of Paul Theroux travel books, this one about a river trip in China in the eighties. The other passengers were rich tourists.

When they passed a city the air smelled of coal smoke, sewage, industrial waste and a hint of kerosene. A 70 year old Englishman said it reminded him of Leeds in his boyhood.

Stearmen · Nov 28, 2013

LizzieMaine said:
"Live Alone And Like It!" was a popular catchphrase in the late thirties -- the war cry of women who were perfectly satisfied to live independent lives. And it scared a lot of men spitless. Apparently it still does.

It always amazes me, how many of my fellow men who are intimidated by a smart independent woman! Don't get me wrong, I do not suffer either sex well when they get in my face and try to intimidate me with their power trip. My mother always told me to marry up, that included, intellegence, I finally figured out, she was right!

GE-Man · Nov 28, 2013

I live in a house that was built in 1932. If it was 1940, i would miss the heating central heating system. There would be a stove in every room. The windows wouldnt be insulating glass and plastic frame, they would be real wood - but with only one single glass.

I would freeze like hell, because i didnt buy any coal to operate the stoves...

Captain Nemo · Nov 28, 2013

I would notice the change in the means of disseminating information. Instead of smart phones, they had street corner newsstands, and perhaps morning and evening editions of the newspapers.

People would perhaps notice each other and interact in person, instead of sending texts.

esteban68 · Nov 28, 2013

first I guess would be the smell of coal fires in this coal mining area it was cheap, cheap, cheap, then that everybody who wanted one had a job as work was plentiful, the absence of ladies in the pub would seem strange, and again the smell this time of bodies washed twice a week on average even in summer!
Other than that bring it on!

Cobden · Nov 28, 2013

The fear, suspicion and resolve.

Britain in 1940 was only pleasant if you enjoyed being bombed.

If you went back to the Golden Era, what would you notice first?

GHT

I'll Lock Up

LizzieMaine

HoosierDaddy

LizzieMaine

sheeplady

I'll Lock Up

Foxer55

A-List Customer

LizzieMaine

AtomicEraTom

Edward

Shangas

I'll Lock Up

dh66

HoosierDaddy

LizzieMaine

HoosierDaddy

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab

Stearmen

I'll Lock Up

GE-Man

New in Town

Captain Nemo

Familiar Face

esteban68

Call Me a Cab

Cobden

Practically Family

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If you went back to the Golden Era, what would you notice first?

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Call Me a Cab

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