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Ever feel like you're in the wrong time period? (1 Viewer)

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Ron1973

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This might be off topic, but this is something I think on all the time. My nightly viewing lately has been My Favorite Martian, a show that premiered a good 10 years before I was born; heck, my parents were teens!!! Everyone knows what a nut I am about The Beverly Hillbillies as well as other shows of the 50's and 60's. I am the world's biggest Hank Williams fan; I actually have uploaded rare stuff to YouTube of his that has never saw the light of day on LP or CD, but has been passed around among collectors over the years. I have a ton of Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, big band, and Hank Williams 78 rpm records. I still have a huge shelf full of 8-track tapes. Yet I'm only 42 years old. I know the "good ole days" probably weren't all that good from the way my parents have talked, but I feel like that's where I belong sometimes. Does anyone else feel that way?
 

JamesSmith

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Same here. I know things were far from perfect, and that a great many things were swept under the rug. But it seems to me there was a great many more talented people who did more with less. This is in contrast with today's pop singers who only seem to be able to sing one type of music, or song.

James
 

BobO'Link

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Well... I *was* a kid in the 50s/60s/70s (graduated HS in 73) and think it was a *great* time to have grown up. While I wasn't old enough to actually go to SF or Woodstock I *knew* about what was going on and experienced the music and TV of the times. I also grew up in a small town (pop ~4000) in which you could "go uptown" by yourself as a 6-7 year old and not have anyone worry about your safety. You pretty much knew everyone in town and everyone pretty much looked out for each other. While I wasn't there for the "Birth of Rock 'n Roll," I *was* there for its offspring's influences and the way it changed the climate, especially in the mid to late 60s. The same for TV. In both cases I was able to partially experience the eras as I heard the music on the radio and was able to watch those early TV shows due to afternoon syndication blocks. I watched the build up to and the first moon landing *live on TV* (Mercury to Apollo). How can you top something like that? When I think about all the things my generation has experienced, good and bad, I'm humbled and amazed. Overall, it's been a great trip!

Still... I have something of a nostalgic feeling when I hear music or watch films from the WWII years. That may be due to having grown up in the shadow of WWII and Korea with Vietnam a very real horror. I *love* rock 'n roll (almost all forms) from the 60s/70s (with lessening enjoyment/artists as the years progress) as well as the popular music from the WWII/Korea/early rock years and early bluegrass/country (with Hank Williams being a favorite), but music from the WWII era affects me the most, frequently with a somewhat melancholy feeling. Every time I hear it I think about what it must have been like living in those years and what those songs meant to those who experienced them, but not so much that I wish I could have directly experienced those years.

So, no, I don't necessarily feel like I'm in the wrong time period but frequently wish we could go back to how many things were in the 50s/60s, especially regaining the optimism and hope for the future from those years that seems to have been lost.
 

Gary OS

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Absolutely. I'd gladly step in a time machine (TARDIS or any other kind) and whisk myself back to a time before the 60's, which was the decade I was born in. Often I've lamented that I was born in the wrong time period. Would have much preferred to be a part of the "Greatest Generation" or "Silent Generation" ,or even some other earlier generation. Baby Boomers and Generation X (born right in the middle between the two) are not my cup of tea.


Gary "definitely out of step with the 21st century in many ways" O.
 

Jack P

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As for myself, I am culturally more sympathetic to an earlier era even as I recognize it had its problems. I admit that I enjoy the popular culture of then but with the freedom and luxury of being able to sample it as I can with today's technology (remember, back then, we had no recorders etc. to catalog our favorite programs and once they aired we never saw them again!). I would love to travel back in time to *experience* things like going to the 64 World's Fair or seeing baseball at the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field but would I want to spend the rest of my life there? Tough question. What I do know is that I was born in the wrong generation for the kind of work I wish I could have done because there were greater opportunities in the area of teaching history on the college level then, than there are now thanks to changed demographics and the corruption of academia on all levels. The grad instructors I had who got tenured jobs without a doctorate in the 1950s because there was such a demand for people in the profession had it easy.
 

Dan McW

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I graduated high school in 1984 but almost always watch TV shows from the 1960s and '70s. People like Murray Hamilton, Jacqueline Scott, and countless others are almost like old friends.
 

Frank Soyke

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I definitely feel this. The entertainment, politics, and social mores of this era certainly don't match up with mine. I was born in 69 to older parents so I was mostly exposed to TV from the 50's and 60's as well as music and movies of that era rather than my own. I realize every era has it's problems but I think morality wise, we live in a garbage dump now in this modern world despite all the tech conveniences of the era, and I would have much rather lived in a time where it wasn't considered bigoted to hold conservative values, your kids could be trusted at a park (for the most part) and society wasn't just based upon an "anything goes as long as I feel like doing it mentality." An era where we were taught about discipline (within reason) as kids and we were taught to respect teachers and police officers and not just blame somebody else or sue them when we screw up. An era where you had to achieve something to get an award and not just show up. An era where is was a positive attribute to be a person of faith and you weren't looked at as a neanderthal bigot for being a Christian.
Before I get accused of violating forum rules. I am simply explaining my answer to the OP's question as these values and standards that were taught in previous eras were reflected in the entertainment of the time and much of that entertainment was not disgusting and devoid of any type of moral standard at all...
Or short answer Ron, YES!
 

Professor Echo

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No time period has any monopoly on happiness. Measure life by your happy MOMENTS, no matter when they occurred, instead of by such arbitrary and fickle "friends" as calendars and clocks and all the regrets they can foster. That way no matter what era you happen to be in, it will seem like the right one. :)
 

TravisR

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No time period has any monopoly on happiness. Measure life by your happy MOMENTS, no matter when they occurred, instead of by such arbitrary and fickle "friends" as calendars and clocks and all the regrets they can foster. That way no matter what era you happen to be in, it will seem like the right one. :)
I'm definitely a guy who 'fantasizes' about living in a different time period but at the same time, I think you're right. To me, it seems like it would have been great to be a teen or an adult in the 1960's or 70's but if I had been, I'd be complaining about how great the late 40's and early 50's were and how I missed it.
 

Professor Echo

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I was lucky enough to be friends with author Ray Bradbury for many years and once while spending an afternoon at his favorite watering hole in Beverly Hills, my brother and I were going on and on about how much we loved being kids in the 1960's and how we wish we could back to those days. Ray listened to all of it with a slight smile and at the end of it simply said... "Ah, but you should have seen the 1920's. You have no idea what you missed."
 
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Bert Greene

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One era I'd particularly desire to experience would be the late-40s/early-50s cultural transition from the radio days to the beginnings of television... Via the vantage-point of mid-America. Back when both media were still so local driven.

I spent many multiple hours going through old hometown newspapers on microfilm at the library many years back, doing research, and got a pretty vivid feed for the provincial, cultural pulse surrounding the period. From the matured radio-network scene to the burgeoning excitement of a local tv-Channel's debut. The various businesses vying for sponsorships, the remotes covering community events, the schedules full of raggedy poverty-row films and made-for-syndication oddities, and all that. Add to this the waning days of movie theaters' Saturday matinees of b-westerns, slapstick comedies and jungle adventures. Each week, famous personalities toured by, from big-name cowboy stars headlining the rodeos, to Nelson Eddy giving a concert, to Vincent Price doing Shakespeare, to local nightclubs serving up floor-show comedy from Billy Gilbert to Penny Singleton. One week at the municipal auditorium, Bob Hope accompanied by Doris Day, Les Brown, and Irene Ryan. Next week, Red Sovine.

A somewhat neglected era in most peoples' nostalgic musings, but I'd find it both fascinating and satisfying. Only drawback for me is that it would probably already be too 'modernistic' for my musical tastes, which tend to repose even further back in time! As for today, circa 2016, yeah... It's like living in an open sewer. We've really descended into some truly vomitous depths. I really no longer feel any connection nor emotional attachment to the country at all anymore.
 

jcroy

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So, no, I don't necessarily feel like I'm in the wrong time period but frequently wish we could go back to how many things were in the 50s/60s, especially regaining the optimism and hope for the future from those years that seems to have been lost.

(Going slightly offtopic).

I have this strange "nostalgia" (if it could be called that) for the late-50's -> 60s era space race.

I was too young to have known the significance of the golden era of the space race. When I was growing up, I was fascinated by reading books about space type stuff, both fiction and nonfiction. By the time I was a teenager, I was fascinated with tv shows like the original Battlestar Galactica and later Star Trek reruns + Buck Rogers.

Nowadays I know it is plain silly to fantasize about living in the late-50s -> 60s during the golden era of the space race. (ie. Without going into politics heavily, there were tons of other problems during those years much more upfront than the space race, which I wouldn't want to live through).
 

Frank Soyke

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I just know despite the Cold War still going on in the 70s and 80s, I still felt safe here. No longer. That alone is enough to make me want to go back to a different era.
 

Flashgear

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I share the sentiments already expressed with heartfelt eloquence...all of you great HTF members inspire me...nostalgia is a persuasive and powerful force in our imagination...and, more so in our memories...

I was born in '56, so my formative years were the '60s - '70s...as those years wore on and my values, body of knowledge and struggle to understand the world we live in were formulized in my immature mind, I grew to detest so much of what I perceived to be the degradation and decay of society...not good for a young person to be such a confirmed cynic beyond redemption...and, of course, I idealized the past era of my parents coming of age...depression era farm kids both and my dad a war veteran...

I didn't know it at the time, but my after school TV had fully immersed me in so much of the popular culture of the '30s and '40s, and WW2...Andy Hardy, Henry Aldrich, Three Stooges, Bowery Boys, Charlie Chan, The Falcon, Saint, Bulldog Drummond, etc...I loved the heroic optimism, common purpose and idealism of the war years...the counterpart in the '60s for me was the triumph and joy of the space program...my heroes were often the astronauts and test pilots of that era... so the counter culture nihilism that became so fashionable as the latter '60s dragged into the grotesque '70s really got to me...

The war of those times being Vietnam...during the Tet offensive of Feb. 1968, I remember praying over the phone with my Great Aunt who was a devastated wreck in worry for her two sons who were "in country"...I had only met my cousins twice and hardly knew them...they were from Rhode Island and I grew up in Canada...but my Mother beckoned me to the phone to pray with my Aunt...she wanted to hear the prayers of a child, in the hope of holding close the pure and perfect memory of her own children, far away in the Mekong and at Hue...I realized years later that this evoked the distant echoes of home front worry and longing held by my own parents from World War Two...I also discovered that I could listen in via short wave radio to battlefield radio traffic as it occurred in real time from Vietnam...I was fascinated and horrified by what I heard...the terminology of the airmobility war..." LZ", "hosing the perimeter", "dustoff", "KIA", "body count", "Victor Charlie", "slicks", "Huey", "archlight" etc...the desperate tone in their voices...

So, I idealize the '40s and war years...the '50s too, and maybe up to about 1965, the great television...I love the pop culture entirely...and I hold fast to a fantasy contrived to please myself...an informed and self conscious nostalgia...

There's no more perfect joy for me than my perennial viewing of "Meet me in St. Louis"...an immortal achievement in celebratory nostalgia...produced at the height of the worst war in human history...when it debuted in January 1945, the war was at a crescendo...the calendar years of 1944 and 1945 between them would see some 40 million people killed...and the film itself would convey a longing for better times...1903 and the triumphant celebration of the American Century...the irony is not lost, then or now...

I no longer find it too surprising when I encounter young people for whom Turner Classic Movies holds great fascination and allure...the more things change, ha, ha...
 
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Walter Kittel

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Not really. Every era has its own appeal, its own set of challenges and rewards.

If I were going to be born elsewhen; rather than wishing for a life in the past, I'm of the opinion that (at least in a general sense) every decade of humanity's presence on the planet is marked by progress. So I would rather be born later to see what our futures hold vs. living in a earlier period that is a known entity. (The uncertainty of the future is simultaneously scary and alluring; so perhaps it is better that I don't have a say in the matter. Plus, you can always experience the past via film, music, literature, etc. :) )

- Walter.
 
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