Many Will Say A Grateful Amen
Dear Ann Landers: I would like to respond to those young people who keep writing to gripe about how tough things are today.
They say that we don’t understand them and that we didn’t have drug problems or drive-by shootings when we were teenagers. They are right. We didn’t have a lot of things they have, both good and bad, when we were growing up. I’m an old man now, but my memory is still pretty good.
We didn’t have running water. We had a pump in the back of the house. We didn’t have electric lights. We had kerosene lamps. We didn’t have a bathroom. We had a path that led to a place that seemed like a long way off when the temperature was below zero.
And then, of course, there was the Depression, when the banks closed and millions of people lost their life’s savings. Men who once owned businesses were selling apples on the street corners.
During World War II, a lot of people had a tough time getting sugar, soap, margarine, elastic underwear and gasoline (if you had a car - we didn’t). My mother and sisters wore cotton stockings. Nylon went into parachutes for the Air Force fliers, and silk was too expensive.
I was only 11 when World War II began. I had never been more than 10 miles from home. Every time a plane went over us, we hid under the bed. We thought it was the Japanese. By the time I got to high school, the war was over. But it wasn’t a time of rejoicing for those who had lost sons, brothers, husbands, fiances and sweethearts.
If you were lucky, you got a job for 50 cents an hour. I knew no boys in high school who owned cars. I never saw a TV until I got married.
One woman who wrote to you said old fogies like me didn’t have to put up with date rape or sexual harassment. She’s dead wrong. In our day, women were hardly acknowledged, much less treated as equals. If a girl got pregnant and the boy didn’t want to marry her, he would get five or six of his pals to say they had sex with her, too. She was branded a slut and sent to an aunt somewhere to have the baby. Unmarried mothers were a disgrace to the family, and their babies were put up for adoption.
My son had a different war. It was Vietnam. He didn’t want to go because he didn’t believe in that war. He said we had no business in Vietnam. The only thing more shameful than the 18- and 19-year-olds who died in that war 10,000 miles from home was the way the men who served were treated when they came back to the states. There was no big parade down Broadway. Some returned with drug problems - something else they learned while serving their country.
I could go on and on, but this letter is already too long to fit in your space, if you decide to print it, which I’ll bet you won’t.
Please tell the people who write to you to quit complaining. They have it pretty good, what with welfare handouts and all. No girl in our day was given an apartment and food stamps if she got pregnant at age 15. Times have certainly changed, Ann, and not all the changes have been for the better. - Chris in Heyburn, Idaho
Dear Chris: Thanks for the sociology lesson as seen through your eyes. The under-35 crowd that reads your letter won’t be able to relate to most of what you have written, but the rest of us will - and we thank you.