Re: Choice is the key

chris_tine49@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Towse wrote:

Josh Hill wrote:


On 15 Aug 2005 09:09:53 -0700, "chris_tine49@xxxxxxxxxxx"
<chris.editrix@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



She =was= talking about the 50s, Skoooter.

"It wasn't that different in 1965"
qualifier she adds near the end of her paean to a far-far better and
warmer, happier and healthier America, except for those for whom it wasn't.

I hope I wasn't writing such a paean. 

You weren't. :-)

Looking back it all looks so idyllic, though, doesn't it? Pickup baseball games at the end of the street. Exploring the gravel pit on the other side of the hill. Taking the bus downtown to watch the new Dave Clark Five movie. Riding around on my bicycle listening to the 9V transistor radio I'd saved up for, rooting for the St Louis Cardinals in the 1964 World Series.

Josh was painting a picture with
statistics that looked odd to me. I was painting a picture of my own
experience, which may look odd to others but nevertheless WAS my
experience, however odd it may look to them.

Your experience is fairly similar to mine on the not-LA West Coast except that my mom didn't do coffee klatches.

Just because, according to some statistics, 90% of American households
had a TV set in 1960 doesn't mean that children watched much.

Amen. 

Some did.

We didn't have a TV until the younger younger guy knew how to read well because I'd experienced an anecdotal correlation between easy availability of television and a lack of interest in reading. For over ten years, while the younger guys were growing up, The Guy and I purposefully became part of that weird 1% of U.S. households that didn't have at least one television set.

When we made the "no TV" decision, my mom was appalled that we were depriving our precious kids of the television experience: Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, A Very Brady Christmas ...

I was like, um. Mom? The older Towse kids of the 50s and 60s were similarly deprived and we turned out OK.

Didn't we?

--
Sal

Ye olde swarm of links: thousands of links for writers, researchers and the terminally curious <http://www.internet-resources.com/writers>
.

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