Why I’m not a Baby Boomer. I do have a vague recollection of Howdy Doody, though.
25 thoughts on “Generation Jones”
I get the where this article is coming from. I was born in 1980, which technically puts me in Generation X, but a lot of stereotypical Gen X cultural touchstones occurred when I was pretty young. But I don’t really feel like I identify with millennials either, so I’m kinda in the middle. The real point should be that the typical 20 to 25 year span we use for a generation is overly broad, there’s a big difference between the oldest and youngest members of each one.
Hmm, what to call them? Old.
OK, old person.
One of my things has always been the 60’s and “free love”. If you were born in the early 60’s you are a baby boomer but you weren’t yet nine by the time of Woodstock. By the time you could have participated in free love it was mostly over and Ryan White was only a few years away.
I’ve always felt kind of gypped.
Wodun, I prefer gen G (geezer).
That’s a good one.
Rand if you can remember Howdy, Sky King, Roy and Dale, the Lone Ranger or Captain Kangaroo, then you are a boomer 🙂
Yes, I remember all of them, but I was very young. I also remember Soupy Sales.
Just fooling around. I don’t identify as boomer either. My silent parents manifested boomer traits that I despise.
How about Spin and Marty? Mickey Mouse Club? Now a real teaser, Supercar.
Fireball XL5
Rand,
I think you were ’55. I was ’54. Back in the days when children could free range most days without constant parental surveillance. Back in the days when public education was still kinda decent. Back in the days when we were the first humans in history to see ‘artificial’ stars. Barely passed calculus* so engineering wasn’t going to happen for me. Was very good at chemistry and went into astronomy instead.
*Have a friend with a PhD in Mathematics. He laments that he wasn’t good enough to have been a particle physicist
Tell him whereas all STEM PhDs cannot be particle physicists, all of them are now allowed to wear a beret.
Cernntainly an aspect neither he nor I considered.
One of the things missed about Boomers is that the experience was very different economically, if you were born at the start rather than at the end. I think it’s almost purely economic. Someone born in 1946 would have been at the forefront of every Boomer-related economic trend. The first to go to college. First to get a job. First to get a house. First to access social services that tend to decline in value over time.
Someone born in 1964 would be on the tail end of that. All of those things would be more expensive. For example, all those houses had 18 years to rise in price. Social Security would have 18 more years to see the ratio between funds in and funds out drop further.
Further, the economic crises of the 1970s would hit these people at different points in their lives. The oil crises and stagflation would hit the 1946 person in their twenties and earlier thirties. They would be more secure, employment-wise and have seniority over the late Boomers. The 1964 Boomer wouldn’t even enter the workforce as an adult until after 1982.
Economically, the earlier boomer will be wealthier than the late boomer, just because they hit the trends and crises right by pure luck.
Funny how Boomers are most easily vilified.
My family was lower middle class at best. Paycheck to paycheck.
Funny how the politicians always get rich.
Funny how we get blamed.
(Nothing personal. Just making a counterpoint.)
I think most of the Boomer hate I’ve seen comes from people who don’t get along with their Boomer parents or children. Transferring their relationship problems to the whole generation.
Howdy Doody lived on in syndication into the 1970s. I’m a Gen-Xer, but I watched it at some point in my childhood.
I remember Clarabell the clown showing up on an episode of Happy Days sometime in the mid-70s.
It’s worth remembering (or knowing in the first place for some of you) that the entire “generations” thing, including the concept of “Boomers” (as distinct from children born during the so-called Postwar Baby Boom) comes from this book:
People don’t want to be described as boomers anymore because some mental-defective bloggers found out they could get fame and money from inventing horseshit that’s now part of the Narrative. It’s also worth recognizing that while some of the oldest boomers served in Vietnam, the bulk of us were too young (I became draft liable in 1969). The war itself was started and prosecuted by members of the preceeding generations. “We didn’t start the fire,” so man up chilluns.
Btw, Howdy Doody wasn’t shown in many TV markets on the east coast. I saw it because I lived in Grand Junction, Colorado, when I was 5 years old.
WB,
“People don’t want to be described as boomers anymore,…”
I am of the generation who most subscribes to the MOAB.
“Boom”.
I think I hit the sweet spot. “58” We built forts in the woods as kids then fixed cars in our teens. I can fix most anything I can get parts for and started playing with computers when they came down to the size of refrigerators. Too young for Vietnam though in my army carrier I was surrounded by privates and coporals with more blood stripes than rank stripes. Some great, some truly troubled. Stumbled into tech work when most people were truly afraid of computers and where they were taking us.
I was born in 1962. I’ve never really felt like a Boomer since I have no memory of when JFK was shot. For my slightly older cousins, that was a transformative moment.
I (barely) remember Captain Kangaroo, but not Howdy Doody, Sky King, Roy and Dale, or the Lone Ranger. I clearly remember Apollo, but not Mercury. Gemini—I’m not sure. I might have synthetic memories from what I learned later.
I remember a gal, school employee, coming into my 4th grade class room about 10:30 am Pacific Time Zone (fact check me, but it”s my recollection) to tell my teacher that Kennedy had been shot and killed.
The world suddenly ended.
We had his pictures on our classroom walls.
Could have been Stalin’s pictures, much the same kind of adoration.
I was born in 1950, just the right age for space age memories. I was 7 for Sputnik, 10 for Vostok, 14-16 for Gemini, 18 for Apollo 11. I was 30 and at the press site for STS-1. 35 for Challenger. 52 for Columbia. The first Falcon 1 to reach orbit did so on my 58th birthday.
I was thinking about this stuff the other day, and thought:
These poor, stupid Slackers (the correct name for GenX) have no idea what they’ve missed, stuff that will never come again. We Boomers were young when fast food was new and fresh, popping with delicious fat, when you could get 8 hamburgers for a buck. All slackers got was the stale, warmed over crap.
And girls! We got to pop the cherry on all those long-legged blonde girls. All Slackers got is sloppy seconds so rank you have to shave off the stench. And know with certainty that before you ever saw the pedo Brazilian, some hairy fat girl got to play with it first…
It went on like that until my wife wanted to know what the fuck I was snickering about…
WB,
I find myself nodding in agreement.
Old enough to not care what anyone else thinks about what I should think.
I get the where this article is coming from. I was born in 1980, which technically puts me in Generation X, but a lot of stereotypical Gen X cultural touchstones occurred when I was pretty young. But I don’t really feel like I identify with millennials either, so I’m kinda in the middle. The real point should be that the typical 20 to 25 year span we use for a generation is overly broad, there’s a big difference between the oldest and youngest members of each one.
Hmm, what to call them? Old.
OK, old person.
One of my things has always been the 60’s and “free love”. If you were born in the early 60’s you are a baby boomer but you weren’t yet nine by the time of Woodstock. By the time you could have participated in free love it was mostly over and Ryan White was only a few years away.
I’ve always felt kind of gypped.
Wodun, I prefer gen G (geezer).
That’s a good one.
Rand if you can remember Howdy, Sky King, Roy and Dale, the Lone Ranger or Captain Kangaroo, then you are a boomer 🙂
Yes, I remember all of them, but I was very young. I also remember Soupy Sales.
Just fooling around. I don’t identify as boomer either. My silent parents manifested boomer traits that I despise.
How about Spin and Marty? Mickey Mouse Club? Now a real teaser, Supercar.
Fireball XL5
Rand,
I think you were ’55. I was ’54. Back in the days when children could free range most days without constant parental surveillance. Back in the days when public education was still kinda decent. Back in the days when we were the first humans in history to see ‘artificial’ stars. Barely passed calculus* so engineering wasn’t going to happen for me. Was very good at chemistry and went into astronomy instead.
*Have a friend with a PhD in Mathematics. He laments that he wasn’t good enough to have been a particle physicist
Tell him whereas all STEM PhDs cannot be particle physicists, all of them are now allowed to wear a beret.
Cernntainly an aspect neither he nor I considered.
One of the things missed about Boomers is that the experience was very different economically, if you were born at the start rather than at the end. I think it’s almost purely economic. Someone born in 1946 would have been at the forefront of every Boomer-related economic trend. The first to go to college. First to get a job. First to get a house. First to access social services that tend to decline in value over time.
Someone born in 1964 would be on the tail end of that. All of those things would be more expensive. For example, all those houses had 18 years to rise in price. Social Security would have 18 more years to see the ratio between funds in and funds out drop further.
Further, the economic crises of the 1970s would hit these people at different points in their lives. The oil crises and stagflation would hit the 1946 person in their twenties and earlier thirties. They would be more secure, employment-wise and have seniority over the late Boomers. The 1964 Boomer wouldn’t even enter the workforce as an adult until after 1982.
Economically, the earlier boomer will be wealthier than the late boomer, just because they hit the trends and crises right by pure luck.
Funny how Boomers are most easily vilified.
My family was lower middle class at best. Paycheck to paycheck.
Funny how the politicians always get rich.
Funny how we get blamed.
(Nothing personal. Just making a counterpoint.)
I think most of the Boomer hate I’ve seen comes from people who don’t get along with their Boomer parents or children. Transferring their relationship problems to the whole generation.
Howdy Doody lived on in syndication into the 1970s. I’m a Gen-Xer, but I watched it at some point in my childhood.
I remember Clarabell the clown showing up on an episode of Happy Days sometime in the mid-70s.
It’s worth remembering (or knowing in the first place for some of you) that the entire “generations” thing, including the concept of “Boomers” (as distinct from children born during the so-called Postwar Baby Boom) comes from this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123
People don’t want to be described as boomers anymore because some mental-defective bloggers found out they could get fame and money from inventing horseshit that’s now part of the Narrative. It’s also worth recognizing that while some of the oldest boomers served in Vietnam, the bulk of us were too young (I became draft liable in 1969). The war itself was started and prosecuted by members of the preceeding generations. “We didn’t start the fire,” so man up chilluns.
Btw, Howdy Doody wasn’t shown in many TV markets on the east coast. I saw it because I lived in Grand Junction, Colorado, when I was 5 years old.
WB,
“People don’t want to be described as boomers anymore,…”
I am of the generation who most subscribes to the MOAB.
“Boom”.
I think I hit the sweet spot. “58” We built forts in the woods as kids then fixed cars in our teens. I can fix most anything I can get parts for and started playing with computers when they came down to the size of refrigerators. Too young for Vietnam though in my army carrier I was surrounded by privates and coporals with more blood stripes than rank stripes. Some great, some truly troubled. Stumbled into tech work when most people were truly afraid of computers and where they were taking us.
I was born in 1962. I’ve never really felt like a Boomer since I have no memory of when JFK was shot. For my slightly older cousins, that was a transformative moment.
I (barely) remember Captain Kangaroo, but not Howdy Doody, Sky King, Roy and Dale, or the Lone Ranger. I clearly remember Apollo, but not Mercury. Gemini—I’m not sure. I might have synthetic memories from what I learned later.
I remember a gal, school employee, coming into my 4th grade class room about 10:30 am Pacific Time Zone (fact check me, but it”s my recollection) to tell my teacher that Kennedy had been shot and killed.
The world suddenly ended.
We had his pictures on our classroom walls.
Could have been Stalin’s pictures, much the same kind of adoration.
I was born in 1950, just the right age for space age memories. I was 7 for Sputnik, 10 for Vostok, 14-16 for Gemini, 18 for Apollo 11. I was 30 and at the press site for STS-1. 35 for Challenger. 52 for Columbia. The first Falcon 1 to reach orbit did so on my 58th birthday.
I was thinking about this stuff the other day, and thought:
These poor, stupid Slackers (the correct name for GenX) have no idea what they’ve missed, stuff that will never come again. We Boomers were young when fast food was new and fresh, popping with delicious fat, when you could get 8 hamburgers for a buck. All slackers got was the stale, warmed over crap.
And girls! We got to pop the cherry on all those long-legged blonde girls. All Slackers got is sloppy seconds so rank you have to shave off the stench. And know with certainty that before you ever saw the pedo Brazilian, some hairy fat girl got to play with it first…
It went on like that until my wife wanted to know what the fuck I was snickering about…
WB,
I find myself nodding in agreement.
Old enough to not care what anyone else thinks about what I should think.
Hehe.