IN SEARCH OF THE 50'S

By Greg Evans

When I was a kid growing up in the 1980's my mother used to say to us that she ran our home like it was the 1950's. "Life was more wholesome then." It was a term she would use often and whenever she was trying to explain to us why we couldn't watch T.V. during dinner, or why we had to go to church on Sunday or why we had to use manners at all times and why we had to be well groomed and well dressed when we left the house. She was always home we when got off from school, drove us to our sports practices and scout meetings and we always ate dinner together at the table always saying grace before beginning. Back then, as a kid, I really didn't fully understand what she was getting at. Today though, now that I have my own child and I am trying to raise her in a similar environment to the one I was raised in I completely understand her rational. In a society where people seem to be living haphazardly, carrying on like barbarians, treating each other horribly, no work ethic, accepting mediocrity, sex and foul language on every television show and movie it is no wonder society is having the problems it is.

And so I am influenced by my mother's wisdom far beyond her years, I am regularly now in search of the 50's kind of lifestyle and in the way children are raised because now a days they don't much seem they are raised much at all. Maybe if we halted the "progress," except for medicine, then we would be amazed at how society would begin to correct itself. We should do it at least for our children. Do our daughters to think it is OK for mothers to spend all their free time going out to bars and night clubs, socializing without restraint and not seeming to make much effort in the domesticity aspect of life. My life has been affected by such behavior first hand. And it truly affects the behavior of the children when they don't understand why they aren't being put first.

There are many aspects of today's world that just don't seem to be improving society and even if you run your own home properly the outside world can be damaging. Look for example at the cost of living today compared to how it was thirty to fifty years ago. I spoke with an old timer not long ago and he talked in depth about how the cost of living today was far higher then one could earn compared to the way it used to be where you could live off of what you earned. And to earn a bachelor's degree would provide you with many opportunities. All you needed back then was the will to work and a good reference. Today couldn't get you a job sweeping toilets in Grand Central Station. Today even with a PhD it can be difficult to find a job unless you have an immediate family member with influence. You'd be surprised how many people out there think they have clout in their company until they are asked to help out with job placement and they realized no one gives a damn about their opinion.

If only we could start turning the clock backwards (metaphorically) and find a way to become a wholesome society in the sense of bettering ourselves and the small little world immediate around us for the children if not for ourselves. I miss the life I knew when I was a child and it doesn't have to completely disappear.