INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE 1% ERS: 99% of people born between 1930 and 1946 (GLOBALLY) are now dead. (btw, I was born in 1942.) If you were born in this time span, your ages range between 77 and 93 years old (a 16-year age span) and you are one of the rare surviving one-percenters. You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900's. You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years. You are the last to remember ration books for everything from tea to sugar to shoes. You saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into cans. You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" at the front door. Discipline was enforced by parents and teachers. You are the last generation who spent childhood without television and instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio. With no TV, you spent your childhood "playing outside". There was no city playground for kids. The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like. We got “black-and-white” TV in the late 50s that had 3 stations and no remote. Telephones (if you had one) were one to a house and hung on the wall in the kitchen (who cares about privacy). Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked. Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon. INTERNET and GOOGLE were words that did not exist. Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and your dad would give you the comic pages after he read the news. The news was broadcast on your radio in the evening. The radio network gradually expanded from 3 stations to thousands. New highways would bring jobs and mobility. Most highways were 2 lanes and there were no Motorways. You went downtown to shop. You walked to school. Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into working hard to make a living for their families. You weren't neglected, but you weren't today's all-consuming family focus. They were glad you played by yourselves. They were busy discovering the postwar world. You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves. You felt secure in your future, although the depression and poverty were deeply remembered. Polio was still a crippler. Everyone knew someone who had it. You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our country. World War 2 was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life. Only your generation can remember a time after WW2 when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better. More than 99% of you are retired now, and you should feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!" If you have already reached the age of 77 years old, you have outlived 99% of all the other people on this planet. You are a 1% 'er!
Interesting...I guess I know quite a few 1%'ers then, including my dad! Our neighbor lady will be 100 soon...still lives by herself, and putters around out in her garden regularly...seen her mowing on the Z turn the other day! Continuing on with the 1% theme... If you make more then $34,000 annually, you have top 1% income, worldwide. If you make more than $500,000 annually, you are in top 1% in the US! We are the 1%: You need $34k income to be in the global elite... and half the world's richest live in the U.S. | Daily Mail Online
Very interesting article. Mom is 98 and there have been so many changes since she was born. My grandfather was born in 1899 and lived until 1999. Just think of the changes he saw during his lifetime. Electricity being one of them. We have a local TV station (other end of the island) that on their evening news after the weather, they post birthday congratulations to anyone over 90 and anniversary congratulations to any couple over 70 years. I am always amazed at how many people are mentioned especially the 100 yr. olds. And these are only the ones the families send into the news channel. And they are not just from Victoria, BC which is the retirement capital of Canada either. All up and down the island. I think though, of the many countries around our world, that reaching 65 is an amazing age to be. Thanks for posting this.
My dad had a tendency of keeping things. In his garage is the console radio he had before his first TV. I'm pretty sure his first TV was out there at one time, too. I do remember his first color TV. "Portable" - but only because it had a handle on top. I remember him sitting at the kitchen table with the back off of it, replacing tubes and adjusting things with a mirror so he could see the front of the TV and what was happening. I still have his tube tester.
When Judy and I married we had no tv. One time she bought one for $3.00 but it didn't work. It cost another $8.00 for a few vacuum tubes. Our first color tv came about 10 years after we married. We never watched tv much and now our tv only gathers dust.
I remember 3 digit phone numbers, although our number when I was little had 5 digits. Mom still has that number, although it now has 5 digits added to the front of it. And you have to dial all of them even if you are not calling "long distance". Of course, no one literally 'dials' a number any more .
I dread reading these after all the Gen-Z, millennial, Gen X, baby boomers, etc versions float around. the divisiveness they spout. this one is the first time I’ve seen one for the “greatest generation”. Some of them dad (1938) has really shared the perspective. All I can think is… our generation saw the trials you suffered and found ways to overcome them, and the next generation is doing what they can to move forward… no one likes change nor do they like being told “that’s how it’s always been.” Some where in there is the future that rises from yesterday.
Dennis, here I knew some that still had an outhouse is 70’s & 80’s .. to heck with electricity.. I am a fan of indoor plumbing
Me too. I had enough of the outhouses when I was young. What a joy when I didn't have to carry water for the house and also walked that path out back.
We had only a 2 seater outhouse at my Grammy's/Grandpa's (which became my house 1982 that I lived in for 40 years) until 1968 when I was 9 yr. old.
We had a neighbor, actually twin brothers, served in WW2, neither one ever married it was always just Skip and Ben. Hand water pump in the kitchen was the extent of the indoor plumbing, drained out he wall onto the ground. Had an electric wringer washer, those got hard on the fingers when you played with them. Skip died of cancer in the mid 80s, never had an indoor chitter, Ben installed a bathroom not too long before his own death in the early 90s. Still bathed out in the Ell in a copper tub.
Our kitchen sink drained through the wall and drained on to the ground, it was the only running water in the house.
We had one of those electric wring washers, clothes dried in the basement or outside The neighbors had a bathroom in their trailer but there was a hole in the floor where the toilet sat and it dumped into a giant washtub Nasty frozen mound during winter and smelly as ever in the summer. I don't recall going to that place much but it's hard to forget that sight. we had plumbing at our place. But I did lots of water carrying for the animals.
