Back in his day, President Franklin Roosevelt called Europe an incubator of wars. I wonder if, looking at the latest European war, occurring so many decades after he said that, would he be dismayed that it was still so, or would he merely make a face and nod.
And when Europeans have wars with each other, boy do they war, slaughtering and killing combatants and civilians however they may, smashing cities, destroying crops, livestock and farms to induce famine in the survivors. When they finally exhaust themselves and quit, they hold grudges and can't wait to raise another generation to hurl at each other, renewing the butchery with sword and pistol, no quarter ask or given.
It's interesting to study FDR's evolving views on Europe and its role in promoting perpetual warfare. Shortly after he was inaugurated in 1933, he had some kind words to say about Hitler, apparently thinking him a new, progressive type of politician. Also that year, when Dwight Eisenhower approached him to provide funds to modernize the army, especially its armor, noting that the US Army only had 12 modern tanks, Roosevelt told him there was no need; in fact, he was considering abolishing the army entirely, turning over homeland defense to National Guard units. After all, there certainly would never be a major war again. The Europeans had finally learned their lesson in the Great War and would never be so foolish as to turn to war to solve their problems ever again. So why have an army?
Eisenhower told him, in polite terms, that he was being naive. The Europeans had not and never would change and there would be another great war in Europe by 1940. What Eisenhower told him dovetailed with what Henry Stimson, Taft's Secretary of War and Hoover's Secretary of State, told him in a private meeting, that it was time, even past time, for the United States to seize the world cockpit from the Europeans, telling them to settle down and behave, play fair, share their toys and no hitting! Don't make us come over there! That's kind of a flip way of saying that Roosevelt was beginning to realize what a mistake had been made at the end of what was not yet called World War I, that as historian Edward H. Carr would write a few years later, "in 1918 world leadership was offered, almost by universal consent, to the United States and was declined." (The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939) It was time to rectify that mistake. But how to do it when the American people wanted no part of foreign slaughterhouses? Foreign entanglements? Get real. Foreign abattoirs, charnel houses, foreign cemeteries filled with American youth? No. No!
How the international interventionism of Henry Stimson and his confreres not only won over Roosevelt (who gets praised -- or blamed -- for the policy) is a long and fascinating story but by 1937 Roosevelt was warning of the danger of Nazi Germany in his famous Chicago speech and calling out British and French complacency. It's actually quite amazing that he actually did get America to become not merely an interventionist power, but the enforcer (emphasis on force) of an Americanized planet, with mighty Europe being a sullen, resentful has-been. An example of what a stunning change FDR engineered is that at the beginning of 1935, when Roosevelt proposed that the United States join the World Court, basically a symbolic gesture of solidarity with European efforts to prevent another war among themselves by creating an adjudicating body to resolve disputes, the senate revolted, epitomized by Minnesota senator Thomas Schall's literal shout during debate over the issue, "To hell with Europe and the rest of those nations!" I found that quote in Time magazine's contemporary coverage of the senate debate. Schall represented the vast majority of the American electorate's thinking. When Italy invaded Ethiopia later that year, the League of Nations tried to impose an economic embargo but Roosevelt, understanding how hostile the American voter was to any foreign entanglement, would not commit the United States to participating. In fact, US oil exports to Italy tripled and the League's efforts to punish Italy collapsed, the League powers blaming America. But in December, 1937, it was discovered that Sir Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, the British and French foreign ministers, had signed an agreement to partition Ethiopia between their two countries. The America public reaction was profound cynicism and disgust for the European so-called democracies, which were really nothing more than gangster nations, their statesmen nothing but snooty-accented, tuxedo-clad Al Capones, Lucky Lucianos and Dutch Schultzes, their flag-waving, drum-beating patriotic wars nothing but fights between mobsters for control of the rackets.
When the Japanese bombed the US gunboat Panay as it patrolled the Yangtze River near Nanking, along with three Standard Oil tankers, the same month as the Ethiopia revelation, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, echoing widespread Roosevelt Administration feeling, said, "War with Japan is inevitable and if we have to fight her, isn't now the best possible time?" I don't know why he thought December, 1937, was the best possible time, but the American public and a press which then followed closely that opinion, did not agree. "The gunboat Panay is not the battleship Maine," editorialized The Christian Science Monitor, and Minnesota Senator Henrik Shipstead demanded, "What are they doing there?" of American naval vessels on Chinese inland waterways, echoing the questioning of the majority of Americans who did not want to fight Japan but to get our sailors out of China. The upshot of the Panay incident was that the Ludlow Amendment introduced by Indiana congressman Louis Ludlow, stating that except in case of direct invasion of American soil, the United States could only engage in war if a majority of the voters agreed in a national referendum, which had been bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee, got all the signatures needed for a discharge petition and the amendment was brought to the house floor for a vote. President Roosevelt strongly fought the amendment, noting that in 1898 the public, propagandized by the Hearst newspapers and other media, would have voted for war, "in all probability an unnecessary war," (!) "one which a strong, unencumbered president could have prevented." The amendment was defeated 209-188, a pretty narrow margin, considering how radical the amendment was.
It was around this time FDR began thinking of why Europe was so warfare prone, deciding their empires were a major cause of friction, even compelling Japan to adopt their ways to avoid becoming colonized itself, and concluding that they all had to be dismantled, along with the European armies and navies, and a new world order (that phrase), a one-world system, had to be instituted to suppress European aggression, liberate the peoples exploited by their imperial policies and ensure peace. Thus, while anti-interventionist Americans thought that Roosevelt was in league with the British Empire and Jewish foreign interests, selling out America for unfathomable reasons other than that he was in league with Satan as Woodrow Wilson, the president blamed for getting us into the Great War, is depicted to have been in John Dos Passos' novel 1919, part of the USA trilogy, in which Wilson is described as having, " a terrifying face, I swear it's a reptile's face, not warm-blooded...," he actually had his own agenda, one of vast ambition: to end war, destroy all empires, free colonial peoples, bring prosperity and peace to the whole world. And to do that he would use the economic and military power of the United States. Of course, even if Roosevelt could accomplish this, he was committing America and its people to being what would later be termed the world's policeman, essentially forever, without asking Americans if they agreed with his agenda or wanted such a role. He was just going to do it, even if he had to lie to the America people to do so. In 1940, campaigning in Boston for an unprecedented third term, he told a crowd, "While I am talking to you mothers and fathers I give you my assurance once more -- I have said this before but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Well, how was he going to achieve his dream for a remade world without American involvement in wars overseas?
In any case, despite dying only about two months into his fourth term, with much of his plan for the new world he envisioned still unaccomplished, the postwar world did, in fact, resemble fairly closely what Roosevelt envisioned. The European empires dissolved, the colonial peoples became independent and world peace, more or less, was enforced by the might of the United States. Of course, some things FDR did not imagine, most especially the Cold War, developed to produce a world Roosevelt would not have wanted. Two allies of convenience, Stalin and Churchill, largely brought the Cold War about, Stalin because he had his own world agenda and Churchill because he saw that a world divided between the USSR and the USA had no room for the British Empire, so he set about fomenting dissension between the two, not that Stalin needed much help with that. But I do wonder if Roosevelt had lived and been of sound mind if he could have managed the postwar world much better than Truman did -- not to bad mouth Truman, who achieved a lot, all things considered. And the efforts of the colonial powers to hang on to their empires, most especially the French, led to wars that never should have been, and American involvement that never should have happened. And the freed colonial peoples have not prospered as much as Roosevelt imagined they would. And this...and that.... Still, Roosevelt did a lot to change the world for the better. We've had no wars between great powers, as was routine when Europe ran the world, and however much we can attribute that to FDR, he is to be thanked. And, although I haven't mentioned it, with his domestic policies he radically changed America itself, I personally think in ways that were necessary and helpful. I'll let the following documentary review the domestic scene under Roosevelt.
Life in the Thirties, produced by NBC Television's Project XX, first broadcast October 16, 1959. It's a look back at that decade by those who lived through it. America was one sort of country when the decade began, and another altogether when it ended. It was a terrible decade and it led to a world war, and on into the world we inhabit today. The one-hour documentary is here divided into two parts. Narrated by the wonderful Alexander Scourby, it focuses on Roosevelt's first two terms and how he changed the American domestic scene, not his foreign policy. It's a good reminder that for Americans America is what's really important, and what a president does to improve America and solve its problems is what really counts.
When I tell people I was a Navy brat growing up, if they are civilians and always have been, they react either with incomprehension or the "oh, you poor dear" type of condescension. But if the person was a service brat him- or herself, or is in the service or has been, they ask, among other questions, what rank my parent was. When I say my dad retired as an 0-7, they grow quiet. I grew up on officers' row on bases throughout the Pacific and west coast. In fact, I was born overseas and never set foot in CONUS for some years.
It's common for civilians to put down those in our armed forces, and to hold the most negative views of them, commonly thinking they all come from "the lower classes," whatever those are. This despite the fact that, much to the dismay of the armed forces themselves, 75 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24, the most likely time to join, are not qualified to serve. Only A and B high school students have a chance of being accepted providing they also possess a whole series of requirements most can't meet. The requirements have risen over the years, and many who were accepted into the service in the 1980s, even the 1990s, would never get in today. And studies have shown repeatedly that those who join up are middle class or higher in social rank, well educated, physically fit, emotionally stable, drug- and alcohol-free. In other words, among the best the country produces.
So why so much denigration of such people? An easy answer would include the words envy, jealousy, resentment, unwelcome realization that they couldn't do what our service members do every day, that they're simply not good enough.
But I'm not convinced that's more than a partial answer applying to some. A different reason is people getting sick of the forced "patriotism" of military displays at sporting events and the like, as well as the "thank you for your service" fake gratitude that is pushed. Personally, I think it's good that society not worship the military or war heroes. After all, you only have war heroes if you have wars, and I'd prefer we not have those. And about the resistance to "thank you for your service," I think it's pretty well understood that most jobs in the armed forces are non-combat support-side stuff -- maintenance, supply, administrative, and so forth. Why thank people for having a routine, albeit necessary, job? Then, of course, for what I think may be the majority of people, they are just not interested in the military life and can't understand why anyone would be. They hear about homeless vets and vet suicides (the numbers of both wildly exaggerated or misrepresented). They assume those who join up can't find any other work. Not true, of course, and easily proven to be untrue because almost all who join do one hitch and then go on to a typical civilian life, except with a lot of cool stories about that time on liberty in Marseilles or this one time that...
Unfortunately, despite the high standards of recruitment, there are still those who were not doing well in life before they enlisted, performed adequately, but no more, in some routine support job, then after discharge went back to not doing well in civilian life. Whatever troubles and failures they have are not the result of their military service, they are the result of their own personalities, decisions and actions. It's just like anything else involving people, some are failures even if they come from privileged backgrounds and some are successes even though they come from the most miserable circumstances. I know immigrants with no particular job skills, talents or education who, through perseverance and hard work have become very successful and they love America. I also have some slight acquaintance (I avoid losers as soon as I recognize them) with immigrants who have utterly failed, ending up as bums and barflies, working menial jobs for years with no effort to advance in life. They blame America for their failures and are bitter and resentful. That's the way life is. It's no brilliant insight to point it out. "Root hog, or die," used to be a popular expression. It's still true.
The Reagan sailing past Iwo Jima
Although I come from a service family and understand and can navigate the life, even be successful at it, I don't think it is for everyone, by any means. It's a great trade school for high-school graduates, one that pays you to learn, then provides benefits to help you extend your education if you so choose. But lots of people just can't stand all the rules and regulations and the deprivations and disruptions to normal life that civilians will never encounter. I can't speak for the other services, but, for example, in the Navy at sea there are no days off, and a work day can easily last 13 hours, then for the enlisted, even on a big ship like an aircraft carrier, you sleep in what is little more than an open coffin, jammed in with many, many others. You have no privacy, and no way to get away from anyone you dislike or can't get along with. You have to endure. Of course, on a smaller ship, conditions are worse.
Despite all this, our armed forces get some of the very best of our young people to serve. Very often these days, they come from families with a tradition of service and so it is a natural thing for them to do. They are smart and dedicated and very capable. I have no doubt that our armed forces are staffed by better people than in any other country's military. That's not boasting. The British may have the best of the European armed forces, but in Iraq and Afghanistan they performed miserably, having to be rescued in Basra by the Iraqi army, they were so incapable, and saved by the US Marines in Afghanistan, a place the Brits asked to be sent to make up for their humiliation in Iraq to prove they could at least handle goat fuckers. But they couldn't. They ended up trapped in their outposts, unable to do anything. And we are talking about British elite units like 40 Commando. When the US Marines came, the Brits were close to being overrun and annihilated, but the 3/7 attacked within 24 hours of arriving and drove out the Taliban. There was some very heavy fighting, but the outcome was never in doubt. Some time later, in what was, under the watchful eye of our Marines, a pacified and peaceful area, a combat outpost was turned over to a company of volunteering Estonian soldiers, Estonia being a new member of NATO that wanted to carry its weight. Alas, as soon as the Marines left, the Taliban, always lurking, always watching, attacked and overran the outpost, killing and wounding some 22 Estonian soldiers. The Marines had to return and repacify the area. The Estonians never again volunteered to do anything.
By the way, in case you didn't know it, the Marines are part of the Navy. "Marine" stands for "My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment," don't you know.
These days I read a lot of uniformed but highly opinionated comments about how the Chinese Navy will destroy the US Navy. Apparently, even at least some high-ranking Chinese believe this. Maybe so. Hopefully, we will never find out. But history being what it has been, and humans being what they are, I suppose the time will come when we do. But having seen something of how the British and Australian navies operate, and more how the Japanese and South Korean navies perform -- more than adequate but without the top-notch personnel we have -- I can't imagine the Chinese will be better than they are, let alone us. And, yes, I know about the disasters and fiascos our navy has experienced. Operating a world-wide blue-water navy 24/7/365 year after year, is not easy. (And you don't think other navies have suffered serious troubles as well? Really?)
The Chinese navy doesn't attract the best of Chinese youth by any means, and the service itself is riddled top to bottom with corruption, both in equipment procurement and maintenance, but also in personnel advancement, with the officer corps paying bribes to get promotions. And, of course, the Chinese Navy has never participated in any form of combat at all. Even before the communist revolution, the Chinese had no naval tradition to speak of. As unimpressive as the Europeans and Japanese navies may be compared to ours -- and they are not bad, far from it, especially the Japanese Maritime forces shine, but we are just better -- the Chinese are much worse. And all the America-allied countries have strong naval traditions and have fought and won major sea battles. The Japanese alone could wad the Chinese navy up, from what I have observed. If the Chinese want a no-ROE fight with the USN, believe me, they will face a crew of the best there is ready to rock and roll.
Oh, right. The Russians. No comment. None need be expressed.
Of course, in war contingency and luck play enormous roles, so who can say what the outcome of any naval war might be. But if it comes to it, I'll not only put my money on the United States Navy, but also my life. Actually, I already have. More than once. If I have to, I'll do it again. How about you?
It's interesting to see what people believed made American girls different from those elsewhere 80 years ago. It was a time when Americans were going overseas to serve in the war and the GIs were observing foreign women and comparing them to the American girls back home. It came through clearly to them that there was a distinct "something" that made Americans different, we were as separate a people as French and Germans, English and Italians. Just what was that?
By the way, in those days people spoke of race when nowadays we would speak of nationality. Thus Norwegians and Irishmen were said to be different races. Click the pages to enlarge them.
It's hard to believe, looking at the photos, how normal life was in the before times. Who could have imagined then what a decadent, crime-ridden freak show life in these United States would turn in to.
Things keep getting crazier and I don't understand why. None of it makes any sense to me. Who is profiting from this raving nonsense? Is it, as Theodore Dalrymple says, merely a way to humiliate people by forcing them to accept and parrot lies that they know to be lies? If so, why? What is gained?
But...what is it that "they" want to control? And why? I can't figure it out.
Well, since my time machine is still in the experimental stage and the transmorgrafier cam wheel flange has flooglelated again and Amazon is out of stock, I'll just have to hang around in the present for a while longer. Rats.
But what I can do is just ignore it all, focus on what's real and important to me, and especially those who mean so much to me. What else can I do -- and, when you get right down to it, what else do I really want to do, now or at any time under any circumstances? All things come to an end. This, too, shall pass. In the meantime, I'll never forget what is always most important to me in my life. I hope you can do the same.
It's easy to think of adults being the prime listeners to big band music during its heyday, roughly 1938 to 1942, give or take, maybe because we have a memory of grandparents listening to it. It's reasonably easy to imagine them as middle-aged people, but not so easy to imagine them as high-schoolers, but that's who was listening the most to Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, et al. Sometimes they were called subdebs, sometimes bobby soxers (although that phrase belongs more to the late 1940s early 1950s) and sometimes the now-standard teenager.
The radio was a common way to listen to the tunes of the day, but so was hanging out at a juke joint, feeding nickels to the record machine and dancing the Lindy Hop or jitterbugging.
But juke joints had an unsavory reputation and were often infested with lowlifes. And, of course, bars had juke boxes, but teens didn't go to bars. Record stores, however, allowed you to listen to records before deciding to buy or not and you could hang out with your friends all evening if you wanted to. It was safe to walk home after dark in the America of that era, but should trouble arise there was always a cop walking his beat nearby.
Of course, you could always invite your friends over for a platter party, playing your collection of 78s and dancing with each other to "Chatanooga Choo-Choo" or "Stardust."
When the Japanese surrendered, the peoples who had been colonized by the European empires naively believed that the old order was gone forever and they tried to establish their own nations again.
Fools.
The Europeans would not let go of their cash cows so easily. Even the Japanese were planning ways to stay part of the robber syndicate. And their erstwhile enemies welcomed them.
And make no mistake, those colonized hated their colonizers. They looked to America, as a traditionally anti-imperialist power, to help them.
We should have. Imagine a world in which we did.
Stories are from postwar 1945. Click image to enlarge.
By that I mean when was the point, if you were to go back in time, that you would still feel in familiar circumstances but if you went back only somewhat further you would feel you were in an alien world?
I've thought about this a lot over the years because I have an abiding interest and curiosity about the past. I want to know what it was like to be alive in those far gone times, how was daily life lived, not merely in general terms but in the most minor details.
So, anyway, I've decided that today's world, at least today's American world, came into existence, picking a somewhat arbitrary year, in 1940, but probably a few years earlier, but by 1940 for sure. And a lot of things we think of as happening post-1945, after World War II, would have happened sooner, television, for example, without the war, which seems to have set back civilian developments about a decade.
Okay, okay, I know that nobody would want to have a root canal done by a 1940 dentist, or have TB or polio treated by 1940 medicine and et cetera. But that's not what I'm talking about. Look at the kitchen in the Hotpoint ad. It's from 1942. It's got a refrigerator and electric stove and oven, but also a sink disposal and a dishwasher. It's basically the same as a kitchen today. The ad copy says postwar appliances will be better, but the important thing is that all those appliances already existed. So did small kitchen appliances such as electric mixers and a variety of coffee makers -- drip, siphon, percolator. Frozen foods also existed. The Bird's Eye ad is from 1940. Of course, all variety of canned goods were available, lots of the same brands as today. Breakfast cereals the same as you can buy at Safeway today were also well established, as were candy bars, the same ones as we enjoy today. You could buy Parkay margarine and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (cooks in seven minutes!) at the A&P or Jewel supermarket. And speaking of Jewel, there was the then-famous Jewel Tea Man, who took orders over the phone from the Jewel catalog and delivered right to your door -- and not just food but all sorts of household items. The milkman also delivered to your door not only milk and cream, but butter, eggs and ice cream. The bread man brought fresh bread to your door, too, as well as pies and donuts, cakes and other goodies. The local grocery store delivered: call in your order in the morning and a local boy would bicycle it to your home after school and even help put away your purchases. Mail was delivered twice a day, morning and evening, and the postman famously always rang twice to let you know you had mail.
Bathrooms were essentially modern, too, with hot and cold running water, flush toilets with the same Scott toilet paper as well as Kleenex we can buy today, not to mention Modess sanitary napkins. They had sinks and showers and bathtubs, nice towels and bathmats, vanities and medicine cabinets, just like today.
But more important than all of this, important as it is, at least to me because I would want to enjoy a pleasant and
Happy suburban neighborhood c.1940. Safe and sane!
comfortable life, is the fact that, with whatever skills and education you have now, you could function in the world of c.1940, even in small details, and almost certainly find employment.
Let's take handwriting, for example. I can write cursive because my mother taught me as a child. Lots of people nowadays can't write cursive, it was not taught in school, and aside from a scrawled signature, they have no particular use for it. Well, okay, if you can't write cursive and you found yourself in 1940, guess what, you could use a typewriter. Maybe you've never even seen a typewriter, but you would recognize the same qwerty keyboard you use with your computer and you could easily figure out how to use a typewriter, maybe the return carriage lever being the only really odd thing you'd need to get the hang of. So you could carry out correspondence in an adult, professional manner. And that would mean you could get an office job.
And back to cursive -- If you can write it, you write it Palmer style, the method taught in the US from the mid-1920s until cursive faded away. Before that, people were taught to write cursive in the Spencerian style. That style survives in the Ford and Coca-Cola logos. It's much fancier than Palmer. Imagine having to write cursive in a Spencerian hand -- legibly. Everybody educated before 1925 could do it. If you wanted an office job, you'd have to be able to write it. But by 1940 or so it was fuddy-duddy stuff and you wouldn't need to worry about it.
Also by 1940 there were dial telephones and telephone directories. Yes, you'd have to dial "0" to get the operator to make a long-distance call, but otherwise making a call would be very much like today. So you wouldn't be isolated, unable to contact others.
And also by c.1940 cars were not that much different from those of today. Yes, yes, I know cars of today are vastly superior and all that. But what I mean is that, for example, you could climb into a four-door sedan, scan the controls and instruments and see they were pretty much like today's -- speedometer, gas gauge, horn, headlight switch, windshield wipers, ignition key and starter, even a radio. The big difference would be a manual transmission, if you don't know how to use one. But you could learn that. And if you couldn't,
Notice the caption says these 16-year-olds drive!
Oldsmobile introduced the automatic transmission in 1939, so buy an Olds. Oh, and even high-school kids drove and had their own cars, at least the guys had their own, usually old cars -- jalopies -- that they fixed up. Or they borrowed their parents' car.
And while their weren't any interstates the roads were paved and signed just as today, there were traffic cops, parking lots, drive-ins, motels and campgrounds, full-service gas stations everywhere that offered free roadmaps, roadside diners, even travel trailers you could tow behind your car as you saw the USA in your Chevrolet, visiting the national parks.
Anyway, you could drive to work, drive to shopping, drive on vacation, or just take a spin on a Sunday afternoon.
There were local and transcontinental bus lines if you didn't want to drive, public transportation in the cities (safe and clean!), and of course those wonderful passenger trains with dining and club cars, Pullman sleepers and observation cars. There were commuter trains between city and suburbs (yes, they already existed), but there were also inter city and even inter-small town passenger trains.
And, believe it or not, there were plenty of scheduled airlines operating planes like the DC-3 and DC-4 or the Boeing 247 and 307, or Lockheed Electras. I've flown in a DC-3 and in the later version of the DC-4, the DC-6. They were pleasant, comfortable passenger liners. Some airlines flew sleeper versions of these planes, so you could take a night flight and arrive at your destination in the morning after a good night's sleep. Pan American's flying boats that spanned the Pacific not only offered sleeping accommodations but also dining and lounge facilities. At the exotic island stopovers, first-class hotel and meals were included in the air fare. Taking a few days to leisurely travel from San Francisco to Macao via Honolulu, Wake, Guam and Manila in an airplane flying only a few thousand feet above the sea, so you could wave at ships and see whales, get up and walk around, dine at a table served by a waiter, sleep in a bed, take breaks at exotic locales....
Back to finding a job, there were plenty that you could probably do. If you are a book keeper or accountant, you could do those jobs with the same skills you have today. No Quickbooks or Turbotax, but you could use an electric adding machine and the type of accounting and tax preparation you would do would be the same as today.
You would have no problem figuring out how a cash register worked and so be a cashier. A job as a waitress or waiter would be the same. As would that of a bartender or short-order cook -- people ordered the same drinks and the same foods, more or less. Ham and eggs or bacon and eggs, pancakes, waffles, cold cereals or oatmeal were standard breakfast fare. Hamburgers were popular lunch fare, as were ham sandwiches and BLTs, road beef and club sandwiches as well as fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, hot dogs, potato chips, cole slaw, potato salad, etc. Steak for dinner or maybe a roast chicken or spaghetti. Desert would be apple pie with ice cream or maybe chocolate cake with coconut icing and a cherry. Coffee after. Typical American fare then as now. No pizza, though, except maybe in a big eastern city like New York.
You could drive a truck or a taxicab. If you are mechanically inclined or like to noodle around with your lawn mower or dirt bike or fool with an old car, you could get a job as an auto mechanic and find the job much simpler and easier than it would be today, needing only basic tools. And you could work on any engines, from chain saws (yes, they had them) to airplane engines (no turbines yet!). All internal combustion engines, either simple side-valve or pushrod-activated overhead valve. Rarely would you encounter an overhead cam engine. All had manually adjusted ignition points and timing. Simple, simple, simple. You could open your own shop, work at a service station or a car dealership. Lots of job openings.
Rules and regulations were much simpler and imposed far fewer costs -- no OSHA, no EPA, no race and gender quotas, no this, no that. So opening your own business would be a lot simpler and require much less in start-up capital.
When it came to clothing, everyday wear was not so much different from that of today. Women's casual dresses were a bit dowdy, and the patterns were a bit much, to my eye, but they were comfortable. No corsets and bustles and wasp waists. No bloomers!
Women's business attire was quite chic and, if I tossed away the hat, I could probably walk down a street in a city business hub today wearing a 1940 woman's suit and not get a second glance. I particularly like the shoes women wore in those days, as stylish as those of today and not looking somehow odd, as those of only a few years before do to me.
The plane is an Aeronca, still lots flying.
Women wore slacks and shorts and loafers and tennis shoes, even blue jeans, although they favored those in baggy styles with the cuffs rolled up. Hairstyles were a bit fussy, even complicated, but if you didn't choose to get too fancy, nobody seemed to mind.
I think you guys would be okay with 1940.
Women also dressed to be sexy; after all, this was the era of the pin-up, the Petty Girl and the Varga Girl, copies of which would soon earn immortality as the nose art on Army Air Force combat planes in the coming war. Silk stockings were giving way to less expensive nylons and bust-enhancing bras were becoming popular, especially when worn under a tight-fitting sweater. This combination was so popular, in fact, that it caused the coining of the phrase "sweater girl" to denote a sexy college co-ed.
Oh, and, um, they did have condoms back in those days. Latex condoms were mass produced and inexpensive, regulated by the Food and Drug administration. The makers of Trojans used automatic testing equipment to ensure each one was defect-free. The Roosevelt administration's surgeon general urged their use and figuring that boys and girls will do what comes naturally no matter what, opened hundreds of outlets that gave away condoms for free.
To my eye, men's fashions seem even less dated. I suppose things like tie width and pattern, as well as lapel width, have changed, such things do, but I think a man today could wear a 1940-era suit and take the same city walk as above and attract no attention. Aside from the shoes, the dress style of a late 1930s Princeton man, looks quite contemporary to me. A guy from today could show up in in 1940 and hit a men's clothing store, glance around, and know what to buy to look well dressed. But in 1910? How about 1870? Oh, and about those white shoes the Princeton boy wears, we still speak of white-shoe law firms, don't we?
By 1940, ordinary middle-class people had enough leisure time and income to enjoy recreation that cost money to do. You had to go someplace like a bowling alley, tennis court, ski resort or golf course, pay to do it, even pay for special training, buy or rent equipment, maybe even pay for overnight lodgings. All of those things are as we do them today and we could enjoy them then, just as today. Of course, gear is better now, but still, if, for example, you're a skier and were to find yourself in Sun Valley in 1940 you would recognize what the equipment was and be able to use it to hit the slopes.
Aside from movies, many of which you can still watch and enjoy today, the radio provided the most popular form of personal entertainment, offering the same sorts of programs as we enjoy today -- detective dramas, cop shows, situation comedies, variety shows, murder mysteries, costume dramas, soaps, cooking and home-improvement shows, news and commentary, etc. Live broadcasts from famous ball rooms featuring the latest singers and bands were popular. And television was just ready to go when the war stopped everything for some years. Of course, you could buy your own records and listen to whatever you liked in your own home. Books were popular and everyone read the latest novels, much as today they watch the latest cable series, and there were book-of-the-month clubs that would mail you inexpensive editions of all the latest titles. There were tons of magazines, many still with us today. Many homes had pianos and sheet music sales were still considerable, so if you can play, you would find the era most congenial to your talents.
Interior of a TWA Boeing 307 Stratoliner.
Look, I know all of this is subjective, based on my own tastes and views of what's historically important, but I've thought about this a lot over the years and often wondered how far back in time I realistically could go and hope to have a life I would enjoy, based on my abilities and proclivities. How about you? Do you know how to handle a team of horses? Would you like to sit on a stool and add and subtract figures by hand, writing them down in a careful Spencerian hand, at an accounting firm? Do you want to cook meals over a hot wood stove that needs constant careful attention? If you have to go to the bathroom at night do you want to pull a chamber pot out from under the bed and do your business in it, then have to carry it outside to the outhouse to dump it, then clean it, the next morning? Do you like the smell of kerosene, refilling lamp reservoirs, carefully cleaning the delicate glass chimneys of soot, replacing wicks? Oh, and how about accidentally brushing past a kerosene lamp some night and knocking it over and having it shatter, showering you with flaming fuel, not only brutally burning you but burning your house down as well, and maybe the whole block? Do you...? Can you...? Would you...? Not me! My time machine's wayback dial enters the red no-go zone at about 1935 and stops dead at 1930.
Why do I imagine moving back to the past, and think about it in such detail? Do you like the present? Are you okay with all the...the...the...you know-- you do know -- ? Haven't you thought of escape, maybe emigrating? But to where? It's all everywhere. So, in reverie at least, I turn to the past. Sure, I know that those years were full of their own problems but compared to today, I'll take theirs. I'm speaking as an American, of course, and traveling back to an earlier America. I don't care about Europe or Asia, then or now. I'm just your typical parochial Doofus americanus and I'm quite happy to be one. Now excuse me while I climb into my time machine, shaped like a 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster, and skeedaddle.
B'bye!
C'mon, hop in! Let's all go for a drive back to 1940!
People can live in so much emotional pain that it expresses itself in physical pain, often unbearably so. But merely caring, merely listening -- no, not merely...sincerely -- touching a shoulder or forearm, holding hands, can take the pain away. Very much of my off-duty professional life involves this. It may seem trivial, but it's not. It's the most important thing. I take their pain upon myself. Sometimes it takes its toll on me. Sometimes it's very hard.
In Touch, first broadcast October 29, 1981, over the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
Wilson, the president blamed for getting us into the Great War, is depicted to have been in John Dos Passos' novel 1919, part of the USA trilogy, in which Wilson is described as having, " a terrifying face, I swear it's a reptile's face, not warm-blooded...," he actually had his own agenda, one of vast ambition: to end war, destroy all empires, free colonial peoples, bring prosperity and peace to the whole world. And to do that he would use the economic and military power of the United States. Of course, even if Roosevelt could accomplish this, he was committing America and its people to being what would later be termed the world's policeman, essentially forever, without asking Americans if they agreed with his agenda or wanted such a role. He was just going to do it, even if he had to lie to the America people to do so. In 1940, campaigning in Boston for an unprecedented third term, he told a crowd, "While I am talking to you mothers and fathers I give you my assurance once more -- I have said this before but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Well, how was he going to achieve his dream for a remade world without American involvement in wars overseas?
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