Fifties

Since I was born in 1937, I was a child of the forties and fifties. I grew up in Springfield, IL but when someone asked me where I was from I didn't say Springfield but I said the north end. The depression and WW 2 had pulled people together and we thought of ourselves as our neighborhood. If someone was in trouble the whole neigborhood knew about it. I had a dozen dads and every father would report behavior to other fathers. As the 60's came along people changed. They were no longer a group but more like individuals and this was a sign of growth. We moved away from home after we finished school and began to spread out across the country. In the fifties we only had radio so we spent a lot of time outside. All that began to change when TV came along and that type of change had continued and accelarated up to and including today. Today people spend too much time indoors and too much time alone and it is hurting young people.