How did Boomers survive all this?!

[Magus]

 

[DrHenley]

I grew up in the 50s and 60s. I never heard of Radithor or Olestra. And I didn't know anyone that fed their dogs canned dog food. I thought only cat people did that.

 

[dademoss]

I grew up in the 50s and 60s. I never heard of Radithor or Olestra. And I didn't know anyone that fed their dogs canned dog food. I thought only cat people did that.

Like many youtubes, the "facts" may not match reality. The youtube video is WAY off on Olestra tiiming. It was still in research and development for use in food in the mid 1980's ( I interviewed for one of the positions in the project.). Around 1995 they were testing it for use in fat free Pringles. One of it's problems was the "Olestra squirts" if you ate too many . (Don't ask how i know.)

https://www.cookist.com/olestra-the-embarrassing-story-behind-the-once-famous-fat-substitute/

 

[jazzy]

i never heard of people being so broke they ate canned dog food back in 50-60s. interesting. i do recall poor elderly turning to canned cat food now and then in the 70s. ive become convinced that the boomer generation was the major experiemnted on by pharma making up new diseases and vaxes/meds for and food companies adding chems, dyes and preservatives not really well known for safety- made things cheap and they made big bucks and if we got sick heck--thats whats pharmas for, right?
how can anyone trust any of them again

now we got to watch out for bugs being snuck in our food.

 

[Magus]

Looking at the two generations since all that, they're the way they are because of all that OR because of the lack of all that.

Maybe 0bama was right: a little radiation IS good for us!
Might be. Maybe Mercury and DDT, too? Now hear me out here,
Suppose getting mini doses kept whatever the hell happened to Gen Y
and the Millennials from happening! 0_0

 

[Supervisor42]

Looking at the two generations since all that, they're the way they are because of all that OR because of the lack of all that.

Maybe 0bama was right: a little radiation IS good for us!
Might be. Maybe Mercury and DDT, too? Now hear me out here,
Suppose getting mini doses kept whatever the hell happened to Gen Y
and the Millennials from happening! 0_0

I believe there is a lot of truth to that.
Anybody remember the phrase: "That which does not kill you, makes you stronger."
Being exposed to all that bad stuff early, built the bodies we have today.
The 'protected' generation "Z" survive about as long as an animal that has been caged it's whole life and then released into the wild.

 

[Dave V]

I grew up in the 40's, 50's, and 60's.
I guess you get to grow up in 3 decades when you're born near the end of a decade!
I had a real-life "canned dogfood encounter."
Long-story-short, I was on a 5-day R&R touring a lighthouse in a place called Vũng Tàu
when I was in Vietnam in 1969.
A soldier I met at that lighthouse ended up getting back to the States the same time I did,
and being a nice guy, (!) I borrowed a car and gave him a ride from Fort Bragg
to see his folks in a tiny NC town called Conover.
Holy cow...I had no concept of what poverty was (in a 1st world nation)
until I saw his family!
They must have been renting the house or maybe inherited it, but it was just ghostly gray ALL over and had this layer of dust on every surface inside and out. The windows were all wide open, the paint was nonexistent, and there was NO furniture whatsoever in that house.
We got there about the time the sun was starting to set and there were no lights.
We walked around room to room calling out, but no one was there.
Shortly after we got there, there were suddenly a bunch of people on the front porch.
Most were carrying what looked to me like trash bags. A couple were carrying bent up metal pails with what looked like empty dog food cans.

We were greeted with a shower of hellos and back pats as I was introduced to his sisters, brothers, cousins, and his parents. I'd say there were at least 15 of them!
It was dark enough that I was able to hide my horror as I saw some of them using pocketknives, old bent up spoons, and forks to scrape out and share any food that remained in what looked like dog/cat/tuna/spam all kinds of apparently not completely empty cans.

They were all super nice, and they peppered us with questions about the war, and then about me and my family, and "was that really my car?" (no, I had borrowed it from another buddy!)
After a couple of hours of sitting on the front porch, our feet dangling over the edge, they started to go inside and were apparently laying on rags in what constituted the bedrooms in this house. (I had seen the piles of rags in the rooms inside before people started showing up.)
By the way, I never asked to use their restroom, but I'm pretty sure they were using an outhouse.

Originally, I had intended to spend the night at his house, but after
I was propositioned by not one, but by two of his sisters or cousins to come sleep with them,
I said "thanks but I had to visit another buddy but I'd be back to pick him up in two days" so we could return to duty.

I parked the car in some random store's parking lot, locked the doors, cracked the windows, and slept on the bench seat in the back. Until I picked him up, I just drove around the Hickory area. When I picked him up, I thanked his family for the evening we'd spent on the porch, shook his father's hand and I slipped him every dollar I had on me except for what I knew I'd need for gas.
I could see the mix of confusion, gratitude, and shame in his eyes, as he gripped my cash.
I could only imagine the weight on that man's shoulders.
He thanked me for looking out for his son - like I had protected him in Vietnam - I hadn't.
But his boy was in the Army, and he was alive, and doing OK...better than OK.

I never mentioned any of this to him on our way back to Bragg and I lost touch with him soon after that.
What I had seen, was poverty right here in our country I could not have imagined.
At least they had a roof over their heads, but no food, no beds, their clothes were rags, their bodies stained brown from living in squaller.
Thankfully, I've never lived in such desperation.

We can be politically smug and say the people losing their jobs "deserve it,"
but I wish only the best for them,
and I hope the loss of their livelihoods will not throw them into homelessness.
I don't wish that on anyone.

 

[Magus]

I had a 1 time with Kenny canned cat food.
I woke up drunk. The can had no label, but it had a pull ring.
I slammed it on a sandwich and thought. "When does tuna have gravy?" I gave my brother
one, and halfway through, he says, what is this? it tastes good, but something isn't right." and
I say, it's that can of tuna your mother gave us." He spits his bite of sandwich across the living
room, and after a minute of spitting and cussing, says:
"Idiot @!$$^*(&$#(()()(_!! That's that can of cat food she gave me to get that stray cat to come in here!
I wrote cat food on the top!" I got the can. "Nope, you wrote it on the bottom! Can I have half of your sandwich? shame to waste it." I smelled like fish all day after he hit me with it.

 

[lonewolf]

i never heard of people being so broke they ate canned dog food back in 50-60s. interesting. i do recall poor elderly turning to canned cat food now and then in the 70s. ive become convinced that the boomer generation was the major experiemnted on by pharma making up new diseases and vaxes/meds for and food companies adding chems, dyes and preservatives not really well known for safety- made things cheap and they made big bucks and if we got sick heck--thats whats pharmas for, right?
how can anyone trust any of them again

now we got to watch out for bugs being snuck in our food.

no its only immigrants that eat canned dog food.

 

[UrbanHunter]

I had a 1 time with Kenny canned cat food.
I woke up drunk. The can had no label, but it had a pull ring.
I slammed it on a sandwich and thought. "When does tuna have gravy?" I gave my brother
one, and halfway through, he says, what is this? it tastes good, but something isn't right." and
I say, it's that can of tuna your mother gave us." He spits his bite of sandwich across the living
room, and after a minute of spitting and cussing, says:
"Idiot @!$$^*(&$#(()()(_!! That's that can of cat food she gave me to get that stray cat to come in here!
I wrote cat food on the top!" I got the can. "Nope, you wrote it on the bottom! Can I have half of your sandwich? shame to waste it." I smelled like fish all day after he hit me with it.

Thankyou Magus, I really needed that! I remember going hunting in the 70 with grandpa (he supplied everything) stopped for lunch one day, he pulls out a half loaf of bread and a tin of Deviled ham, spreads the stuff on a slice of bread with his hunting knife (the one he had been cleaning fish with), the says eat, it's lunch! I would have liked to have had some of your tuna gravy that day...

 

[elkhound]

I grew up in the 40's, 50's, and 60's.
I guess you get to grow up in 3 decades when you're born near the end of a decade!
I had a real-life "canned dogfood encounter."
Long-story-short, I was on a 5-day R&R touring a lighthouse in a place called Vũng Tàu
when I was in Vietnam in 1969.
A soldier I met at that lighthouse ended up getting back to the States the same time I did,
and being a nice guy, (!) I borrowed a car and gave him a ride from Fort Bragg
to see his folks in a tiny NC town called Conover.
Holy cow...I had no concept of what poverty was (in a 1st world nation)
until I saw his family!
They must have been renting the house or maybe inherited it, but it was just ghostly gray ALL over and had this layer of dust on every surface inside and out. The windows were all wide open, the paint was nonexistent, and there was NO furniture whatsoever in that house.
We got there about the time the sun was starting to set and there were no lights.
We walked around room to room calling out, but no one was there.
Shortly after we got there, there were suddenly a bunch of people on the front porch.
Most were carrying what looked to me like trash bags. A couple were carrying bent up metal pails with what looked like empty dog food cans.

We were greeted with a shower of hellos and back pats as I was introduced to his sisters, brothers, cousins, and his parents. I'd say there were at least 15 of them!
It was dark enough that I was able to hide my horror as I saw some of them using pocketknives, old bent up spoons, and forks to scrape out and share any food that remained in what looked like dog/cat/tuna/spam all kinds of apparently not completely empty cans.

They were all super nice, and they peppered us with questions about the war, and then about me and my family, and "was that really my car?" (no, I had borrowed it from another buddy!)
After a couple of hours of sitting on the front porch, our feet dangling over the edge, they started to go inside and were apparently laying on rags in what constituted the bedrooms in this house. (I had seen the piles of rags in the rooms inside before people started showing up.)
By the way, I never asked to use their restroom, but I'm pretty sure they were using an outhouse.

Originally, I had intended to spend the night at his house, but after
I was propositioned by not one, but by two of his sisters or cousins to come sleep with them,
I said "thanks but I had to visit another buddy but I'd be back to pick him up in two days" so we could return to duty.

I parked the car in some random store's parking lot, locked the doors, cracked the windows, and slept on the bench seat in the back. Until I picked him up, I just drove around the Hickory area. When I picked him up, I thanked his family for the evening we'd spent on the porch, shook his father's hand and I slipped him every dollar I had on me except for what I knew I'd need for gas.
I could see the mix of confusion, gratitude, and shame in his eyes, as he gripped my cash.
I could only imagine the weight on that man's shoulders.
He thanked me for looking out for his son - like I had protected him in Vietnam - I hadn't.
But his boy was in the Army, and he was alive, and doing OK...better than OK.

I never mentioned any of this to him on our way back to Bragg and I lost touch with him soon after that.
What I has seen, was poverty right here in our country I could not have imagined.
At least they had a roof over their heads, but no food, no beds, their clothes were rags, their bodies stained brown from living in squaller.
Thankfully, I've never lived in such desperation.

We can be politically smug and say the people losing their jobs "deserve it,"
but I wish only the best for them,
and I hope the loss of their livelihoods will not throw them into homelessness.
I don't wish that on anyone.

welcome to southern Appalachia....i seen this growing up myself.

 

[Magus]

Me too.