If you could go back, or pick and era to grow up in...would you you?

I didn’t have to choose a button…I lived it, being born in ’41. One room country school with no electricity, no running water, and backbreaking farm work from dawn to dusk, kids included. Three channels of TV didn’t arrive until ’55, and our telephone was a party line with a half-dozen other families.

Adversity is good. Worried about where your next meal is coming from, and no unemployment benefits to fall back on? You worked hard at any job you could get, and were thankful for what you had.

Worried about the economy or war? You paid attention to what the politicians were doing and voted with your brain, not your feelings and someone else’s bank account. Military service was paying the country back for our liberty. Nearly all the boys in my high school class served, most volunteered. None died in service. I enlisted at 17 and made it a career.

Cars? Got my license and my first car at age 13. The POS ’41 Chevy cost $75. First new car I ever drove was dad’s ’56 Plymouth replete with tailfins and pushbuttons. I loved it, and abused it horribly when he let me borrow it.

All my buddies and I owned cars from the forties or early fifties, and we all modified them. Except for a few hotrod engine parts, there was no aftermarket source. If you wanted it, you made it, or adapted it, or modified it yourself. Ditto for customizing.

I wouldn’t change growing up in the fifties and sixties for anything. Those were the golden years.