Comments on: I Think We Did It

By: Mary Jane huckleberry

Mary Jane huckleberry — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:18:40 +0000

Thanks for your insight, guys. I’ve missed reading your venting…

Please don’t stop contributing your thoughts.

By: silverlin

silverlin — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:14:40 +0000

Jerry, your illustrations are interesting and I agree that houses are bigger and in many ways nicer than the ones “rich people” had when we were growing up. I haven’t been in Taylors’ house but I bet I’d still think of it as a very nice house. I certainly wasn’t thinking of this when I wrote”I Think We Did It.” but the bigger house pendulum has swung too far. Think of the energy consumption impact of a 4000 square foot house, no matter how well insulated and efficient the appliances..

Anyway, I think those of us who are more prosperous than our parents were are so partly because our parents lived through the Depression and raised us to be careful with money. I think there were benefits as well as a few drawbacks to growing up if not poor, then under fiscal constraint. I meant my point about prosperity to be that more young families in Pueblo were firmly in the middle class when we were kids than now. If Pueblo seems prosperous now, it’s because there are many retirees who very careful through the years, and lots of people living beyond their means.

Jeff

By: jerry miller

jerry miller — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:35:20 +0000

Jeff writes, “we lived in a period of prosperity…” I agree, but only when you compare it to what came before. Our parents lived through the depression only a few years before, and for many, including my mother who grew up on goat hill, the depression was only a continuation of the poverty she had always known. Also, prosperity is relative. My guess is that most of us live in far nicer houses than those we grew up in. That certainly includes my friends from wealthier families whose houses were in the Aberdeen. The Thatcher house, that I thought was a mansion, would be similar to a typical two-story in El Camino subdivision where I now live. The Keen house probably had less than half the square feet of my current home. The Taylor house on Ditmer, which I felt was the epitome of fine living, is not much different than today’s standard rancher.

Shortly after the first of the year, 1950, I remember a teacher at Carlile (sadly I can’t remember her name) telling the class that we had reached the milestone of the midway point of the 20th Century, and although she wouldn’t see it, we would live to experience the beginning of a new century. I was 8. She was partially right. Most of us have survived, although some in that class did not come close to living until the year 2000. Now we think that some of our children and most of our grandchildren will experience the middle of the 21st Century. I wonder, at the time she said it, if that unremembered teacher, thinking back over the cataclysms and calamities of the previous 50 years, wondered if the world would last until the year 2000. And I wonder, also thinking back, if the world will last until the year 2050. My guess is that it will, but honestly, I’m glad that I won’t be here to see what it looks like.

By: Mr WordPress

Mr WordPress — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:48:36 +0000

Hi, this is a comment.
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