denverpilot
Tied Down
And the kids probably didn’t have the newest latest electronics, or cell phones (or anything that required a monthly subscription, that’s for sure) and the family gathered around one medium sized TV, not one in every room, and clothes were rarely “designer” or met any of the latest fads, and someone cooked every meal, eating out was a special event... the list goes on and on. Family probably spent Saturdays mowing the grass and working on one car, maybe two, but the cars rarely saw a shop nor needed to. Luxury late in that era may have been a big old Ford LTD or Plymouth that grandma and grandpa owned... LOL. Only Docs and lawyers could afford those big fake wood paneling station wagons...
I think an FAA inspector could probably afford four kids the way families dealt with having four kids back then. “Lifestyle” and resulting monthly costs (often via consumer debt) went way up dramatically since back then. But they don’t have access to that lifestyle really anymore. The kids would lose their minds if mom and dad didn’t buy them a smartphone and an unlimited plan for talking to their friends... “All the other kids have them!”
Not trying to sound like the “walked uphill in the snow, BOTH ways” guy, but my middle class family didn’t have anything fancy in the 70s or 80s. Anyone else remember their folks making furniture out of giant wooden wire spools or other huge construction lumber, and spending a Saturday getting high on fumes helping dad wood stain the stuff all day, doing multiple coats? Families like ours valued our tools heavily because those tools in the garage MADE us a LOT of things, and fixed even more things.
Grandpa, the Great Depression era South Dakota farm kid, could out-repair any of us, though. He could make bailing wire, duct tape, and wood, with a handful of nails he had pulled out of old boards and straightened himself before storing them in old peanut butter jars, make anything work until we could afford a new one. Sometimes the repair would hold for a decade and we’d all just be amazed that whatever the thing that got repaired was, was still working.
I remember grandpa liked those decorative windmills people put in yards back then. He came across one mangled out near a trash can once, dragged it home, and spent three weekends beating it back into proper shape, literally, including all the little “fan blades” on the top piece, and then pulling the bad bearing and replacing it for like $3 back then, greasing it all up, and it doing its weathervane thing in his yard for nearly thirty years until someone ran it over with a car when they got out of control on ice.
He saved cool whip containers for use as “Tupperware” and every coffee can he ever drank coffee out of was repurposed as a container for various parts in his shed. We even found he’d saved twenty or so TV dinner trays after washing them up as a way to sort parts in the shed and garage. A pile of them on the self above the workbench after he passed.
I still have a lot of his hand and power tools. They’re built. Solid. I get a smile using them. They were made to do stuff. They’re not the complete crap Home Depot sells. Only thing that ever came close to the quality level in my lifetime for the price was the old Craftsman lineup at Sears and that’s been long dead for quite some time now as a quality brand of tool.
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