Your Generation? another Poll

[Nemo2]

I believe it is called that because it threw it up very few political leaders, and no US presidents. A generation was skipped between Reagan and Clinton I think.

And Joe Biden was born the same year as me.

 

[ChainsBeGone]

Born in Dec 64. I always felt too young to be a Boomer and too old to be an X-er. I guess that makes me the middle child?

 

[gauss]

Born in 1963, I am technically a "younger boomer" but I feel more like a Gen-Ex. This is because how I originally heard the definition of a "boomer" back in the 1980s. A "boomer" referred to the post-war baby boom which began after WWII ended. The soldiers came back from the Europe and Asia and got married and had lots of kids. But my dad was not old enough to have served in WWII, so I never considered myself a "boomer" whose dad was a WWII veteran. This makes me a Gen-Exer, like my younger brother who was born in 1968.

I am an early Gen-X er but feel that I relate more to the boomers.

I think there was a significant change in the culture of the US that started in the early 1980s. Perhaps this is why I don't identify so much with the rest of the Gen-Xers as my formative years were in the late 60's-70's.

-gauss

 

[scrabbler1]

+1. Another '63er here. Being called a boomer drives me crazy. I can identify closer to the late 60s set than the late 50s set. Too much happened in our experience that we were left out of (Vietnam War -- we just missed the draft, and I'm NOT complaining, for example).

Yup. To me, the boomers are the ones who protested the Vietnam War, were part of the civil rights movement, were old enough to be shaken by the deaths of JFK, RFK, and MLK, and remember a man on the moon for the first time. Those all happened in the 1960s. Except for barely remembering the man on the moon, I have no real knowledge of most of the others except for the tail end of the Vietnam War into the early 1970s (and I was hardly old enough to ever get drafted, that ended in 1973 when I was 10).

My more formative years were in the 1970s which included the women's movement, Watergate, the energy crisis, stagflation, our Bicentennial, and the Iran hostage crisis. We older Gen-Exers grew up with those things.

 

[Which Roger]

I was born in 1962. As evidence that this was at the end of the boom, my class was the first in the history of my high school that didn't need to share a locker, and my grade school and middle school both closed within a couple years after I left them.

Like others have commented, I was aware of most of what was happening in the late 60s and early 70s, but was just a kid and wasn't really a part of any of those things that seem to define the boomer generation.

On the other hand, Kurt Cobain is the defining symbol of Gen X, and I identify even less than him that I do with flower power, vietnam, etc.

So I feel like I am really in no-mans land when it comes to fitting in to a generation.

 

[JoeWras]

On the other hand, Kurt Cobain is the defining symbol of Gen X, and I identify even less than him that I do with flower power, vietnam, etc.

But we have Wham! and Madonna.

 

[Lsbcal]

The Mad Men TV series covers adults who came of age in the 1950's. The series hero Don Draper fought in the Korean War and then went on to be an advertising man on Madison Avenue. That's not my generation (born 1948) but it was interesting to see how the world might have looked to those who were confronted by the discordance of the Vietnam War era, the higher divorce rate, and the 1960's racial tensions when in their 30's or early 40's.

 

[LoneAspen]

But we have Wham! and Madonna.

As cheesy a decade as it was, I loved the 80's, especially the music.

Who can forget Kajagoogoo with "Too Shy"

 

[unclemick]

As a child I remember 1949 A Christmas Story and being consumed with lust and longing until I finally did get my Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.

There were a few other events in my 71 years 1943-2014 I vaguely noticed in passing.

heh heh heh - Yes I too almost put my eye out!

 

[imoldernu]

"A Christmas Story" ... yeah... I lived it too... BB gun and especially the flat tire on our 38 Oldsmobile. War years, and no tire tubes available... All of our tires had anywhere from 2 to 5 or more patches, and I did help with the jack. The furnace was coal, except we could only afford "coke", and my dad would also mumble and groan about having to clean out the grates when we had a "clinker".

Gordon Annon had a Red Ryder Gun, but we couldn't afford that, so I had a generic Daisy. He also had a Roy Rogers cowboy hat, and I had to make do with the old fashioned Hopalong Cassidy "roundtop" hat.

BTW... as to the "Generation" thingy... I had to poke around to find a chart where I could be a GI, and not "silent"...

 

[Texconsin]

"People try to put us down...talkin' 'bout my generation."

"Hope I die before I get old." (too late; I'm there)

 

[LoneAspen]

The furnace was coal, except we could only afford "coke", and my dad would also mumble and groan about having to clean out the grates when we had a "clinker".

I could Google it, but it would be more interesting reading about it from somebody who knows it firsthand...

What's a "clinker" ?

 

[JoeWras]

I could Google it, but it would be more interesting reading about it from somebody who knows it firsthand...

What's a "clinker" ?

In short, it is a useless lump of something, like slag, rock or dirt, instead of coal that burns. It either comes in the load or forms up from little bits that aggregate from contaminated lumps. It can foul up the works.

 

[mickeyd]

As a child I remember 1949 A Christmas Story and being consumed with lust and longing until I finally did get my Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.

There were a few other events in my 71 years 1943-2014 I vaguely noticed in passing.

heh heh heh - Yes I too almost put my eye out!

My Mom was always afraid that I would surely "put someone's eye out" so I could never have a BB gun. Santa did bring me a 25# bow and a dozen steel tipped arrows however when I was in the 6th grade or so. I did not dare question Santa's wisdom as I preferred the bow to the gun anyway.

 

[marko]

As a child I remember 1949 A Christmas Story and being consumed with lust and longing until I finally did get my Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.



heh heh heh - Yes I too almost put my eye out!

I got a Daisy BB gun when I was about 12.

The next day, we went down to the basement and I asked my brother to shoot me...I wanted to see if it hurt. He shot me right in the chest from about 10 feet away; I only had a pajama shirt....oh yeah!!! it hurt alright! What an idiot I was!! Lucky he didn't aim for my face.

And of course, there was the "don't tell mom" aspect as well.

 

[Walt34]

My Mom was always afraid that I would surely "put someone's eye out" so I could never have a BB gun.

Same here, Mom was afraid (probably justifiably so) of what I'd do with it. So the best I could do was a wrist rocket slingshot (I think that's what they were called) and steel ball bearings. I did enough damage with that.

 

[Texconsin]

As a child I remember 1949 A Christmas Story and being consumed with lust and longing until I finally did get my Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.

There were a few other events in my 71 years 1943-2014 I vaguely noticed in passing.

heh heh heh - Yes I too almost put my eye out!

My brother (with my BB gun) missed a kid's eye by a fraction of an inch and the BB went behind the kid's eyeball. I saw and heard the whole thing: "Don't move or I'll shoot!" Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

I don't know how much came from the homeowner's insurance policy and how much from my Dad's bank account, as it was swept under the family rug, covered by the family code of silence. The funny thing was that my brother was the dull, good kid and I was the black sheep...and I never shot anybody.

 

[Sea Kayaker]

I was born in '72... Generation X here... definitely the coolest sounding of all the current generations.

 

[Retch The Grate]

I was born in '72... Generation X here... definitely the coolest sounding of all the current generations.

Same year for me. And yes, we win on generation name clearly. Perhaps I will reread my copy of Coupland's novel now...

Interestingly, the novel notes on the inside of the cover say: "Finally... a frighteningly hilarious, voraciously readable subtle to the generation born in the late 1950s and 1960--a camera shy, suspiciously hushed generation known vaguely up to now as twentysomething."

 

[imoldernu]

I never gave it a thought that anyone might not know what a clinker was...

A little more here than meets the eye. It also occurred to me that people might not know what "coke" is.... We grew up with it, and here's the story.

We lived in Pawtucket RI, and our kitchen "gas stoves" and some furnaces were powered by manufactured gas. Here's a page that explains manufactured gas, with some pictures of the "Blackstone Valley Gas and Electric Company"... which we could see from the 4th floor of our High School.

MANUFACTURED GAS PLANTS - Tidewater Site, Pawtucket, RI

The gas that came to our homes was extracted in a heat process, from coal. After the gas was extracted from the coal, the chunks of coal became porous. These "rocks" were called coke, and still could be burned in home furnaces.
The coke was hard to burn, and required periodic stoking to keep it burning. When the coke "rocks" didn't burn through,and turn into ashes, the pieces that were left, were called clinkers... The furnaces had moveable grates that had to be shaken with a large handle. The ashes went into the bottom of the furnace, to be taken out with a shovel, and spread out in the dirt driveway alongside the house. When the solid "rock" that didn't burn, bounced around in the grates, it would "clink".

Something more that you didn't need to know: We had a choice of what to burn in our coal furnaces. The best coal was called "Blue Coal" The most expensive and hottest burning coal. Next was Anthracite, which was regular coal, and the people like us, who couldn't afford either, bought "Coke"... the least expensive.

My dad worked nights, before he left for work, he would "bank" the furnace... meaning he would fill the burner with fresh coal... In the early AM when he came home from the mill, he would empty the ashes... If there was a clinker, it had to be removed by shaking, breaking or hammering with a poker. Not easy, resulting in the kind of language seen in "A Christmas Story"... My dad never swore at all. The only bad word he ever used was "little bugger" and I'm quite sure he never knew what it meant.

Fond memories...

 

[EastWest Gal]

West Coast late boomer here. We had a gas furnace. Knew about coke when learning about oil refining in organic chemistry in college, as well as from my dad. Never knew it was used as a cheaper version of coal (so to speak) My parents were teenagers during WWII, but waited to have kids, so we fell into the boomer category. I've seen other polls defining baby boomers as being born before 1961, but this poll puts them in a different category.

I'm old enough to remember the 1968 assassinations, not to mention the riots that caused my dad to go a different way to get to work to avoid them. I remember watching the moon landing on TV. So cool that it happened in the summer. I remember it especially because it was my cat's birthday.

 

[jon-nyc]

I never gave it a thought that anyone might not know what a clinker was...

A little more here than meets the eye. It also occurred to me that people might not know what "coke" is.... We grew up with it, and here's the story.

We lived in Pawtucket RI, and our kitchen "gas stoves" and some furnaces were powered by manufactured gas. Here's a page that explains manufactured gas, with some pictures of the "Blackstone Valley Gas and Electric Company"... which we could see from the 4th floor of our High School.

MANUFACTURED GAS PLANTS - Tidewater Site, Pawtucket, RI

The gas that came to our homes was extracted in a heat process, from coal. After the gas was extracted from the coal, the chunks of coal became porous. These "rocks" were called coke, and still could be burned in home furnaces.
The coke was hard to burn, and required periodic stoking to keep it burning. When the coke "rocks" didn't burn through,and turn into ashes, the pieces that were left, were called clinkers... The furnaces had moveable grates that had to be shaken with a large handle. The ashes went into the bottom of the furnace, to be taken out with a shovel, and spread out in the dirt driveway alongside the house. When the solid "rock" that didn't burn, bounced around in the grates, it would "clink".

Something more that you didn't need to know: We had a choice of what to burn in our coal furnaces. The best coal was called "Blue Coal" The most expensive and hottest burning coal. Next was Anthracite, which was regular coal, and the people like us, who couldn't afford either, bought "Coke"... the least expensive.

My dad worked nights, before he left for work, he would "bank" the furnace... meaning he would fill the burner with fresh coal... In the early AM when he came home from the mill, he would empty the ashes... If there was a clinker, it had to be removed by shaking, breaking or hammering with a poker. Not easy, resulting in the kind of language seen in "A Christmas Story"... My dad never swore at all. The only bad word he ever used was "little bugger" and I'm quite sure he never knew what it meant.

Fond memories...

Great story, and very educational. Thanks for sharing it.

 

[HFWR]

We had BB guns, and bows, and even a Marlin .22 bolt-action rifle, a prize for selling the requisite amount of Christmas cards...

No one lost an eye, though I was shot in the kneecap once with a CO2 BB pistol. Yep, it hurt...


Sent from my iCouch using Early Retirement Forum

 

[JoeWras]

I never gave it a thought that anyone might not know what a clinker was...

A little more here than meets the eye. It also occurred to me that people might not know what "coke" is.... We grew up with it, and here's the story.

Grew up in Chicago, and one of the first "complicated" things I remember reading was the envelope in the mail that said: "People's gas, light and coke company".

Me: "Mom, why do we get Coke with our gas bill?"
Mom: "Let me tell you what coke is..."

There still was a lot of coal in Chicago up to the early 70s. We had gas, but the neighbor's 6 flats had coal. 1/4 of the basement was a coal room. The trucks opened trap doors which they dumped the coal right in. Fun to watch.

But MORE fun was going down to the boiler room (only under supervision from my friend's dad) and watching him bank and clear clinkers. "Bank" in this case meant piling a mound of coal at the business end of a long auger, into the coal pile.

It was awesome! Awesome! I think things like this helped drive me to a technical career. The automatic auger would pull the banked coal right into the boiler. The whole thing was extremely dangerous for a child, hence why we could only go there under supervision. You could lose and arm or leg. We occasionally would help pile at the top of the auger, especially if there was a "cavern" trying to develop.

All in all, very cool. It wasn't long though, that it all got converted to gas. The coal rooms then became play rooms. I shudder slightly at that thought, but I think they hosed down the dust. The walls were still black.

 

[JoeWras]

You guys bring up some other things we late boomer, early Xers miss:

- Our bb guns were dumbed down. Most had little springs in them. I think the big pump actions still existed, it was just that Mom would make sure to buy the wimpy one.

- Fireworks. Well on their way to being illegal many places. I drooled at the stories dad and uncles had about their cherry bombs.

- Legal drinking. Just missed that legal 18 year old window in my state.