1943 ... The Best of Times !

I'm getting older than I feel. My chronological age far outweighs my mental age. Here are some of the things that were happening in 1943 when I was born, some 66 years ago. First and foremost, none of you were born yet! Life did go on before you arrived on planet earth.

Some interesting (maybe just to me) things include: Angelo Bertelli won the Heisman Trophy at the University of Notre Dame. The Chicago Bears won the championship of the National Football League (Pre-Super Bowl days). The Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup for professional hockey. The University of Wyoming won the NCAA men's basketball championship. The Yankees won the World Series of baseball (no surprise).

The average income of an American household was $2,041; a new car cost $900 (don't know what manufacture); a new house cost $3600 (don't know the sq. footage); a loaf of bread sold for 10 cents; a gallon of regular gas cost 15 cents; a gallon of milk was 62 cents; gold sold for $35 per ounce; silver sold for 71 cents per ounce; and the DOW Jones Average hit a high of 134 points.

The President of the United States was Franklin Roosevelt. The life expectancy was 62.9 years (so I've outlived that expectancy by now, I'm 66).

Joe Namath, the football player from the University of Alabama and later pro player for the N.Y. Jets was born on May 31. Chevy Chase the comedic entertainer was born October 8. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was born on July 26. There were 11 others but I doubt you would recognize their names.

Nostalgia news reports include that 150,000 German Troops surrender in North Africa. The German Army surrenders at Stalingrad. Mussolini deposed and Italy surrenders to General Eisenhower, Japan withdraws all troops from Guadalcanal, and The Pentagon completed the worlds largest office building at a completed cost of $64 million dollars (a huge some in that day and time).

Roosevelt calls for a $100 Billion Dollar Military Budget (I think the current budget proposal for 2010 and 2011 is over 3 Trillion dollars with $850-900 billion going to the defense department).

Canned food and shoes were rationed in the U.S. The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The War Department issued a directive that said no hard liquor for Army personnel. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is named Supreme Commander of the European Forces. One of the most important things a soldier could carry into battle was a box of band-aids.

The best motion picture of the year was Casablanca. The biggest musical hit for the time was a musical named Oklahoma.

A major invention of the year was the drug LSD. It became a hit with many young people in the 1960's and 1970's. (From a song: I took a trip and never left the farm ... even though I think those words were related to sitting on a sack of marijuana seeds.)

Camel and Lucky Strikes were the most popular cigarettes costing 7 cents per pack.

A few more tidbits. No one in my home town had a television. Few had radios. Most read newspapers to get their news from around the country and around the world. It was 1958 before the first television arrived in Oak Grove. Jasper Scott purchased a 7" rectangular black and white television. He was the talk of the town and he was sitting in tall cotton. My family didn't get a TV until I was a junior in High School. I had no transistor radio (equivalent to an ipod these days.) Video games did not exist. Child care centers and kindergarten classes were to be found only in the big cities. I went to the 1st grade when I was 5 years old. No stereo, it was all mono, no CD's or DVD's, but we did have 331/3 rpm albums, 78 rpm albums, and 45 rpm discs. None of them were very portable to lug around. They were flimsly plastic and scratched easily.

But ... I grew up in the best of times. We rode our bikes all over town and never feared of getting molested or kidnapped. We weren't frustrated with so many choices of things to have and buy. If you got one present at Christmas time you were lucky. I knew kids in my home town that didn't get any present. We didn't have 300 cereals to choose from. We had Kool-Aid and that was about it. We had Coke, Pepsi, 7-Up and Root Beer. Maybe 3-4 varieties of snack cakes like Twinkies. The cookie section at the grocery store took up about 2 sections of shelves on an aisle. Pet food was even less of a selection. You could bring home 2-3 sacks full of groceries for $5-$7, meat included.

No computers, no smart phones, no iPhones, no Blackberrys, no i-pods. We just played with each other out in the front or back yard and entertained ourselves.

Ahhhhhhh ..... those were the best of times!