Boomers

It wasn't easy.

Boomers are a scapegoat, sometimes deservedly, but a lot of what people write about them isn’t true. I constantly hear claims that Boomers had it easy, that they went out to eat every weekend and blew through money. This wasn’t true. My dad and all my friends’ dads worked in factories. Those were awful jobs full of loud noises and soot.

(My dad at his factory job, sometime in the 1980s.)

When the factory closed, that was it. You lost your job. There weren’t other factories around, and in that pre-Internet world you couldn’t just rebrand your life at 35. Options and information were limited.

Mortgage rates were 10-20% in the late 70s to early 80s.

My great-uncle was drafted into the Vietnam War. Some of my friends’ and classmates’ dads would have PTSD nightmares. They didn’t get a post-9/11 GI Bill or great benefits either. Boomers graduated high school, still boys, were sent as cannon fodder, returned home forever changed, and were told to figure it out on their own.

Boomer white men were actively discriminated against in hiring. Scott Adams tells the story in his book of being denied a promotion for being a white man. Adam Corolla was told to not even bother applying for the fire department. My dad was denied a state police job for being a white man.

My friends and classmates who had better-off (financially) parents were hardly living in largess. The “Schwan’s Man” would deliver food to their houses, that was a luxury, but the food wasn’t that much better than the processed frozen pizza and fish sticks you could get at the grocery store.

I understand the frustration (and sometimes rage) men have. But they also need to live in reality.

You drove a beater car. (This is harder now due to Cash for Clunkers removing used cars from the road.) For kids, this was embarrassing to be dropped off at school in a car that would backfire like a gunshot went off and had rusted-out doors.

Even the “rich” Boomers didn’t drive cars as nice as people have today. A car payment was seen as a necessary evil. Swapping out leases or getting a new car every 5 years was unheard of.

You drank Folgers coffee because that’s what the grocery store had. I remember my dad being thrilled when the local grocery stores finally got Chock full o’Nuts, which was apparently a huge step up. There wasn’t a debate over “Should you get $5 coffee,” because no such thing existed. Gas station coffee was nasty, that’s why they invented flavored coffee creamers.

Nobody door-dashed. You cooked your own food. Lots of rice, beans, crockpot / stewed meat, and those awful “fish sticks.” You rotated the same meals because the food wasn’t that good and you didn’t the options you take for granted today. Going out to eat usually meant fast food or Pizza Hut. You’d make one large pizza stretch out to a family of 5 or 6.

You had basic cable, with maybe HBO as an add-on.

There was no meaningful access to information, so if you were a bit different or had higher aspirations, you would have found life constricting.

I wouldn’t trade places with a Boomer, except maybe the lucky ones born in California, who saw their houses increase 300-1,000% and consider themselves geniuses for living by the ocean.

Zoomers call everyone over 35 a Boomer. As a Gen Xer, maybe I was on the last plane out of Saigon and am out of touch?

I don’t think so. There is way more opportunity for enterprising men today than in any other generation. You couldn’t map out your life back in the Boomers’ day. You were born into a place and followed a predictable path. If your parents had money, maybe you’d go to college. If you were working class, you joined the Army to pay for college, or adventure. Absent that, you graduated high school and tried finding a job.

Life has always been hard, and sometimes sucked, and I am not always optimistic about the work my kids are growing up in (hence why I’m politically engaged rather than sitting on a beach listening to Jimmy Buffett), but I’m glad to not have been born into the Boomer’s era.