For Thursday, July 12, 2001                                                               Drummer Column, Gibbs, 742 words

 

Decades of teens (part 1)

 

 

     So much has changed over the decades in our dealings with teenagers that I'm not sure where we're headed, but would sure like to know. I've taken broad shots and glossy glimpses at the issue of a teenager's place in American society, but with the summer to think, I've decided to dig in deeper, and give the subject some continued-next-week style analysis.

     I will start with the 1950s because that's when I was born, and follow the changes I've seen by decade up to the present. Then I'll make a few predictions about the future and call it a day.

     Kids of the '50s were kind of the kind kind. They had it pretty nice and they treated it so. They were Boomers in a booming Pleasantville economy. They tapped into rock 'n' roll and drove hot cars. A lot was wrong with the world, like war in Korea, but knowledge of it was remote and hard to come by.

     Lots of entertainment infrastructure was built after World War II. Stores catered to returning young soldiers with plenty of loot and new young families. Malt shops, dance halls, skating rinks popped up, and merchants thrived on the revenue from burgers and ice cream. Single-income families were the norm, and most kids got this strange thing known as an allowance.

     Though youthful rebellion is a constant in human development through all ages, during the '50s it was at a low. These kids had heroes for parents. Their dads had defeated Hitler. They had battled evil with bravery and won. Respect was high, and many families had the direct influence of military discipline and a permanent mom to keep behavior in harmony.

     This reverence between generations spilled into the marketplace. Kids had money, freedom, and encouragement to enjoy life because it is precious and fleeting. Merchants catered to veterans' kids in clusters and didn't worry that their furniture and bathrooms would be vandalized. Kids of the '50s generally didn't spray paint the sides of buildings or slash leather booths.

     The '60s began in 1964 with the beginning of our involvement in Viet Nam. Over the next ten years, $140 billion dollars were drained from urban renewal and spent on destruction of life and property. The prosperity of the past leveled off and the stock market traded flat for 20 years. We lost 58,000 kids to bloody death in the terrifying jungles of a foreign land.

     The Viet Nam War differed from previous wars. It was televised. It exploded into living rooms through new color TVs. We saw the blood. On closer inspection, many failed to see the evil on the other side. There was no Hitler, no gas chamber, no Pearl Harbor.

     The government's stance was that we were containing godless communism. Cold-war politicians tried to paint the battles in the Gulf of Tonkin as another Pearl Harbor. Still, our purpose for fighting became filled with doubt and distrust.

     Were we being sent to slaughter by our elders? This question rose and stuck in the minds of young Americans. The aura of heroism faded and youthful rebellion increased. War resisters were called cowards by veterans of WWII, arrested by the government, hosed down by the police, and misunderstood by their parents, many of whom felt blindsided by this rip in our social fabric.

     Local merchants saw declining patronage by young customers, many of whom were drafted or dead. The others preferred to gather outdoors in larger groups, perhaps for safety. The "establishment" and the "generation gap" were born. Teens felt reluctant to support the establishment, and diverted their spending money from burgers and Sno-cones to marijuana and soothing song lyrics. Walls got spray painted; leather seats got slashed. Merchant and youth lost trust and the popular teen spots of the '50s vanished from our nation's cityscapes.

     The '70s gave us the Nixon impeachment, our first major military failure, and a volcanic disruption of values, leadership, and direction. Boomers became young adults and a new, smaller generation of disenfranchised teens grew hair.

     The usual gathering spots were gone, making it difficult for kids to converge and agree on a new identity. Inflation put moms to work. The use of drugs as political statements in the '60s evolved into drug addiction. Families fragmented. Boomers became reluctant to marry. They resisted the trappings of capitalism and failed to grow the economy. Our mom and pop society was turned on its head, and our children inherited the mess.

 

… to be continued