The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Greetings ta ever one in western Illinois and all readers of "The Quill".
Last week's Barnyard column covered "Days gone by'. Fer this week's column, I will appropriately follow up with "The Silent Generation'.
Children Of The Greatest Generation
Born in the 1930s and early 40s, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the Silent Generation.
We are the smallest number of children born since the early 1900s. We are the "last ones."
We are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
We are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.
We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.
We we're raised as children to be seen and not heard.
We were taught ta clean up our plates (somebody in China was starving).
We were raised by parents who practiced "spare the rod and spoil the child).
We saved Christmas present wrappings and ribbons fer follow'n Christmas'.
We were educated in the country in one room schools.
We had no school lunch programs (our lunch was packed in a bucket or sack).
We traded lunches at school.
Our unwed teachers stay'in in someones home with their family.
We walked and/or rode a pony to country schools.
We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available.
We milked cows "by hand.'
We can remember milk being delivered to our house early in the morning and placed in the milk box on the porch.
We saw the advent of electricity on the farm.
We are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.
We saw the "boys' home from the war, build their little houses.
We are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, we imagined what we heard on the radio.
As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood "playing outside."
We did play outside, and we did play on our own.
You were given caster oil when sick and given a poultice around yer neck and chest when ya had a cold or sore throat.
There was no Little League.
There was no city playground for kids.
The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like.
On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave us newsreels of the war sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.
"Outhouses" were common on the farm.
Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines of three or more) and hung on the wall.
Computers were called calculators, they only added and were hand cranked; typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon.
The internet and Google were words that did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on our table radio in the evening by Gabriel Heatter.
We are the last group who had to find out for ourselves.
As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth.
The devout went ta church regularly and the country church was well attended.
The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.
VA loans fanned a housing boom.
Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans put factories to work.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility.
Young folk left the farm in large numbers. It was hard ta keep them down on the farm once they saw the bright city lights.
The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.
The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands of stations.
Our parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
We weren't neglected, but we weren't today's all-consuming family focus.
Air conditioning was unheard of on the farm.
They were glad we played by ourselves until darkness settled in.
They were busy discovering the post war world.
We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we were welcomed.
We enjoyed a luxury; we felt secure in our future.
Depression poverty was deep rooted.
Polio was still a crippler.
The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 50s and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks for Air-Raid training.
Russia built the Iron Curtain and China became Red China.
Eisenhower sent the first "advisers' to Vietnam.
Castro set up camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.
We are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
We came of age in the 40s and 50s. The war was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.
Only our generation can remember both a time of great war, and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. We have lived through both.
We grew up at the best possibe time, a time when the world was getting better, not worse.
We are the Silent Generation
"The Last Ones"
We had "summer kitchens", cob houses, and ice houses.
Most folk on the farm had livestock and poultry.
We learned how ta work at an early age.
Hockey was a tin can, limb of a tree, played on a frozen crick.
Fish'n was with a cane pole and night crawler.
Neighbors worked together and ya knew ever one in yer neighborhood.
Folks ate in their homes together as a family.
Wal-mart and McDonalds had not been invented along with other mega stores. The country store was common.
Soda pop was a rare luxury.
Deodorant was unheard of on the farm.
Baths were used for Saturday night and the whole family used the same water.
Farm tractors had no cabs and the loud noise damaged our ears result'n in many of us that are left, wearing hearing aids.
Health care was limited fer the most part ta home remedies.
There were no four wheel drive pick up trucks down on the farm, in fact only a few had pick up trucks at all.
No utility 4 wheel "rangers" and "mules" and no snowmobiles.
As pick up trucks came to the farm, name and address was required printed on both doors.
Hunting squirrels, rabbits, pheasants, and turtles was provision fer the family.
We experienced the last "hold overs' of threshing and horses utilized on the farm.
Home butcher'n and big gardens were common. Canning was a family affair.
Snow on the roads were scooped by hand.
We went to town on Friday nights ta do our "trade'n'.
Schools and churches didn't shut down fer the weather.
We experienced "Blue laws.'
More than 99% of us are either retired or deceased and we feel privileged ta have "lived in the best of times'!
And then there was the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952.
It appears that some of the U.S. Judges failed to read this law before ruling on Trump's Executive orders. It is a shame that the President's staff seems to have missed it also.
Wouldn't it have been interesting if, at some point during the presidential campaign, if one of the candidates asked "Oh, by the way, has anyone in Washington, D.C., ever heard of the McCarran-Walter Act Of 1952?" I did not know of this act until recently, but it has been a law for almost 65 years.
Here are the historic facts that would seem to indicate that many, if not most, of the people we elect to work for us in Washington do not have the slightest idea of what laws already exist in OUR country.
After several terrorist incidents were carried out in the United States, Donald Trump was severely criticized for suggesting that the U.S. should limit or temporarily suspend the immigration of certain ethnic groups, nationalities and even people of certain religions. The criticisms condemned such a suggestion as, among other things, being un-American, dumb, stupid, reckless, dangerous and racist.
Congressmen and senators swore that they would never allow such legislation, and our former president called such a prohibition on immigration unconstitutional. As Gomer Pyle would say, "Well, surprise, surprise!"
It seems that the selective immigration ban is already law and has been applied on several occasions. Known as the McCarran-Walter Act, the immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allows for the "suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by the president, whenever the president finds that the entry of aliens or any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States."
"The president may, by proclamation and for such a period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens, immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose any restrictions on the entry of aliens he may deem to be appropriate." Who was president when this was passed? Democrat Harry Truman.
Who do you suppose last used this process? Democrat Jimmy Carter, no less than 37 years ago, in 1979 to keep Iranians out of the United States. But Carter actually did more. He made all Iranian students, already in the United States, check in with the government. And then he deported a bunch of them. Seven thousand were found in violation of their visas and a total of 15,000 Iranians were forced to leave the USA in 1979.
So, what do you say about all of the criticism that Donald Trump received from the Democratic senators, representatives and the Obama Administration?
Additionally, it is important to note that the McCarren-Walter Act also requires that an "applicant for immigration must be of good moral character and in agreement with the principles of our Constitution." Therefore, one could surmise that since the Quran forbids Muslims to swear allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, technically, all Muslims should or could be refused immigration to our country.
When pro-illegal immigration advocates say our immigration laws are broken, perhaps they would find that they are intact and encompassing if they would actually "read" and "use them"! Authenticated at: (look under 1952. http//library.uwb.edu/Static/USimmigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1952
That's all fer this week's column. Hope ya enjoyed it and it stimulated some thought. I'm sure the boys will discuss it some.
Hope'n ta see ya in the church of yer choice this week.
Wherever ya are, whatever ya be a do'n, "BE A GOOD ONE!'
Keep on Smile'n
Catch ya later
Barnyard Bruke