Can anyone recommend a good introductory book on radio?

Not like "News Radio", or radio disk jockeys or the like.  I mean the technicalities of radio. What sort of antennas go with what and the like.

July 14, 1920 Summer camp.

A few of the boys for summer school, arriving at Naval Training Station, Naval Base, Hampton Roads, Va., July 14, 1920

Youth summer camps are something I'm wholly unfamiliar with as I never went to one as a kid, and I never knew any other kids who did either.

How about you?

Vintage Coffee Grinder

Doggone this thing is cool.

Vintage coffee grinder.

Was this a common design?

How long do you keep your vehicles?

I just hate changing vehicles.

This topic comes up as somebody I know well, who must have a truck due to his line of work, has taken up the practice of trading them in when they reach about 75,000 miles.  This same practice was the one that the state and Federal government used to employ with its motor vehicle fleet and maybe it still is.

It isn't the one I employ at all.  Indeed, in the back of my mind, with at least my last two trucks, including the one I currently own, I've more or less assumed that I'd keep them as long as they ran decently.  My current one I seriously hope to keep until: 1) I can no longer drive due to the passage of time or the passage of me; or 2) electric vehicles are the norm.

Everyone in my family says this is nuts. At age 56, they maintains, I'll long outlive an 07 truck and will end up replacing it at the point at which its junk.  Indeed, they all maintain that I'll soon be putting more into the vehicle than buying a new one would cost.

Well, not yet, and on top of it I don't think that argument makes sense given the modern price of trucks, which has hit the super high level.

Indeed, that's part of my difficulty in grasping this argument.  When my father drove his trucks into the ground it probably did make sense as they never got up to 100,000 miles before they were wrecks and during their last few years they were in the shop all the time. But modern vehicles really last.  My 96 Ford F250 diesel made it up to 175,000 miles before it started to have engine problems, which it sadly did, and it started to rust away.  I'd never even had the brakes worked on the entire time I'd had it.  The current 07 Dodge 3500 is going strong at 175,000 miles.  For that matter, the 97 Dodge 1500 is at about 150,000 miles.

On Monday here I posted an item about diet, which I realize has nothing to do with vehicles, but one thing it did was to link in a post to a blog which referenced buying less stuff.  It didn't mention it in this context, but I note that as I'm continually amazed by the degree to which people are so ready to buy trucks here which are extremely expensive and yet they don't really expect them to last long term.  As most of them are purchased by way of loans, and therefore are even more expensive than the negotiated price, that makes them a major and continual expense that people seem willing to engage in.  I guess my thought, perhaps naive, is that if I spend that kind of money on a thing, it ought to really, really, last.

Of course, vehicles are rolling stock and they do not last forever.  They do wear out, or they can wear out.  But well maintained, they don't have to wear out that quickly.  The logic of frequently trading in is that way they retain their value, but the counter to that is that if you do that and are paying with a loan, you are always paying on loans.

Additionally, I never have a 4x4 that I don't end up customizing in some way, with that usually being the addition of a heavy bumper or grill guard and a tool box.  Now that I know what the situation is with differentials, in order to really have a truck outfitted the way that I want it to be, I need to swap out the open rear differential with a torsen differential and put lockers on the front axle.  A person can't, however, buy a long bed 4x4 pickup with these features, or at least not a diesel American made one.  Let alone one that is also a crew cab, as  is.  You have to add the differentials yourself.  Sinking brand new differentials into a brand new truck would be silly, let alone expensive, and for that matter new tool boxes and bumpers aren't either.

All in all, I guess, I don't get it.  I don't understand why people don't get trucks or cars of the type they really really want, and just keep them.

Did you work January 1?

Laborer working a press, January 1, 1920.

Yesterday was a Wednesday, but I didn't post a Mid Week At Work item because it was a holiday.

But I did go out to see if I could find a parts store open so that I could buy oil to change the oil in my truck, as it was overdue.  I found that all the chain stores were open, so I spent my day doing that.

When I say I spent my day, I mean it.  I haven't changed my own oil for awhile so I couldn't find a tool I needed and had to go to the store twice.  And it was a cold day and the 3500 won't fit all the way into the garage, so it was a project.  I bought a fuel filter too, but I'd forgotten that getting to the 3500's fuel filter is nearly impossible, so I didn't change that, even though I have the water in the fuel system light on.  Chances are a I have a loose connection.

Anyhow, so I spent the day doing something that I thought would take me just half a day, which was a disappointment, but probably not as much of one for people who worked a full day.

Did you work?

A request of our readers who use Chrome.

If you use Google Chrome on your browser, is this site working well for you?

If it isn't, can you indicate what any problems you are experiencing are?

The Clearance Dilemma

The 2007 Dodge in the high country.

I have a 2007 Dodge 3500 4x4.  It's the crewcab with a long box.

It's a great truck and I have no intention of trading it away any time soon, even though my wife feels that I should be trading it in, and even though there are a few valid reasons to do so.*  Indeed, I have no intention whatsoever of getting any new vehicles in the future whatsoever.

It's been a great truck.  It's had a few problems over the years, as they all do, but by and large, as a vehicle with 180,000 miles now on it, it's been remarkably trouble free.  As I'll post here shortly in another thread, it's also been a very safe one.  It preforms very well, in that context, on highway ice and snow, and I've had it on some dicey roads to say the least.  There are things that it doesn't compare favorably to in regard to newer trucks, but there are things it compares more favorably with, in my view.  For one thing, it has a standard transmission, something which is now a thing of the past with American full sized trucks. Automatics, the favorite of urban dwellers, have taken over.

But there's one thing.

As a very long, and stock, vehicle, it doesn't have the kind of clearance that I'd like.

Another 07 in a parking lot, photographed from the cab of my 07.  This one has about the perfect tire size in my view, and is leveled (not lifted) about 2".  It looks great and has better clearance than mine.  Of course, he isn't towing any stock trailers either.  I wish I'd run up and taken a photo of the tire size.

I've whacked rocks with the front differential and slightly dented it.  And I've high centered it on snow nearly annually.

I'm tempted to try to boost the clearance, and that would mean larger tires.

It came equipped with 265/70R17s, and I have an off road (that will also do highway) example of that on now.  That tire is 31.5" in width.  It will, as is, go up one tire size. Which gives you an additional .5" of clearance.

That's right.  One half inch.

Hmmm.

High lift 1983 Dodge crewcab on a used car lot. Didn't this lift go a bit too far?  But It looks like it does have good clearance.  It also has a full sized crew cab, something that isn't the case with the 07 for some odd reason. The box here appears to be a short box, which isn't what I'd want.  The tires on this truck are likely 35" tires, maybe 40".

On the other hand, there are off road tires that will fit 17" rims that are 35" in width. And that would give me an extra 1.5".  That doesn't sound like a lot, but it may be.

40" tires are also made for 17" rims, but I'm not going there.

The father of all modern 4x4 trucks, the first generation of the Dodge WC truck from World War Two.  These had great clearance, but this 1/2 ton model was also too high and prone to roll overs.

I'm tempted to go with 35" tires, but that means the tread width is also wider, which I really don't want if it starts to impact performance.  I like narrower tires over wider.  I don't want to float on wet roads or mud.

And some people claim that if you put 35" on, you need to lift the truck or put on a leveling kit. Others claim that isn't so.

Second model of World War Two WC 4x4 truck. This 3/4 ton truck was about perfect.

What would also be the case is that it would impact the gear ratio by making it higher.  My gearing is the lowest possible but that would effectively make both 5th and 6th gears overdrives.  A person can adjust this, I think, by changing the ring and pinion gears in the axles, but I hadn't planned on really doing that.

And of course it might mean that I'd need to lift it as well, or a leveling kit that also lifted the rear.  Modern trucks are canted forward on purpose, for fuel efficiency purposes, and a leveling  kit does just that.  It lifts, probably about 2" in this case, which would be fine, but that also means if you have a trailer on the rear, it's going to have its nose in the air.

All of which leads me to believe that maybe no more than one tire size bigger, if that.

Which really won't achieve much.

The two Dodges.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*It's starting to get some rust over a wheel well.  It has a crack on the body of the box.  My brother in law, who is a diesel mechanic by training, warns me that sooner or later it'll need some major engine work, as old as it is.  And it needs a selection of odds and ends repairs to really get it back into ship shape if I'm keeping it, and that's money into an old truck.

Keeping the old ones. . .

I don't like to trade vehicles.*

The 97 Dodge.

Indeed, I sometimes wish I'd found a truck just like I wanted, a one ton 4x4, back when I first bought my first new truck, in 1990, and kept it.

That wasn't realistic at the time.  I did get, however, at that time a very nice, in my view, 6 cyl Ford F150 4x4. I loved it.  I traded that away a few years later when my son was just a baby to get a F250 diesel 4x4, a great truck, that I loved.  I still miss it.  That one went in 2006, however, when a single cab truck would just not work anymore for a family of four.  At the time, it had 165,000 miles on it and was just starting to have a few problems.

Its replacement was a 2007 Dodge D3500, a one tone 4x4 crew cab.  I still have it.  It now has 168,000 miles on it, which shows I guess that I drive about 160,000+ miles over a decade, quite a bit by the standards of some, and not so much by the standards of others.

Seven or so years ago the D3500 was supplemented here by the purchase of an even older vehicle, a 1997 Dodge 1500.  My son was getting near driving age at the time and we needed something so we bought that.  He's still driving it.  It has 155,000 miles on it.  And we added a 1997 Jeep some years ago.  That's my daily driver.  It had a lot of miles on it when I bought it and now it's at 165,000.  And my daughter is driving a ten year old Jeep Liberty.

And then there's the 1962 Dodge. We'll forgo discussing that.

Only my wife's car is newish.  She's not a fan of keeping the old ones.

Anyhow, I hate replacing vehicles which means that I likely keep them longer than I should.

In my heart of hearts, I just can't really grasp why a vehicle ought not to basically last forever.  I know that's not realistic for something that's a collection of moving parts, but that's sort of how I view it.  I figure that you get the vehicle you like, and then you keep it.

That's somewhat ironic, truly, for a person who has owned as many vehicles as I have.  I should know better.  My first vehicle was a 1958 M58A1, a surplus Army Jeep, that I bought at age 15 and had only a little into my legal driving years.  It seemed old when I got it, and was in mixed condition, but in thinking back now I own vehicles that are older now than it was when I got it.

After that I had a 1974 Ford F100, then a 1974 Dodge D150, followed by the addition of the 62, which I still own, and a 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe Sedan.  Then I added a 1974 Toyota four door Landcruiser.  The Landcruiser died in 1990 and I bought the brand new Ford F150, and then the F250, and then the D3500. In the mix, at the time I owned the F150, was a 1946 Jeep CJ2A and a Mercury Comet which I inherited.

I've omitted the things that I've owned with my wife, as those vehicles were largely hers.  If I add them in, there was the Nissan Pathfinder (a great 4x4), a Chevrolet Suburban and then a Tahoe.

Of everything listed, only the Pathfinder, the F150 and the D3500 were new when purchased. The Suburban and Tahoe were nearly new.

If it had been up to me, I would not have traded off the Pathfinder, which was a 1993 or 94.  And then, if it had been up to me, we would not have traded the Suburban.  I didn't like the Suburban, but I never grasped why we traded it for a vehicle that was similar to what we already had.

Of the vehicles listed, of course, most are now long gone.  The Comet went to the person I bought the F250 from, along with the F150.  The Chevy I sold when I inherited the Comet.  The F250 I sold when I bought the D3500, and it was having rust and engine problems at the time.  With high milage, the D3500 has done much better.

Which brings me to my current post.

The 97 1500 has always had a few problems with it, the biggest one being that it's been anemic.  It's equipped with the 318 engine, or what I call the 318,and its just never had a lot of go.  Recently it's been having a lot of problems and we endeavored to find a replacement.

We failed.

The reason we failed is that between my son and I we can't find anything that really fits the bill as well as it does and, moreover, which is affordable.  I can't bring myself at age 56 to buy a vehicle that's as expensive as they currently are.  They've just gotten enormously expensive.  That's why my Jeep is a 97.  When I decided I'd like to try a Jeep again, the new ones were way out of price range for what I was willing to pay, and most of the used ones were absurdly priced.  The one we found was on a salvage title due to an accident early in its existence, and so it was affordable, the way I define that. And it's been a great 4x4 car.

The replacement for the 97 1500 would have to be a pickup truck and it'd have to be a standard, that latter requirement being one I apply myself to my own vehicles but attempted to dissuade, unsuccessfully, my son from. The only thing we found that looked like a good option, financially, was a fairly new, slightly lifted, F150, but it was an automatic and was therefore rejected by the intended user, even though he'd be using a vehicle (we'd own) that was much newer than anything I drive.

So we determined to fix the 1500.

That's been a really odd experience and I've come to realize that by and large most mechanics now approach old vehicles like this with the concept that you don't want to fully fix them, but rather just maintain them in acceptable condition until they're replaced by something newer.  As a result, certain problems have just lingered for years.

One of those is the odd lack of real guts in the 97  Given as its a 318 I've just attributed it to that, but recently one mechanic said that he'd measured compression and that it was quite low in one cylinder, 70 lbs. That caused us to feel that it had to be replaced, but as we couldn't find anything to replace it with, we then thought of rebuilding or replacing the engine.

It used to be, back when engines gave up around 65,000 miles or so, that there were shops locally that routinely did that. But as one mechanic has explained to me, as engines now push 200,000, that's just not the case any longer.  So the options consistently seemed to be to put in an ordered engine.  My research on that dissuaded me from doing that however.  I did find a local shop that will rebuild them, and does a lot of racing engines, so there is a local option.

But in the meantime as the old truck had a brake problem develop and a scary rattle show up, it went back to the shop and it was determined, by a different mechanic, that the front brakes needed to be worked on and an axle u-joint had gone bad.  That was expensive, so as long as we were looking at rebuilds, I had the shop fix the loose steering as well. This truck has had loose steering for years.  They were reluctant to do it, given that its an old truck, but in explaining that I really wanted them to do it, they did.

And they are of the opinion that the truck really doesn't have low compression but that a leaky air manifold gasket is responsible for the check engine light being on intermittently, so that's being replaced. If they are correct, and they are confident they are, that should be the old truck back into pretty fair shape.

Not that it's been cheap.

In the meantime, the tires on my D3500 are nearly completely shot and I need to replace them. More money.

I've really liked the D3500 but it has a few issues as well.  One is that I've never found the clearance to be really adequate.  I've thought about lifting it slightly with a leveling kit and having a larger set of tires, and perhaps wheels, put on the truck.  Now, if I'm going to do that, I need to do that, or I'll be stuck with the current tire size for years.  As its now old, only cost keeps me from experimenting with it, I suppose.

I also now have rust above a wheel well, and a crack in my box.  Bare minimum I need to do something about the rust if I'm going to keep it.

Which I suppose I will. This is the last year for standard transmission Dodge trucks and I'm not keen on automatics.  And the trucks I have looked at on the lot, and I have looked at some, are gigantically expensive.

I guess on that latter point I can convince myself, therefore, that I'm saving money. Sort of. If they last for years, I guess.

On it all, at age 56, I'm perhaps oddly of the mindset that anything I buy now, or repair now fully, I will have until I die . . . or electric vehicles make them obsolete.  I may be unique that way locally, but I'm pretty convinced that we're in the final generation of combustion engine vehicles right now and in another decade electrics will be coming on really strong.  Indeed, they already are, and only solving battery longevity and recharging rates is really keeping them back. Once that's solved, and it will be, they'll start replacing everything else.  Or at least I'll be surprised if they don't. That's not advocating for anything, it's just guessing.  If I'm wrong, well maybe in a decade I'll be back on the lots looking at the newest diesels.

I'll note that I haven't mentioned the Jeep much in this tale of semi mechanical woe.  I really don't need to.  It has problems now as well,including that the heater is stuck on and I haven't figured that out quite yet, but it's remarkably durable in every way.  And Jeeps, it seems, you just keep rebuilding after they endure the last year's worth of automotive use.

So the perils of keeping and riving old vehicles.  I've often wished that while I was in school I'd taken mechanics classes along with everything else and really knew how really dig into them.  Having said that, one of my brothers in law did just that and he doesn't work on his own often.  Indeed, he doesn't keep the old ones either but trades vehicles off when they are nearly new.

A few queries for the few readers.

Do you drive old ones, and if so why?

Turn your own bolts?

Any experience with lifting, at all, D3500s and changing wheel and tire sizes?

_________________________________________________________________________________

*This draft post was started in 2016 and I never finished it.  That shows both how I really do keep the old ones and, moreover, how old some draft posts are here.  As there have been developments on the automotive front  here, as noted in the post, I finally finished it off.

Is there any good reason to lift a truck?

And yes, I'm serious.

I have a 2007 Dodge.  It's showed up here or on my other blogs in the background fairly frequently.

I've had my 2007 Dodge since 2007.

I love the truck.  It's had its problems, to be sure, but all in all its been a good one.  It has nearly 150,000 miles on it, but with a Cummins diesel engine, it'll last for a long time.  It's not rusting out, it still does good on the highway (although I'm noticing a slight wobble in my steering. . . probably need to get it aligned, it'll tow any kind of trailer with ease.  It's been a good one.

But there's one thing about it that's always been a problem. Every year, during elk season, if I have an elk license, I managed to scrape the undercarriage with a rock or something or I get it high centered.

Now, it's a long truck.

 

And that no doubt explains a lot of this.

My across the street neighbor has a truck of nearly the same vintage which is also a crew cab, but with a short box.  He's put a leveling kit on his and the next biggest set of tires (the biggest that will go on the truck's rims) and it truly looks like it has more clearance.  But then, it's not a long box.

And the factory Dodge Power Wagon (the ones they make now, not the old ones, which are a completely different deal) seem to come with that suspension from the factory, or something like it.

Recent model Power Wagon, with slightly higher suspension and larger tires.

I'm tempted, but is it a bad idea?

Some say go for it, but mostly, in the knowledgeable truck community, the opposite opinion seems to hold sway.  For one thing, larger tires change the gear ratio, by default, some.  For another, however, some warn that this contributes to the dreaded "Death Wobble", about which I know little, but which I wish to avoid.

And then there's the cost.

Opinions?

Youth organizations. Their Rise and (near) Fall, or is that a myth? And, did you join?

Granted, we may now have the single most confusing title for an entry on this site, but then this will be a scrambled and confusing thread. So there.

 Boy Scouts writing home from camp, Hunter's Island, New York.  The one guy behind them looks so old that he could have served in the Mexican War.

Recently, I posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Military preparedness and World War One. Training ...:  Bayonet Drill. At one time the concept of boys and girls "going to camp" was so common that it was kind of a running joke....

As I noted in that post, although it wasn't the main point of the post, at one time Scouting was huge.  Scouting, that is, in the Boy Scouts sense. Girl Scouts, or Girl Guides, too, although we'll get to those in a moment..

And not just the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts (Guides), but also a host of other similar uniformed, and non uniformed youth organizations, most of which came in during the very late 19th to mid 20th Centuries and most of which, we're told (but is it true?) are now in decline.

Well, we track trends and experiences where.  Let's look at this.  It's an interesting topic.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts

And let's start with the Scouts.

 A retired Lord Baden-Powell, dressed in a Scout uniform, with King George,

The Scouts originated due to Lieutenant General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, OM GCMG GCVO.  Powell was a never married British Army officer who rose to prominence in the British Army during the Second Matabele War.  In that war, as a cavalryman, he lead mounted reconnaissance operations and met American adventurer Frederick Russell Burnham DSO.  Burnham was, as noted, from the United States but he fit into a group of Americans who found the concept of adventure in the expanding British Empire to be a huge lure, so after an early life of adventure if the United States he decamped to Africa, ended up in the  British forces there, and ultimately rose to high rank in the British Army, a fairly unusual career.

Now, during that time Burnham met Baden-Powell and taught him a lot about what he'd learned about out back life to Baden-Powell, which the latter then employed in Africa.  It made a deep impression on the British cavalryman who soon came to believe, and deplore the lack of manly outdoor skills possessed by British youth.

The UK was a heavily urbanized country by that time, but we can't help but note that it was surely a bit more agricultural then, as compared to now.  Nonetheless, Baden-Powell was likely observing a real phenomenon.  British youth probably was pretty short on woodcraft and outdoor skills, and hence the Boy Scouts came into being as a means of introducing them to that.  It took off like wildfire, being introduced in the UK in 1908 and crossing the Atlantic in to the United States (1910) and Canada (1909).  As in the UK, there was a deep concern in the US that the country was becoming rapidly urbanized and that, as a result, American youth were loosing these skills.

 Baden Powell late in life.

It was really big.  Nearly any established church had a Boy Scout and Girl Scout "Troop", which made sense as originally Scouting emphasized what was (and is, if used correctly) "muscular Christianity".  That is, it was an organization that not only sought to introduce children to the outdoor life and teach them outdoor skills, but which was further premised on the concept that a vigorous outdoor life complimented the vigorous Christian life, although not in a completely overt and stated fashion.  An early version of the Boy Scout handbook proclaimed:

The Boy Scout Movement has become almost universal, and wherever organized its leaders are glad, as we are, to acknowledge the debt we all owe to Lieut.-Gen. Sir Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, who has done so much to make the movement of interest to boys of all nations.

* * *

In these pages and throughout our organization we have made it obligatory upon our scouts that they cultivate courage, loyalty, patriotism, brotherliness, self-control, courtesy, kindness to animals, usefulness, cheerfulness, cleanliness, thrift, purity and honor. No one can doubt that with such training added to his native gifts, the American boy will in the near future, as a man, be an efficient leader in the paths of civilization and peace.

It has been deemed wise to publish all material especially for the aid of scout masters in a separate volume to be known as "The Scout Masters' Manual."

We send out our "Official Handbook," therefore, with the earnest wish that many boys may find in it new methods for the proper use of their leisure time and fresh inspiration in their efforts to make their hours of recreation contribute to strong, noble manhood in the days to come.

The manual, when defining scouting, specifically related it to war (that is, acting as a scout in military service), and noted in that context:

Wherever there have been heroes, there have been scouts, and to be a scout means to be prepared to do the right thing at the right moment, no matter what the consequences may be.

The way for achievement in big things is the preparing of one's self for doing the big things--by going into training and doing the little things well. It was this characteristic of Livingstone, the great explorer, that made him what he was, and that has marked the career of all good scouts.

Lord Baden Powell himself stated on numerous occasions how he conceived of the movement as a Christian movement. In 1917 he declared in 1917 that:  "Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity" in his book Scouting & Christianity.  Upon the foundation of the movement he had stated:

..We aim for the practice of Christianity in their everyday life and dealings, and not mearly the profession of theology on Sundays.... The co-operation of tiny sea insects has brought about the formation of coral islands. No enterprise is too big where there is goodwill and co-operation carrying it out. Every day we are turning away boys anxious to join the Movement, because we have no men or women to take them in hand. There is a vast reserve of loyal patriotism and Christian spirit lying dormant in our nation today, mainly because it sees no direct opportunity for expressing itself. Here in this joyous brotherhood there is a vast opportunity open to all in a happy work that shows the results under your hands and a work that is worth while because it gives every man his chance of service for his fellow-men and for God

A modern (there's no such thing  as "post modern, so get over that) might look at this in our current era with a degree of skepticism.  That is, it's unlikely that scouts of the very recently closed Frontier Era were universally "prepared to do the right thing".   That might be true, depending upon how a person looked at it,   Prepared to do the morally virtuous thing probably doesn't quite fit that definition in our view today, but at the time the recently closed Frontier Era wasn't looked at quite the same way.

 Boy Scout, 1918.  This particular scout is in a troop sponsored by the American Red Cross.

Anyhow, Scouting took off like wildfire and became huge in no time. We've seen photographs of early scouts put up here in the context of the Great War and we could do the same with World War Two quite easily.  I don't know what percentage of American boys joined the Boy Scouts, or its companions the Girl Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls but it was pretty big.

 Girl Scouts in camp, 1912.  These girls are dressed in a completely inappropriate fashion for what they are doing.

Oh, I keep mentioning the Girl Scouts, what was up with them?

Well, not long after the foundation of the Boy Scouts the Girl Guides, which became the Girl Scouts in most places, was founded.  Like the Boy Scouts, it focused on outdoorsy stuff but naturally it didn't focus on manly virtues.  Having said that, it's interesting in that it took a principal focus of scouting, the outdoor life, and took a "us too" approach to it in regards to girls.  

Princess Mary, in 1922, on the occasion of her nuptials, with the Girl Guides.

I know a lot less about the Girl Guides or the Girl Scouts than I do about the Boy Scouts simply because I've never been exposed to them, really, except annually during their famous cookie sales. But fairly clearly, they leaned heavily on the Boy Scouts in principal ways, but not in every way.  The founder, who hailed from Scotland, originally focused on female roles in farm families, but upon the arrival of World War One, they did drill, like Boy Scouts, a very military focus.

 Girl Scout garden during the big gardening push of World War One.  While the Girl Scouts also had an outdoor focus, many of its original aims also aimed at traditional female roles.

An odd thing about the Girl Scouts, however, is that it had a rival organization nearly immediately, or at least there were two expressions of the movement almost immediately.  In 1910, the United States, men who had boys in the Boy Scouts felt the need for a companion organization for girls and formed the Camp Fire Girls.  The organization attempted a merger with the Girl Scouts in 1912 but it was rejected by the organization as it was the bigger of the two.

 Camp Fire Girls in 1917.  These girls are all dressed in Indian fashion showing a then current fascination with Indian Tribes in an idealized fashion.

Joining these youth organizations wasn't universal, however, in spite of what some might like to think.  I know, for example, my father, born in 1929, was never  a Boy Scout and I don't think his younger brother ever was either.  My mother, however, was a Girl Guide in Quebec. 

The Scouts, both Girl and Boy, had competition right from the onset.  Sure proof that Lord Baden Powell had tapped into something is provided by the fact that copycat organizations sprung up right away.  Most of these  organizations rose and fell pretty quickly, and most of them were pretty much copies of the Scouts but without the large organization backing it up and the all that went with it. So its' not too surprising that they didn't last all that long.  Some were a little more militaristic than the Scouts, particularly early on, and emphasized things like shooting, although that was an aspect of the Scouts as well.  I won't, therefore, dwell much with them.  I will note, however, that oddly enough the Boy Scouts itself competed a bit against it self in this area when, in 1912, it organized the Sea Scouts, a youth organization that was focused on the sea and seafaring skills, but which very clearly modeled itself on the Navy in uniform and early appearance, showing how close to being a quasi private military training organization the Scouts really were.

Taking this forward the Scouts remained really strong for a really long time.  I don't know what percentage of American youth belonged to the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, etc., but it seems to have been a fairly large percentage.  As recently as the 1950s it seems to me that there was sort of an assumption that boys and girls became Scouts.  Even as recently as the 1970s quite a few were, although I was only a Boy Scout myself for a few months (so few that I usually say I was never a Scout, too few to really count).

 Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, and the United States Forest Service in a joint poster commemorating the 50th anniversary of the youth organizations.  As an aside, this poster demonstrates the change in Boy Scout headgear as, by this time, the Boy Scouts had generally gone to garrison caps, a pretty worthless type of hat for outdoor wear but which had come into U.S. use during World War One and which had increased in use during World War Two.  Some time in the 1970s the Boy Scouts would introduce the equally worthless beret.

Moreover, only one of my close friends was a Scout. And that's remarkable given that of my close friends at least two had fathers who had been very involved in Scouting and all of us were very outdoorsy.  The one of my friends, moreover, who was very involved in Scouting was a Mormon and the LDS faith had a very close relationship with Scouting, fielding their own troops.

Indeed, that latter fact is remarkable as I've heard that in the 1930s and 1940s all the local churches had their own troops. This is no longer true at all.  The one I was very briefly in met in a church, but it had no obvious connection with it.  I've heard that our local Parish still retains a connection with a Boy Scout Troops, but I've never seen any evidence of that (perhaps its really more closely associated with the Parish's school).   Anyhow, I don't see much evidence of a Boy Scout Troop at church.

This would suggest that whatever has been going on with Scouting, at least in our local area, there's been a decline in youth involvement since at least the 1970s, which would be before any of the currently cited reasons for such a decline set in.

That there has been very much a decline in recent years seems very well established by statistics.  And some have analyzed it and claimed a variety of reasons for it.

If I had a more solid grasp on that, I'd take a look at more closely, but I don't.  The loss of closely connected Christian values is one cited source as the organization has undergone an assault from the "tolerance means acceptance" brigade and its Christian message has definitely occurred.  The concept that there must be no place whatsoever where men can gather in an official setting where women can't be let in has been cited as well, and I think there's a little to that.  The Boy Scouts opened up to girls some time ago and frankly a Boy Scout organization that's co-ed, no matter how little its co-ed, isn't going to quite be focusing on "manly virtues" in the same way, but rather will inevitably do it in a washed out meaningless fashion.  The Girl Scouts is also open to boys, but the nature of boys will largely preclude them from joining it very much anyhow.

Having said all of that, at least by way of my personal observation, I"m not so sure Scouting is in as much trouble as some think.    Going back to my own friends, one of my lifelong friends, whom I was in the Cub Scouts with, has two sons who will make Eagle Scout.  Neither of us were Boy Scouts.  Another friend of mine has a son who will make Eagle Scout.  He was never a Boy Scout.  One of my co-workers had two sons stop by here selling Boy Scout popcorn this year (apparently only one was supposed to).  So, at least by way of observation, Boy Scouts around here appear to be rebounding.

As we've seen from above, the early Boy Scouts recalled military scouting pretty strongly. Even the Girl Scouts did to a degree.  But they weren't the only youth organizations at the start of the 20th Century that looked to the military for inspiration.  Let's take a look at them.

Cadets

Recently on this site we discussed JrROTC, which like Scouting, is now just over 100 years old.  Its about a decade younger than Scouting, having gotten rolling with World War One.  As I just posted on this, and I don't want to repeat what I already wrote there, I'm going to quote a fair amount from that recent entry here, which is the one that inspired this post.

The Great War sparked a huge national movement towards preparedness, and not just in the Boy Scout motto "Always Be Prepared" vein.  Republican elements urged the US to enter the war early on and when the US did not, those who backed entry into the war sponsored military training camps for young men.  Men in their 20s and 30s, that is.  These camps were staffed by Regular Officers of the U.S. Army and sought to train men to serve as Army officers should the need arise, which it was suspected that it might.  The most famous of these was at Plattsburg, New York, but it wasn't the only one by any means.  And they weren't limited to men.  Prior to the country's entry into the war there were also camps for women, teaching them field craft and some military skills, such as the use of semaphore flags, skills that would prove to be more militaristic than they'd actually need for service in the Great War given the roles they were given.

 

 Playing the dread, and stupid, mumbly peg knife game.  Note the hat cords on their M1911 Campaign hats.  I wish this was in color so we could get the branch designation.

And by 1916, the Preparedness Movement, having seen the war in Europe spread to Asia and having seen a semi war break out along the border with Mexico, spread to teenage boys.

The Reserve Officer Training Corps was established in 1916 under the National Defense Act of 1916.  With two expressions, ROTC and JrROTC it covered young men in their high school and college ages.  ROTC, the college aged version, sought to train college men to serve as officers should the need arise.  JrROTC, in contrast, sought to teach high school aged boys basic military skills that would give them a jump in serving as enlisted men in the Army, should that need arise.

 July.  Its hot.

The story of JrROTC has remained a confused one, and somewhat under addressed, for years.  One thing about it is that the 1916 start of it in some ways picked up what was already going on.  In some schools, including the one I graduated from in 1981, an organization like JrROTC was already in place.  You can find, for example, photographs of Natrona County High School boys drilling in uniform in 1915, a year prior to the creation of JrROTC, and the school now boast the oldest surviving JrROTC unit in the United States.  I note that here as I don't think the kids in these photographs are in JrROTC (some might have been, or would soon be), but rather a military organization run by the State of New York that was really darned close to it.  Indeed New York's Military Commission was given broad authority to organize the military instruction of youth during its brief existence (it ceased to exist in 1921).  It basically ran what was JrROTC in New York, which was so extensive that its authority extended to young men who were employed outside of schools, ie., who had dropped out.  In Wyoming JrROTC took off so fast that in 1916 there were state drill competitions between different JrROTC unis across the state.  It was a big deal.

Semaphore signals remained a necessary military skill at the time.

I'll pick up with another quote again in a second, but carrying on with this, what you'd expect to have been the case, that JrROTC would have died with the recoiling against the Great War that occurred in the United States after World War One, did not. Now, huge efforts to train every kid in an entire state, like that of New York did pass away. And lots of high schools that had JrROTC did in fact drop it. But it didn't disappear completely by any means.  Indeed, it didn't disappear locally and it remained a  mandatory class at our local high school.  As will be noted, it did until the 1970s.

We continue:

In our kinder and gentler age, JrROTC has undergone quite a century long evolution and so have events like this. When I was in high school JrROTC did have a summer encampment at the National Guard's Camp Guernsey.  Now, I was never in JrROTC and when I was in high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s "Rotcey" didn't have a lot of general student body respect.  The program had gone from being a mandatory one for boys, dating back to at least 1915, to an elective one in around 1976, and even those who had some concept of serving in the military were a bit leery about it.  It was classified as a physical education class, perhaps justifiably, but that meant it was filled with an odd combination of boys who knew that they were entering the service with certainty and those seeking to avoid PE.  Anyhow, the only time I ran across them in their summer camp was when I was a National Guardsmen working at the Armory who went to Guernsey about this time of year, after we'd already done our Annual Training.  We tended not to be impressed if, for no other reason, the uniform liberties they were given meant that they were sporting a lot of late Vietnam War type uniforms and berets and the like, prior to any of that being uniform gear in the Army itself.

Anyhow, over its century of existence JrROTC has undergone quite a transformation.  I guess all organizations for boys have.  In 1917, such as during the same period when these July 16, 1917 photographs were taken, it was real military training with real gear.  The boys doing bayonet drills up above aren't using weapons at all, but still, they're learning to kill in a pretty up close and personal way.  In the 1930s and 1940s I know that the local school drilled with M1917 Enfields and the rifle team, which was excellent, competed across state lines using M1903 Springfields.  In the 1970s it became an elective here but I can still recall their having a few M14 rifles for demonstration purposes and a collection of M1 Garands for the drill team.  Girls came in at some point (I'm not sure when) and now I'm told that the rifle team uses air rifles. When I was in high school the rifle team used .22 target rifles, which are at least a real rifle.  Not that air rifles don't have their virtues, they do.

Picking back up, if you had asked me in 1981, when I graduated from high school, if I would expect to see JrROTC still there nearly forty years later, I'd have said no. At the time, in the post Vietnan War wake, even here in Wyoming where the war was never unpopular, JrROTC seemed to be on its way out.  And during my time in the National Guard JrROTC certainly did nothing to endear itself to me and folks like me, as when were were down in Camp Guernsey after annual AT, and the JrROTC was there, they looked ridiculous, all decked out in Vietnam era camouflage uniforms and sporting, in some instances, berets when only the Special Forces, at that time, wore them.  But JrROTC is still there and, as with the Boy Scouts, I'm not too certain that something hasn't gone around the other way.  I've been really surprised by how many kids I somewhat know that are in it or have been recently.  It's obviously more broadly popular than it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

JrROTC isn't the only organization in this category, I'd note.  While the Boy Scouts started moving away from its more military features sometime after World War One (although you wouldn't have known that to look at the Sea Scouts) not only did JrROTC keep on keeping on, but it received a little competition from the Civil Air Patrol.  Here's one organization that I actually do have experience with.

 

Civil Air Patrol members, Bar Harbor Maine, during World War Two.

The Civil Air Patrol got its start during World War Two when the United States Army Air Corps enlisted the service of the nations numerous private pilots.  For the most part, during the Second World War, the CAP is associated with quite successful coastal patrols for submarines where tehy proved to be a real irritant to the Kreigsmarine.  They did a little more than that, however, including some patrols on the border with Mexico.  By the end of World War Two the CAP had located 173 German U-boats, attacked 57 of those, hitting10 and sinking two.  Sixty four CAP pilots lost their lives during the war, no doubt mostly to accidents (if not all to accidents).

Following the war, surprisingly, the Air Force retained the CAP as an "auxiliary" organization, converting its mission to search and rescue.  However, seeing a good recruiting tool at hand, it also created a cadet wing which essentially amounted to a type of Air Force JrROTC.

Now some may note that the Air Force has a JrROTC branch, as does the navy (and even, albeit a very small one, the Marine Corps). But this wasn't the case originally.  At first every JrROTC unit in the country was an Army one. The Air Force apparently saw a way to branch into this and make use of a great inducement for youth, aircraft.  CAP, not surprisingly, is very aircraft centric.

 Civil Air Patrol poster, including a CAP cadet, from 1955.

I was in the Civil Air Patrol in the 1970s and at that time it was in fact very much like Air Force JrROTC.  Drill and Ceremony was a big deal with it, for example.  We wore Air Force uniforms and normally the fatigue version of that.  We focused on aircraft, of course, and on the CAP's mission of search and rescue.  Looking back it seems like I was in it for a long time, but in reality that simply reflects the concept of time possessed by youth.  I was in it while I was in junior high, three years.

Looking back, and I can recall it only dimly, I probably thought when I joined it in 7th Grade, after learning about it at the junior high, of staying in it until I was in high school and could join JrROTC.  However, I enjoyed it in its own right.  For reasons I can't really recall, once I was of high school age I dropped my membership entirely.  Once I walked in the door of NCHS, I didn't walk back in the door of the CAP Wing's building here.  I couldn't tell you why, I just didn't.

CAP still has a youth wing but I don't know anything about it.  It appears to be focused on aircraft still, of course, but also on "leadership", something a lot of youth organizations focus on.  If it resembles the old organization much, I wouldn't know.  It's still around, but how popular it is I don't know.  I don't know of any kids that I know being in it, but here the opposite is true as compared to the Scouts.  I'm often quite surprised by how many people I'll run into that were in the CAP as teens.  I know that two of my best friends were in it when was first in it, although they dropped out (just getting there was an ordeal for one who lived out in the country) and I know adults here and there that were.  Just the other day the Byzantine Catholic priest from the Catholic Stuff You Should Know podcast mentioned having been a CAP cadet.

Down on the farm, sort of.

Going from uniformed service, I suppose, to the field, there's long been a collection of youth organizations centered around rural life, and there still are.  We should look at them as well.

The biggest and most well known of these is 4H.  4H got its start in the late 19th Century at a time in which there was a great deal of interest in expanding education to rural communities and youth.  At the same time the nation's land grant colleges and high schools were being very much focused on and, while less than 50% of all Americans graduated from high school, there was a big emphasis on improving average lives through education.  4H came about as part of that.

 Boys at the 4H Fair in Cimarron Kansas, 1939.  County fairs were done away with in Kansas during the Depression, but 4H stepped in and filled the gap nearly entirely.

As this should perhaps indicate, 4H is a lot broader of program than some might imagine who aren't familiar iwth it.  Over time it's become one of the very rare Congressionally recognized special corporations and its quasi governmental in its organization, being under the United States Department of Agriculture and administered state by state by each state's university programs. Wyoming's is administered by the University of Wyoming, which is a land grant university.

Given this origin its not too surprising that 4H has a semi rural but semi vocational focus.  Many people are familiar with its farm related activities, which have been part of it since the very beginning, but its expanded out a lot and not only retains those but many other programs as well.  Locally, for example, it has many farm related programs but it also has sporting related programs, as it does in every state, and programs that might be called domestic.  It's amazingly broad.  Given that, its trajectory doesn't follow that of other youth organizations.  4H peaked out in membership, for example, in 1974.

 4H member with lamb at 4H fair in Kansas, 1939.  Animal raising and showing remains a big part of 4H, but it's not limited to livestock by any means.

Given that fact it's prehaps no surprise that when I was quite young I was in a 4H program locally, but only for about a year or so (I guess I'm not much of a joiner).  My father never was, even though he lived in a family growing up that was extremely closely associated with agriculture.  I suspect that was because he lived in town, even though associated with agriculture, and, at that time, most 4H members were likely living by farms and ranches.  I can recall, for example, him having a distinct memory of a young woman riding a prized bull into the packing house, which would surely have been a Fair Prize bull and likely a 4H bull.

By the time I was in it, in the early 1970s, it had expanded into town but not terribly effectively in our area.  Now, all that has changed.  The shooting sports program it runs in this county dwarfs that of any other organization by far.  Rifle competitors, for example, in this county alone probably outnumber all the JrROTC competitors for the entire state, and the 4H shooters are using firearms, not air rifles.

 4H Cat Show.

I've been associated with 4H as an adult as my kids were/are both in it.  Quite a few other people I know can tell similar stories. So here too, maybe what I expected to report here I can't honestly report.  4H seems to be doing just fine.

That takes me to FFA, the Future Farmers of America.  I can't say much about the FFA as I don't know anything about it at all.  It's also a youth centered farm organization but a more recent one than most of the ones I've written about here, coming about, apparently, in 1928.  Locally it was always very strongly associated with being in a farm or ranch family and when I a kid it was exclusively associated with that.  By the time my wife was in it, and she was, a decade later this was less true and kids from the edge of town were sometimes in it. This seems to still be the case today.

 FFA members, 1942.

Which brings up a peripheral point that's a bit interesting.  In the late 1970s when I was in high school to dress, shall we say, in an agricultural fashion was something truly limited to kids who lived on farms and ranches. When we saw a kid in the hall with a cowboy hat, we knew for sure he was really a cowboy. There were some there who dressed that way everyday, but that look was definitely honestly maintained.  Something here has changed too in that its pretty common now, meaning only that a person is associated with the agricultural class or perhaps aspires to it.  The membership of FFA, locally, has expanded in that direction a bit too, I believe.

I'm hindered in saying much else about the organization.  I know that they have a big annual convention back east and that livestock judging is part of its range of activities locally.  I also know that public speaking is part of what it requires.  It tended to focus on education and skills as 4H does, but in a more limited fashion, I think.  I'm always really surprised when I meet an adult out of context and find that he was in FFA as that tells me that he must have a more rural background that I'd suppose, something that people are often surprised to learn about me as well.

The other thing I can note about FFA is that when I was in high school FAA students had cool blue corduroy jackets with the big FFA symbol on the back of them. They still do.

Based on Faith

Before closing this out, I should note faith based organizations.

 Young Men's Christian Association magazine. The YMCA is not a youth organization, but it had a young focus originally, and its a partial inspiration for some true youth organizations.

In a way, by doing that, I"m circling back to where I started, albeit in an awkward way.

One of the thing we noted about the Boy Scouts is that they were originally Christian themed and remain somewhat so today.  Not surprisingly, therefore, organizations that are very strongly focused on faith and particular denominations came into being at about the same time, or in some cases a little later in the 20th Century.

Its hard to ignore the YMCA in this context, even though it is not a youth organization by any means.  It was, however, an expression of the Muscular Christianity movement which in part focused on the thought that giving an athletic expression to increasingly urban young men would help to keep them from falling into vice.  The YMCA is famous in these regards but it actually isn't unique.  Indeed, a prior Catholic organization in Germany was likewise focused on the plight of newly urban men, although without the athletic focus.

Anyhow, prior to the early 20th Century it would be my guess, and its just a guess, that the need for youth organizations based on Faith were few, as in that slower more localized world young people were more likely to be incorporated into the faith lives of their community and churches.  By the early 20th Century, however some things had begun to change.

 YMCA youth group, 1967, looking for all the world just like a youth group from 1967.

Here, as with some of the organizations noted above, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not all that personally familiar with these organizations.  I do recall that the Catholic one, the Catholic Youth Organization, was pretty active here in town.  What I recall about it is that it had a basketball league and that it sponsored dances.

Looking it up I find that the basketball league was natural, as the CYO had taken its inspiration in part from the YMCA.  In fact a quick search of CYO symbols reveals that a basketball and the basketball hoop are prominently incorporated in a lot of them. Basketball was the original urban indoor sport, so that's not too surprising.

This is one organization that I"m pretty sure has taken a hit in participation over the past thirty or so years and I don't think there is a CYO in this town anymore, which says something as this is the second largest city in the state.  I think Cheyenne may still have one.  I'm  not sure what occurred here but whatever did, this seems to have declined.  This may simply be because CYO organization shave to compete with a plethora of other activities, particularly sports activities, many, indeed most of which, are sponsored by the schools.  School sporting facilities have gotten so good, I'd note, that its hard to image parish basketball courts competing very well with them.

Of course, the local history of the CYO here might not mean much, so I probably can't comment too much, but I would note that there has been a small rise, over the past twenty or so years, in youth programs associated with various religions.  To at least some degree these stand apart  from organizations like the CYO as the CYO, and similar organizations, are informed more by the YMCA than they are by organizations like the Boy Scouts, and the opposite is otherwise true for these revived organizations.

For example, the Mormons had a massive participation in the Boy Scouts after initial hesitancy was overcome.  In recent years the LDS has been the biggest single faith in the Boy Scouts by participation.  However, with Scouting having felt forced to accommodate first girls and then, and more seriously, homosexuality, the LDS have withdrawn their participation in some Scouting activities and it seems pretty up in the air where this will lead.  here this will go is not currently all worked out.

Where's its partially lead is to a revival of Scouting inspired movements that are definitely strongly associated with certain religions, rather than just broadly Christian.  This trend might continue to develop, we'll see, and if it does it might pose a bit of a threat to Scouting in a way, although I think that threat would be simply to weaken it overall.  It also might lead to a bit of a revival of Christian youth organizations that are more local, more CYO like if you will

So, I don't really have a sweeping conclusion here.  Things have changed, but it's hard to define how.

So, were you a member of any youth organization?

And did you go to camp?

Mid Week At Work: So is that work what you expected?

Jerome Facher:  If I were you I'd make it a point in that lunch hour I'd find a place that's quiet and peaceful and I'd be away from all the noisiness and insanity, have a sandwich read a magazine maybe listen on a radio to a game at Fenway if it was playing at the time and I'd make sure everyone knew that I didn't want to be disturbed in that hour of solitude because that would be my time my own private time which no one if they had any sense of any self-preservation at all would dare interrupt if I were you.

Jerome Facher in A Civil Action.

I didn't post anything on it last week, but a few weeks ago I started a series of posts for the occasional Mid Week At Work series that went from what you wanted to do when you were young to what you ended up doing.

I think this is an interesting evolution.  I look around at adults in all sorts of roles and I often wonder how they got there.  As part of that, I wonder if they're disappointed, or resigned, or thrilled how things turned out.  Part of the reason that I wonder that is I discredit most people who claim "I always wanted to be a . . . "

Part of the reason I discredit that is that, at least with most professions, I just can't believe its true.  I hear, on odd occasion, a person claim "I always wanted to be a lawyer", which of course is my particular profession. That's ludicrous for the most part.   I never recall a young kid or a young teen really saying that, although there was one such kid in my daughter's grade school. To the extent that I believe that I believe it only when a person comes from a family which has a lot of lawyers in it and that's what they know.  In that case, however, saying "I always wanted to be a lawyer" equates pretty much with a person saying "I always wanted to be Ukrainian" if they were born in Kiev.

Anyhow, I do believe there are some occupations in which, when a person declares that they always wanted to do it, its true, but they're just a few.  When men say, for example, that they always wanted to be ranchers, farmers, or cowboys, I do believe that.  Or soldiers or policemen.  It's something about the occupation that taps into something in our deep instincts, really.  The key to those, I suppose, is that in many instances those sort of occupations have many more people who "always wanted" to do them, than actually do them.

So, for the many other occupations,  I suspect, people come to them in some other fashion. They become engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., etc., by some other route.  At some point they fixed upon these occupations as they ones they'd do, or they fell into them by some circuitous route.  Most people end up occupying some employment niche for a long time, often the better part of their lives.  But most people probably didn't originally have that role as an aspiration.  At some point, before entering whatever field they're in, they had some sort of conception of what it would be like.

Do those expectations meet reality?  I'd guess in many instances they do not, but then in some they do. Some find their occupations much more satisfactory to themselves than others. Some find them disappointing.  Most people become at least proficient in what they do, but what's their mental mindset about it?  Is it "I'm so glad it worked out this way", or "I'm so disappointed that it worked out this way", or something in between.

I'm not asking that, but I'd ask instead, how closely did your ultimate career meet your expectations?

Standards of Dress: The high school graduation

 High school students, Pennsylvania, 1942.

I originally started this thread at the time of my son's high school graduation.  Like a lot of threads around here that get sort of started, it marinated a long time and I'm only know just getting back around to it.

Indeed, as an aside, I'll note that some marinate so long they spoil, and are discarded.  I usually have about 100 draft posts, some up to two years old, that are lingering around.  I shouldn't do that, as the older they get, the less likely it is that they'll ever be finished.

Anyhow, what I started to note here is that during the recent high school graduation I was surprised by how dressed down the crowed was, and I don't mean the students.  They were generally better dressed than many of the adults.  There are truly no standard in dress anymore.

Outdoor graduation, 1941.

Even as late as the 1960s a crowd of adults here turned out for a high school graduation would have been well dressed. . . nice dressed for the women, and suits and ties for the men.  Not any longer. T-shirts adorned a lot of the adults.

I'm not much better, I'll note. I think I wore a polo shirt in the school colors.

This probably isn't good, in all sorts of ways. For one thing, it  pre loads an assumption in the minds of the young.  Things here aren't the same as they are everywhere.  Indeed, I was recently in Houston in a business hotel and the men lining up for the early breakfast each day were definitely dressed.  Maybe our standards locally have declined more than they have elsewhere, which means when our kids end up in that environment, which seems to be the direction society is engineered to send them, there will be a bit of a learning curve.

Crowd of parents and well wishers at a segregated high school, Georgia, 1941.

Out of curiosity, if you've been to an event like this recently, how were people dressed?