For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds. Generations: Part Three of Three

 Father and son working on team.

From a Pew survey:

For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds: For the first time since 1880, Americans ages 18 to 34 are more likely to be living with their parent(s) than in a household shared with a spouse or partner.

I saw this first in a Singletary column in the Washington Post, and she viewed this as a good trend.  Here college age daughter, about to enter grad school, lives at home with her parents.  As noted, in some ways, it's actually a return to the age old norm. So, in terms of a long term analysis, maybe we just exited a 100 year, or even more like a 40 year, period of abnormality.  We seemingly aren't looking at it that way, but maybe we ought to at least ponder it.

Of course, pondering things like that are the line of country of this blog.  Indeed, so much so that this post was really more developed than the other two in this series at first and wasn't intended to be part of a series at all.

Some comments on the Pew study.  Let's start with this one:

This turn of events is fueled primarily by the dramatic drop in the share of young Americans who are choosing to settle down romantically before age 35. Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other. This type of arrangement peaked around 1960, when 62% of the nation’s 18- to 34-year-olds were living with a spouse or partner in their own household, and only one-in-five were living with their parents.

This is bull.

Okay, not "bull", but a bit misleading in its use of politically correct, probably by necessity, terminology.

Not the statistics, but the way its phrased, that is.  "Romantic partner" is a term that has no meaning, or at least doesn't hold this meaning, in the context of what's stated.  Rather, for much of the period looked at, let's say from 1880 to approximately 1980, the most common living arrangement was to live with a spouse, not a "romantic partner".  The fact that we have to use the term "romantic partner" is part of the big story here. And that a "romantic partner" has evolved in the past two decades or so from a type of illicit relationship into a second type of common law marriage is significant, but seemingly missed.

Indeed, the whole use of the term "partner" is both absurd, really, and rather Orwellian.  In practical terms, it's come to really mean common law spouse, whether or not the couples are married, as marriage is a natural institution and the societal acceptance of a a type of marriage without a ceremony has in fact altered what was for a while a counter cultural act into simply the same old institution but without the legal benefits, or many of them, that the institutional structure for marriage confers.

Even the terms husband and wife, an spouse, demonstrate that.  "Wife", as a word, derives from an old Germanic word meaning "woman".  Originally a term that translates as the modern Housewife was the more common for what we now refer to as a wife, as a House Woman for a spouse meant more sense that just Woman.  Likewise, Husband derives from an Old Norse word meaning Householder.  Spouse comes to us from a circuitous route that takes us back to a Latin word for Betrothed, which derives from a Latin word for Promise. So, Spouses are "promised", a way of referring to the relationship to the betrothed that still exists today.

Anyhow, "partners" are those engaged in a business relationship from  which they each drive a benefit and bear a burden. How romantic.  The reduction of these relationships from illicit ones to quasi legal ones borrows from teh concept of business partners, and not too surprisingly these quasi marriages suffer conceptually from that reduction.  And I hate it when the PC, as is so common now, chooses to address married couples as partners, or when some phrase sensitive person simply uses the term to refer to all relationships. This is how the term will eventually evolve to have the same meaning as spouse, thereby making it meaningless anyhow, however.

But let's not fool ourselves, the use of the term is a bit silly, and while the statistic tells us something, it has to be analyzed for content to really derive a meaning.

Carrying on, the analysis notes:

It’s worth noting that the overall share of young adults living with their parents was not at a record high in 2014. This arrangement peaked around 1940, when about 35% of the nation’s 18- to 34-year-olds lived with mom and/or dad (compared with 32% in 2014). What has changed, instead, is the relative share adopting different ways of living in early adulthood, with the decline of romantic coupling pushing living at home to the top of a much less uniform list of living arrangements.

Ah, now this is interesting.  Contrary to the way that this news tends to be presented, it doesn't quite mean that everyone is now living at home at the same rate as the past.  Nor does that mean it was as high in 1880 as it was later.  We learn here that the last true year of the Great Depression in the United States, 1940, saw the peak of adult children living at home.  Now that's interesting.   And we also learn that this recently peaked again in 2014, and has declined slightly since then. Rather, what we also learn is that a decline in marriage, or whatever Pew must call it given the societal etymology problem earlier noted, has mean living at home has been pushed back up to a really high statistical significance, higher than any other living arrangement.

Let's look at it a bit closer:

Among young adults, living arrangements differ significantly by gender. For men ages 18 to 34, living at home with mom and/or dad has been the dominant living arrangement since 2009. In 2014, 28% of young men were living with a spouse or partner in their own home, while 35% were living in the home of their parent(s). For their part, young women are on the cusp of crossing over this threshold: They are still more likely to be living with a spouse or romantic partner (35%) than they are to be living with their parent(s) (29%). 

Now that is, I suspect, a real change from the past.  At one time, this would have been more common for women than men. That truly reflects a change in society over the past century, which we've addressed here before.

Pew attributes all of this to an increase in postponement of marriage and economic factors, which is no doubt correct. But how much of that, from what we look at on this blog, is actually a return to the historical norm, and what does that mean?

Earlier in this thread we looked at the Boomers, and frankly we were a bit hostile to them when we probably ought not to have been.  But what should stand out regarding them is that there is indeed a lot of Boomer Exceptionalism, if you will.  Leaving home, which the Boomers, in casual conversations, regard as a norm, or a right of passage, may instead simply be a statistical glitch applying mostly to them, and mostly reflecting American post war affluence.   If that's correct, what we're seeing now is the norm, not the exception, and that may mean we're returning to an economic regime that's more the historical norm than the current one, or rather the recent one.

If we step back what we would find, and indeed as we have discussed in other contexts before, is that prior to the introduction of domestic machinery, the living arrangements of the young were much different than they came to be in the 1945 to 2000 period.  As was noted in that thread:

The example of single men and women at the time is telling.  Young men in this era typically did two things when they were of working age, if not married. They lived at home, if they stayed where they were from, until they were married.  If they never married, they just kept living at home.  Presently there's a bit of a supposed mini crisis of adult children returning to their parent's homes, but if that is a new trend, it's only a return to a former condition, to a degree.  These men weren't exhibiting being tied to their mother's apron strings, they were acting in accordance with reality.  By staying home and contributing to the household, the things they couldn't do were being taken care of by their mothers and probably by their sisters.

The other common male option was to live in a boarding house.  Men who did that paid for these tasks to be taken care of as part of their lodging.  We don't have boarding houses much today, but they were common right through the 1940s.  Indeed, the soldiers' song still common in the 1940s, "Hard Tack and Bully Beef" is actually simply a variant of "There Is A Boarding House."

There is a boarding house, far, far away,
Where they have ham and eggs three times a day
O how them boarders yell
When they hear the dinner bell,
They give the landlord

Three times a day.

The fact that this was used as a soldiers song based on this says something about another young man's option.  We don't think of food and lodging being an incentive to joint the service today, but it provided one in part of that bygone era.  With the age old custom of soldiers' grousing, of course, the ham and eggs becomes hardtack and bully beef, with other sarcastic comments worked in.

Young man engaging in the dangerous endeavor of cooking dinner in an apartment over a Primus gas stove. These aren't meant for indoor use at all. 

Of course, some men took apartments in towns and simply ate out every day, or resorted to less than desirable means of cooking.  Even now, quite a few men engaged in heavy labor hit a working man's restaurant early in the day, and pack a lunch of some sort with them for lunch.  The point is, however, that for most working men, the conditions of the day didn't give a great number of options in terms of getting food cooked, clothing washed, etc., and still allow them to work.That work, that is the domestic work, fell to women, but not because of some societal conspiracy thought up by men so much as by necessity.  The were some female out of the house occupations, as noted, but they were generally few, and the women who occupied them tended to be just as oppressed by the needs of every day life as men.  When you look at old advertisements that seem quaint or even a bit odd now, in which some poor young woman is depicted as being in desperate straits as she's in her late 20s and not married, it should be kept in mind that for most women getting married did indeed improve their lot in life as they'd be taking care of their own household, rather than be auxiliary to somebody else s.

This discussed living at home and other living arrangements in a different context.  It's still illustrative of something, even in our much different domestic machinery and economic (maybe) regime today.   Boiled down to its essence, prior to World War Two, and for some time after it, young men and women generally lived at home until they married for reasons that had, in essence, something to do with resources, until they married.  And now, in 2016, this is becoming the norm again for the young. They're living at home until they marry or enter into what is effectively a species of common law marriage.

Now, that may be the condition we're observing, but why?

In order to answer that, we probably have to look at the conditions that reflected the prior arrangement.  We basically have done that above.  But looked at another way, what we find is that conditions and resources made this the most practical, and in some circumstances the only practical, living arrangement.  And maybe, in looking at this, we out to step out of location and take a look at Europe of the same period.

Now, that may seem odd, but the reason that may be illustrative is that we see the same thing in Europe, but it persisted.  Indeed, in some situation the prevalence of adult children living at home is so pronounced that it continues on after those children have married.  Indeed, that's  the norm with farm families.

Now, that is also the norm in American agricultural families as well, but in Europe the norm is and was for everyone to live n hte same house.  Indeed, it's typical to have three generations all living in the same house, with their relative position in the family determined by their location withing the house.  Simply put, in a densely packed region, the resources for individual living simply do not exist.

The US, of course, is a big country, but something that's been missed over the last several decades is that the American tendency to simply assume that the American geography is ever expandable so as to keep the conditions in the country ever the same are simply wrong, and that has expressed itself in housing values.  Americans, unlike many Europeans, tend to aim towards owning their own houses (in some European countries that's not the norm, nor even the general desire) but they are becoming increasingly un-affordable. This tends to cause housing "bubbles" of course, as much of hte current pricing really isn't very realistic, but it also reflects a situation in which moving up into a house is no longer as easy as once was, although there has always been a sector of the economy for which this hasn't been easy at all.

And that carries on to rent.  What used to be fairly easy for a lot of people is to move on and into a rental unit. But now, apartments are blisteringly expensive in many regions.  Indeed, Denver Colorado prides itself on its ever expanding population while continually noting that its rental rates are sky high and going higher.  No wonder.

In such a situation living outside the home is simply impossible for many young people.  It might be once they marry, as two incomes is now the American married rule, but it might not be at that.  A good friend of mine, for example, recently related to me that his married son and his daughter in law are living with him while they save money for a house.  Here we see a return to a very, very old norm, and the re-establishment of the European norm in the US.  This isn't uncommon.

Also worth noting is that the average age of marriages is rising, sort of.  Frankly, this figure is complicated by much of what I've noted above.  If the reality of common law marriages, no matter what htey are termed, are considered, this may actually not be nearly as true, but because of the transitory nature of quite a few such arrangements, which effectively has introduced something akin to common law divorce into the picture, that's a risky assumption.  Anyhow, what is often noted is that Americans are "postponing" marriage until their "careers are established".

Or maybe they are not.

To some extent this is undoubtedly true. But at the same time for quite a few American ethnicities, this isn't true.  So we have the truly peculiar fact that while it is true that "people married younger" and in some instances very young, there's a strong demographic element to it that ran the other way.  This is particular true with some ethnicities such as the American Irish, which did not marry young at all.  Men tended as a rule to be in their early 30s and women in their late 20s, both in Ireland and the United States, amongst people with an Irish Catholic background.  The simple reason was economic.  Men couldn't afford to marry any younger, as a rule. And they nearly always lived at home until they did.  Indeed, the fairly legendary devotion of Irish and Irish American men to their mothers is no doubt a partial product of this, with it being the case that they frequently had lived well into their adulthood in their parents homes providing support while they saved to go out on their own. Boomers who find their adult children now staying at home are, in part, experiencing the exact same thing, as the American economy which allowed an 18 year old high school graduate to go out and find good work is dead.

Indeed, I've experienced, in one fashion or another, nearly all of this, and the reaction to it, in one fashion or another.  My own parents were in their early 30s when they married and my half Irish, half German father resumed living at home when he returned from university, and then Air Force service, and lived there until he met and married my mother.  My mother, on the other hand, had struck out adventurously on her own in her early 20s, but her family bonds were incredibly strong right up until her death.  When I first went to school, I stayed here in town and continued to live in my parents home. When I came back from law school, I moved back in for what I thought was going to be a brief stay, but when my father fell very ill, I stayed. I stayed on after he died out of loyalty to my mother, and then left home when I married.  So I guess I was a pioneer in the demographic trend.  Right now, my 18 year old son is living here at home, but he intends to rent my mother's old house while attending college, a sort of price supported living arrangement which recalls for me the old boarding house arrangement to some degree.

It's interesting to see how Boomers and others react to this.  The old Boomers, strongly influenced by a culture which really emphasized that they should move out and move on, tend to not like the idea of anyone staying on locally, if they didn't.  Missed in that is the fact that their own parents who left home early often had done so due to war, a unique situation, which made those people adults really quickly.  In contrast, the pushing out of the fledglings in the new economy, and culture that was at least somewhat damaged in the wake of Boomer excess, isn't nearly as good.  The foundering of Millennials has become legendary, but then no wonder really.

Again, while making resort to movies for examples is something a person has to do with caution, movies here can show us how societal views have changed on this topic, and living conditions have changed, if we consider what they accidentally depict about their own eras in these regards.  Its' sort of an interesting exercise.

Take again the film Marty.  Released in 1955, the Academy Award winning film presents a "small story" concerning the life of a blue collar, big city, bachelor.  Some might define the film in terms of presenting a "romance", but if it does, it's the most unromantic romance every filmed.  The interesting thing here, however, is that the aging bachelor, plaid by Ernest Borgnine, who was then in his late 30s, is shown living in an apartment with his mother as an important, but routine, detail of the film.  Indeed, during the film his aunt moves from another, married, son's house into the same apartment (while cast in ethnic terms, the same situation is explored, with many of the same movie themes, in the the 1991 film Only The Lonely, one of John Candy's best films).  Similar living arrangements are shown in the much loved film Its A Wonderful Life (1946) and the legendary post war film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).   The point is that in all of these films unmarried men and women living with their parents is shown as common and expected, requiring no explanation.

Take in contrast a film like Failure To Launch (2006) in which the protagonist, played by Matthew McConaughey, is depicted as "still" living at home.  McConaughey was 37 years old, one year old than Borgnine at the time Borgnine filmed Marty, and yet this living relationship is depicted as comedic and abnormal.  It probably seems less so in 2006 than it does now in 2016.

So, I suppose, we are left with the question of what all of this means.  And what it seems to mean is really two things.  The post war period in which everything about the United States seemed exceptional really was, and for various reason the conditions that prevailed prior to it, in a lot of ways, are back.  And if that's true, perhaps what Pew is calling the "Modern Era", isn't.

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Why is the text above blue?  No idea whatsoever.  It just turned blue, and Blogger won't accept the change back in color.

I like Blogger, but it can be extremely frustrating from time to time.

Nuclear implosion?

Local uranium producer UR Energy announced yesterday it's laying off twelve.

So that's twelve jobs, statewide, following the fifty eight laid off the day prior the hospital. 

Not good, and part of the perfect economic storm the region is enduring.  It's the early 1980s all over again.

And, I'd note, houses are for sale absolutely everywhere.  There hasn't been much news about it, but that's the case.

Interesting, the price of oil is back up, and has been for a few weeks. It was hovering around $50.00 for some time and now its above it. If that keeps up, and nobody knows really if it will, that will have the impact of reviving some drilling.  The price climb is the result of a variety of factors, some of which may be temporary, or may not be, and things haven't picked up much yet, but apparently some oil companies are pondering operations a bit.

Cudos go out to. . .

Catherine Rampell for using the word "autarky" in her column in the Washington Post.

She gets a C- however in her article for straining its meaning.  It almost seemed to read like an essay written by somebody who just learned a neat word and felt compelled to use it, no matter what.

Autarky, for those who might not know, and that would be most people, is an economic theory based upon national self sufficiency.  A country that uses autarky for an economic theory, and Rampell is correct in putting North Korea in this category, operates in such a manner as to produce all goods, or attempt to, within its own borders.

Where Rampell falls of the train is in comparing national movements or Brexit to autarky, or claiming that they represent autaraky. They don't.  Just because approximately half of the British electorate wants to depart the European Union doesn't mean that the UK is turning to autarky or anything close to it. The example is extremely strained.

I should be frank that I don't really like Rampell's writing. The 2007 Princeton graduate's writings strike me the way a lot of the writing by the very young crop of writers that are now on the scene. They lack sufficient worldly experience to actually be commenting on anything and they trend towards being snots.  That doesn't mean that all her writing is that way, or even most of it.  But at least a little is. 

That's another topic, of course, but it is interesting how the concept hat a writer had to experience real writing before being a columnist has vanished.  Instead, much like with the law, an Ive League education is substituting for actual experience, and that's not a good thing.

But it does, at any rate, apparently expose a person to a word like autarky.

Mid Week at Work: Old Picture of the Day: Farriers

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Interesting observation in the text on the photo, and interesting comment in the comment section.

Local Bad Economic News: The hospital layoffs.

As if the local economic news wasn't bad enough, the local hospital, one of Wyoming's most significant hospitals as it is a regional hospital, announced yesterday that its laying off 58 employees and not filling another 50 vacant positions.  Pretty grim news in all sorts of ways.

The hospital reported that it has decreased income and more patients, which isn't quite what I expected to be the reason for this event.  It also came right out and stated that if the legislature had approved Medicaid expansion, which it could have done at no cost to the state itself, the layoffs may have been less severe.

That latter item is, it should be noted, becoming an issue in the current election around the state.  Smelling blood in the water for the first time in years, this is one of the issues that the Democrats have been campaigning on, and frankly the GOP doesn't look too good on this one.  The layoffs will emphasize that locally.

The hospital, being a major institution, always draws a lot of attention, and frankly criticism.  It's hard, however, to imagine anyone not feeling pretty concerned about this development.  Just up until recently the hospital was expanding, but it's also been in a prolonged economic struggle with a new private hospital that provides more limited services but is a "for profit" hospital.  Indeed, the last couple of times I've had to take somebody to the Emergency Room, I've gone there.  Quicker.  At any rate, this isn't good news.

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The "Greatest Generation". Maybe they weren't the greatest, but they were different, and pretty darned amazing. Generations Part Two of Three

The other day I was sorting through some of my mother's papers and found her passport from the late 1940s.  It was a Canadian, not an American, passport, as my mother was from Quebec.  She was just in her twenties at the time.  The photograph was a shock, she looked so young. And she looked that way, because she was young at the time.

Her funeral, as those who stop in here know, was in April.  Last week, I went to the funeral of an uncle by marriage.

I've knew him for my entire life, but I didn't really know his life story.  One of his sons gave that story beautifully in the eulogy.

What do these things have to do with each other?

Well, quite a lot.

In my last entry here I frankly slammed the Boomer generation. I rewrote it several times and it still came out that way.  I fully agree, it should be noted, that a generation may define an era, but it doesn't define any one individual within it, so that was unfair, to be sure, on an individual level.  And this one will be, accordingly, undeserving praise for many as well.   And going further, I'll also note that I've never liked that tag, The Greatest Generation, applied by the Boomer generation to their parents as they discovered years later what a praiseworthy generation the generation they tortured really was.  As most corrections of that type, that tag went too far. "Greatest" is quite a claim.  Greater than the generation that fought the Revolution, or the Civil War?  Well, I'm not willing to go that far.

Indeed, I'm willing to state that many of the things that make the "Greatest Generation" great are attributes that they shared with prior generations. Somehow that was lost. And it isn't that they fought World War Two and endured the Great Depression, but rather the way they endured those things and had it not impact their personalities, which is something that would have been true, and was true, of earlier generations as well.  In this era, when it seems society can't even tell that there are two generations in our species, and every human attribute is regarded as some sort of debilitating disease, I don't think that's true.

Because the following is what struck me.

Perhaps the single most interesting feature of that generation, which they share with earlier generations, is the extent to which they entered adult life earlier than other generations, accepted that, and moved through adversity without loosing their morals, character and faith.

Take, for example, the uncle I mention above.  I didn't know his life story well, but it turns out that he was a first generation American. His parents were from Croatia.  He grew up in poverty, but in a household that was deeply Catholic.  He served as a combat NCO in World War Two, and was able to go to college because of the GI Bill.  He did that, moved to town from Cheyenne, and married and raised a family here.  He went blind in middle age.  Throughout all of this, he never lost his morals, his personality, or his faith.

Or take the example of my mother.  She was pulled out of school, due to the  Great Depression, as a teenager in order to work.  She did that for several years before moving, still very young, to western Canada and then down to the United States.  Now, a teenager in her mid teens working in this fashion, out of school, would be abnormal and we'd fear for the girls future.  But here again, from a strong Catholic family, she never lost her way.

And these examples from this generation and the prior ones aren't unusual. Fred Goodstein, now long gone but well remembered even though he was gone, when I first started practicing law, left school to work in his teens, finding industrial employment in Denver.  Moving to Casper and establishing an oil field supply business here in town that ultimately made him a wealthy man, he was the definition of businessman when I was young.  He was also legendary for his generosity and kindness. So, the Jewish boy who left school early to work never lost his way, and became wealthy in the process.

From a generation prior, my father's faher provides another example.  He left home at age 13 to work, moving across the country to do it. But here too, a 13 year old on his own did not become a lost soul, but remained loyal to his faith and upbringing his entire life.

That's the difference, I think, between current generations and the ones that seems to have closed out at the end of World War Two.  They had many fewer advantages. They were much less educated. They often started working very young. But something about how they were raised caused, in large numbers, for the same individuals to have very solid characters by the time they were mid teenagers.  If we are sometimes shocked by how young some married, or how young some were on their own, we should perhaps recall that they were much more adult by their mid teens than many people are today in their thirties of forties.  Most of them didn't fall into vice. They weren't confused about who they were or what they were.  Their faiths were rocked by tremendous adversity.  

We might well ask what it was that made them that way, and how we lost it. Somehow we really did, and not just in the United States, but in the entire western world.  Something occurred.  In some fashion people lost their cultures in very detrimental ways which create for a longing and confusion that is at the epic level.

We cannot say that prior generations, or the generation that preceded the Boomer generation, got everything right. Certainly not.  Indeed, to the extent that I've complained about the Boomers, we should recall that it was their parents that essentially created the world that Boomers redefined when they were  young, by conferring every advantage upon them so that their children were not faced with the same levels of adversity that they were.  And the idea makers of the late 50s and the 60s were, as a rule, the World War Two generation, at least at first, not the Boomers.  

But still, there's something about them which really does set them, and earlier generations, fully apart from the later ones.  They were tougher, and frankly, they were often better, than the ones that came later.  And they were that, with a lot less.  Indeed, in some ways the "lot less" may have influenced why they were better.

Anyhow, something certainly to think upon.

Boomer, wake up. Generations, Part One of Three

I saw this headline on a financial website:

Why The 'Me, Me, Me' Generation Needs Help From You, You, You

In fairness, this categorization was not made by the author of the article, who reluctantly admitted that he's technically part of the Millennials, the generation this article is about.  Indeed, he stated:

Of course, for all of the criticisms and accusations lobbed at millennials, by any standards, they've been dealt a pretty rough hand as they attempt to begin their adult lives. The earliest millennials have already been forced to endure two stock market crashes and multiple armed conflicts (sparked by one of our nation's most traumatic experiences in a century), and they've inherited a world with some of the least-trusted leaders in history, a trend that doesn't seem likely to change any time soon.

Time magazine came up with the " 'Me, Me, Me' Generation" categorization.

It did that in 2013 in an article in which it noted:

I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.

Here’s the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame-obsessed: three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a Senator, according to a 2007 survey; four times as many would pick the assistant job over CEO of a major corporation. They’re so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation is that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right. Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults. And they are lazy. In 1992, the nonprofit Families and Work Institute reported that 80% of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60% did.

Well, baloney.

How on earth has the Boomer generation, which authored this opinion, remained so completely delusional about their privileged generational status, let alone their own history?

To hear them tell it, you would think that every member of the Boomer generation walked uphill both ways to school in a blizzard everyday. And now they lament the rootlessness and aimlessness of the following generations, which have failed to follow their examples of hard work and enterprise.

Eh?

Bull.

Now, let me now state that I'm not into categorizing an entire generation; well too much anyhow.  The same Boomer generation that's identified with anti war protests, etc., actually fought in the Vietnam War and it had a higher volunteer rate than the World War Two generation.  So a person can only take this sort of thing so far.

Boomers protesting the Vietnam War.

 Boomers fighting the Vietnam War.

Moreover, the "Boomers" aren't really one single generation, in spite of what demographers might claim.  The generation is supposed to be the one that was born between 1946 and 1964.  Well, baloney.  That may be true in a statistical sense, but when people look at the boomers they're really looking at the generation that came of age in the 1960s and early 1970s.  Indeed, demographers have variously defined people who were born from 1960 to 1965 in various ways, including as members of the following generation, Generation X, or members of their own demographic, the Gap Generation.   What that tells us, and accurately, is that people born between 1960 and 1965 don't fit in well to the Boomers and identify more strongly with later generations, and that''s how we will sue that information here.  Indeed, a kid born in 1960 would graduate high school in 1978, and have very little in common with one who graduated in 1968.  Even at that, graduates from 1980 would have even less in common, and more in common with those graduating in 1988, and maybe even more in common with 88 grads than 78 grads.

Anyhow, having said this, I hear and read shots taken at Millennials all the time, and I think they're very far off the mark, quite frankly.

I just don't see it.

Indeed, what I do see, is quite the reverse.  The Millennials, and the "Gap Generation" and Generation X just ahead of them are sort of uniquely burdened by the Boomers in ways the Boomer just can't seem to grasp.

The Boomers are the most fortunate generation in American history, and they've enjoyed a world, and its resources, like none before it and like none after it. But they don't grasp that all.

Prior to the Boomers, access to college was based on money.  A  high percentage of Americans didn't even graduate from high school prior to their generation, but their parents made sure they did, and having been exposed to university in mass as a result of the GI Bill after World War Two, they made sure that their kids had access to it as well. The entire concept of public assistance going to university came out of the GI Bill and it was the World War Two generation that gave rise to the Boomers that massively expanded the concept. 

The huge difference between then and now is that the Boomers entered life, delayed compared to their parents, in an era of unparalleled opportunity, but they don't realize it. Moreover, they are acclimated to it.  

The 1945 through 1970 period was one in which merely having a college degree was nearly a guaranty of white collar success.  And even though college degrees became exponentially more common in the period, even having simply a high school degree (the dropout rate remained higher than it is today) meant a person could usually find a decent paying job of another type.  Entire classes of jobs that require college now did not require a college degree then.  Europe's economy remained destroyed form World War Two well into this period, and the United States made everything.  All of this meant that it was much easier to be successful than it is now, and much more difficult to fail.  A person with a trade skill or a college education was going to do well, for the most part.

And do well even with the delayed entry into adult life, which the Boomers (as we will see in a later installment of this series) largely experienced.  Prior to their generation, the entire concept of a delayed adulthood, stretching form the late teens up into the mid twenties, didn't exist.  If you look at old photographs and kids graduating from high school look more adult, that's because, as we will really see, they truly were.  Perhaps they were in the Boomer generation as well, as they sense, but not in the same way.

That's because they were really the first American generation to experience a period of delayed adulthood on a generational basis.  It had always been the case that the wealthy and privileged who were able to go to university experienced that, and tales of youthful college life date back to the Middle Ages.  But most people didn't experience that.  Most Americans, as we have explored in prior threads, by 18 were looking for work. They may have lived at home, and probably did (we'll also be looking at that), but they weren't kids.

Indeed, if a person wants a contemporary movie portrayal of what this period was like, sort of, for younger Americans, a good cinematic portrayal of it is provided in the film Marty.  Another good one, sort of, is provided in the film The Apartment.  "Oh no, those films are about adults. . . ".  Yep, but they're about younger adults than you might imagine.  The stay at home blue collar protagonist in Marty does pretty accurately reflect a common generational experience for the time.  And the fact that slightly wayward Miss Kubelik has immediate resort to her sister and brother in law in The Apartment isn't far off either.

Boomers came of age, for various reasons, at a time in which there was much more slack for everything.  The government expanded benefits to the boomers that they still enjoy today and that they're completely acclimated to without understanding that prior generations lacked them.  The wide latitude given to the generation in social terms meant that the generational reaction to the Vietnam War, which didn't occur with the earlier Korean War, fought by men who were only a bit too young for World War Two but who were kids during the Great Depression, was tolerated and even absorbed by the nation.  The same generation that reacted negatively to the war in Vietnam would send later generations to fight in the Middle East without even noting the sense of irony that created.

And coming into power in the wake of the  Vietnam War, it doesn't seem to recall any sense of irony in a generation that was part of a "youth movement" holding on to power with nearly cold dead  hands even though it is no longer the largest generational cohort.  Indeed, that last fact is amongst the most ironic.  The Boomers started entering government in the late 1970s. And there they remain.  This year we see two out of the three candidates fitting into that generation (Sanders is actually from the prior generation, which probably explains why his views seem different, in part).  No post Boomer candidate survived the primaries.  The Boomers will rule on.

But in ruling on, they've forgotten that when they were younger they were defined by rejection of everything they now grump about, even as they fail to realize that they've failed to come fully back around to the values of earlier generations that they've somewhat adopted but not in the softened form that existed for their parents.  They massively, as a generation, rejected the values of their parents.  They wouldn't serve. They rejected the corporate work life.  They laughed at the value of money.  They rejected much of the tradition of male/female relationships.  They felt no standards should be accepted that existed simply because they did.  Drugs, personal license, etc., were all vices they brought into their generation in spades.

And now they complain that the Millennials don't save and don't work.

In 1973 they made a hit out of Taking Care of Business.

You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above and people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls, who try to look pretty

And if your train's on time, you can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed, look at me, I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day

And I'll be takin' care of business every day
Takin' care of business every way
I've been takin' care of business, it's all mine
Takin' care of business and working overtime, work out

If it were easy as fishin', you could be a musician
If you could make sounds loud or mellow
Get a second-hand guitar, chances are you'll go far
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows.

People see you having fun, just a-lying in the sun
Tell them that you like it this way
It's the work that we avoid and we're all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day.

Hmmm. . . .

Well, by 1987 they were watching Wall Street, with its punchline.  "Greed is good".  Indeed, both of the current front runners in the current Presidential election, who are Boomers, have lauded Wall Street in the past, and it's only because of pre-Boomer Sanders, who appeals to Millennials, that this is suddenly in question.

Somehow that generation of the 1960s that went to college but which was for peace, love and dope (keeping in mind that this wasn't a universal view, and others were "pround to be an Okie from Muskogee"), and never trusting "anyone over 30" became corporate in the extreme, and in a way their parents never were, in the 1970s.  1956 gave us The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit about the generation that came home from World War Two, but the focus on money that's present in that representational film falls far below that which came to define the Boomer generation in later years.

As we'll deal with shortly, a lot of this criticism of the Millennials, and the Gaps, by the Boomers, is really unwarranted.  Indeed . . . in the great scheme of things, they probably stand closer to the Boomers parents, and maybe even their grandparents, than the Boomers do.  If Boomers feel that the Millennials don't share their values, well they're partially right.  They might share an older set however, with prior generations. And they have to live in the world that the Boomers have dominated since the 1960s, and that's not easy for generations that are faced with having less of absolutely everything.

Of course, that's true of some Boomers, indeed quite a few of them, as well.  All along there were those who worried about the direction everything was going and have had to live with it.  That's cold comfort indeed.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Postscript

It's been pointed out to me that I'm not on the only one to make some of the observations here.  Stephen Cobert has done the same:

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Natrona County Courthouses from the air.

Courthouses of the West: Natrona County Courthouses from the air.:

Natrona County's courthouses from the air, as viewed from a Ford Tri Motor.  The classic old courthouse is in the upper middle of the photograph, but the Townsend Justice Center and the Hall of Justice are also visible.  The Federal Courthouse is not visible, however.

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Arab Revolt Begins

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Arab Revolt Begins: Ten Things to Remember About the Arab Revolt  Faisal After the Capture of Aqaba, Lawrence to His Left 1.  The Arab Revolt started ...

Louis Brandeis sworn in as Justice of the United States Supreme Court: June 5, 1916

 

 On this date in 1916, Louis Brandeis was sworn in as Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Brandeis was the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice.  Now this would hardly seem remarkable, but prior to Brandeis there   Presently, three out of the current nine Justices is Jewish, and the current nominee is also Jewish.  The first Catholic Justice was appointed in 1836, which in some ways makes the Brandeis story all the more remarkable as Catholics were a fairly despised minority in the US when Roger Taney was appointed that year.  That makes the Supreme Court one of the more egalitarian bodies in the American government but it also shows, I suspect, the extent to which Jews were disadvantaged in some ways in the US even though they have always been well represented in the law.

Brandeis was a liberal justice and received opposition to his appointment for that reason, which was compounded by the fact that he was Jewish. That was overcome however.  This does make his appointment more interesting, however, as it does demonstrate that Woodrow Wilson was a true progressive, as he appointed a progressive justice, but it also make all the more curious Wilson's racism, which was focused on blacks.  A person would suspect that a progressive President who did not base his choice on matters of faith, would have supported American blacks, but he didn't.

The Arab Revolt commences: June 5, 1916

The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire commences, lead by the Hashemites of Mecca.

Movements towards greater Arab autonomy within the  Ottoman Empire had been going on for some time prior to the revolt.  Perhaps not surprisingly, they had been centered in the Lavant, i.e., Syria, which was a much more cosmopolitan and urban region of Arabia than the Arabian Peninsula.  Given the slow movement of the Ottoman Empire in this direction, indeed, given the slow disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, it's unlikely that a revolt would have broken out in 1916, let alone that it would have been centered in the Hajez, but for the outbreak of World War One which stressed the "sick man of Europe" and which gave rise to opportunities to potential Arabian rulers.  The British presence in Egypt (technically part of the Ottoman Empire), the raging war in Europe, the commitment to the Ottoman Empire to the Central Powers in November 1914, all gave rise to a situation which brought about the halting revolution against the Ottomans in 1916.

Sunday Morning Scence: Churches of the West: Horizon Christian Fellowship, Laramie Wyoming

Churches of the West: Horizon Christian Fellowship, Laramie Wyoming.:

This is an extremely poor photograph of an older church located directly across from the Albany County Courthouse.  I was taking photographs of the courthouse at the time, and as must be with the nature of such things, I used the same opportunity to photograph this church.

This downtown Laramie Church was built as a Presbyterian church originally.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Old West Gamblers and Beer

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Old West Gamblers and Beer: Faro and Warm Beer I’m not sure how many times, hundreds if not thousands, I have read or watched on TV or the movies, a poker game i...

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Brusilov Offensive Launched

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Brusilov Offensive Launched: Russian Infantry Advancing After an Initial Success Against an Austrian Position Where:    Galicia on the Southwestern Eastern Fro...

Imperial Russia commences the Brusilov Offensive: June 4, 1916

The high water mark for Imperial Russia commences with the launch of the Brusilov Offensive.  The offensive was successful against Austria Hungary but was incredibly violent, resulting in over 500,000 Russian casualties and over 1,300,000 German and Austrian casualties.

The Russian offensive halted German operations against Verdun, which was one of its goals, but it was so costly that it effectively impeded the Russians from repeating it.  Had the Russians been able to do so, they may have forced a conclusion to the war and prior to the collapse of Russia itself.  It can be regarded as a genuine Imperial Russian feat of arms.

 Imperial Russian infantrymen, World War One.

The return of the garden

For the first time in many years, maybe a decade, we put a garden in.

We put it in late, I'm afraid, but we put it in.

Some of us here in the household have wanted to do this for some time, but one thing or another prevented it.  This year, however, all the denizens of the household save for one wanted to do it, and in addition that section of the household demographic recently graduated into full adulthood, together with a colleague in a similar situation, expressed a desire to do it and to contribute labor to the same, as part of an effort to reduce their anticipated costs this fall.

And hence it was planted.

The return of row crop agriculture to our familial efforts.

Friday Farming: Land and the Wyoming Cattle Industry Convention on Educating for Ranching Success in the 21st Century

A news release from Wyoming Public Media notes the following:

Agriculture Conference To Focus On Attracting Younger Generation To Ranching

An upcoming agriculture conference will look at how to entice younger Wyomingites to work in ranching.

The article notes the following problem:

This year’s Wyoming Cattle Industry Convention is titled Educating for Ranching Success in the 21st Century. The average age of a U.S. rancher today is 57. Wyoming Stockgrower’s Association Vice President Jim Magagna would like to see that number go down.

And it goes on to note:

“A lot of our focus in recent years has been bringing young people into our industry,” he says. “We hear so much about the average age of ranchers creeping up. And so we really want to make it attractive for young people to be engaged in our industry.” Magagna says the best way to do that is to teach young people how to make ranching profitable. Consultant Dave Pratt will provide ideas for that in one session.

Well, making it profitable would help, but one of the best ways to do that would be for the thing most needed to be a rancher, land, to not be priced at playground prices.  That, more than any single thing, is what makes ranching and farming today impossible to get into.

No doubt the average age is 57.  And that's because those people were born into the places they are operating.  There's no earthly way that a person who is 27, or 37, for example, who wasn't born into agriculture to get into it.  None.  Indeed the only only people from the outside getting into it are those who are very wealthy.

Indeed, since some point after World War Two, and I'm not exactly sure if it was as early as the 1950s or late as the 1980s, omitting price fluctuations here and there for peculiar reasons, this has been the case. Ranching is hard work, as is farming, with a generally low profit margin.  If you have to buy land to do it, you'll never make the money back. Never.

This isn't an exaggeration.  It's a fact.  When large outfits exchange hands today only one of two things is occurring.  If its actually being purchased as a production unit by a producer, he's basically exchanging one outfit for another. That's how he's affording it.  If a person is purchasing from the outside, he's buying with something other than ever making a profit in mind, as he wont.  

Now, this isn't a good situation for a lot of reasons.  It means anyone from the outside, or even anyone simply surplus to a family operation, wanting to get a place of their own, at best must plan on leasing most of their ground.  That is one way to do it, but there are always disadvantages to that.  Otherwise, the only way younger people can get into agriculture is to work for an existing ranch, few of which actually hire outside of their own families.  If they do, and some do, they tended to be owned by people who don't need to really make a profit at ranching, but that doesn't make the pay generous.

In an era in which a college education has seemingly become necessary for absolutely everything, then, that often means a person who feels drawn to ranching might have to plan on going to college for four years, getting a degree, and then working for wages that are fairly low.  That's becoming increasingly common for some degrees in any event, and needs to be seriously examined in its own right, but it also means that this person, who is essentially pursuing a type of science degree, at some point is likely to consider the economic payoff of what he's undertaking, and undertake something else.

Land, is the key.  This can be addressed. But it can't be addressed in an environment in which the only prerequisite to owning agricultural land is money.  And that seems to be unlikely to be something that anyone is going to address in the near future.

So, kudos to the conference for addressing this topic.  But until one of the topics is "land for the producer. . .must it be land for the wealthy?", nothing is really going to be achieved.

Friday Farming: The passing of Gene Logsdon

It's worth noting here that Gene Logsdon, who together with Wendell Berry, defined modern American Agrarianism, passed away on May 31.

Logsdon was an Ohio farmer who fit the agrarian mold, arguing for small farms that were self sufficient.  A prolific writer, like Berry he wrote extensively about his experiences and views.  His writing, however, differed from Berry's in that it often touched on the nuts and bolts of farming while Berry's tends to be more esoteric and philosophical.  Also, while neither Berry nor Logsdon eschewed technology, Logsdon was more inclined to use it, being a small mechanized farmer while Berry leans more towards earlier methods.  Logsdon embraced the use of the computer, something that Berry has not.

With his passing a powerful voice for agrarianism has been silenced.  Its distressing to note that the two most powerful of such voices have been very elderly ones at that, with Berry's now being the surviving one.

Casper Journal: How does working in agriculture enhance hireability?

Casper Journal:  How does working in agriculture enhance hireability?

In this period of economic challenge, many people are looking for steady sources of income with greatly reduced opportunities. This is the case especially for youth since many adults are being forced to take jobs which youth have filled for years. At the same time, agriculture in Wyoming — predominantly hay, beef and sheep production — are always looking for good reliable help.

So You've Managed to Get Started Farming. Now What?

So You've Managed to Get Started Farming. Now What?: Coming up with the capital to acquire land is a showstopper for many would-be new farmers. But it's just the first hurdle to making it in agriculture.

The local news, June 2, 1916. The Battle of Jutland hits the news. . . but not quite accurately.

Residents of Cheyenne were waking up to the shocking news that the British had a "naval disaster", something that was far from the truth.

This is interesting in several respects.  One is that it still took some time for news of naval engagements, not surprisingly, to hit the wire services.  That isn't surprising.  The other interesting thing is, of course, the matter of perception. Today we'd regard the Battle of Jutland as a British victory or, at worst, a draw, albeit one with some serious British losses. At the time, however, the press, at least locally, was weighing the British losses to conclude the Royal Navy had been beaten.

It's also important to note, however, the propaganda aspect of this. 

As noted, the British effort at Jutland was to keep the German High Seas Fleet in harbor, or to sink it. Either way, the British had to keep it from breaking out into the North Atlantic.  If the Germans had managed to do that, the Germans may have seriously contested for control of the North Atlantic.  Indeed, what would have occurred is a big spike in the loss of commercial shipping, the probable near complete shut down of the sea life line to the Allies at this critical point in the war, and a massive game of cat and mouse until one or the other of the fleets got the advantage of the other. There's no real way to tell how that would have come out.

So, the British effort, as we know, was to keep the Germans from breaking out, either by keeping them bottled up, or destroying the fleet. An outright destruction of an opposing force would have been a great thing for the navy achieving it, but very risky at the same time.

It's widely assumed now that the Royal Navy had such an advantage in the final maneuvers at Jutland that it could have in fact destroyed the German Navy.  But what it it had?  It would have made little difference to the war effort, as the Allies could not effect a sea landing on the German coast. So the risk entailed in achieving that had to be weighed against the risk of loosing the British fleet.  If that had occurred, the Germans, absent a sudden American intervention, would have won the war within a matter of months. Even in the highly unlikely scenario of the United States intervening in 1916, it's quite uncertain that the US could have swept the Germans from the North Atlantic.  Jellicoe was right not to risk it.

In not risking it, of course, he was risking a later German outbreak, and the British had to live with that.  But, hindsight being 20/20, what actually occurred is that the German navy became an expensive liability to Germany.  It was impossible, in those days, not to keep the ships basically ready to put to sea at any time, which meant that the Germans had to consume expensive resources simply to keep the fleet.  Having determined not to use it again, the Germans would have been better off simply docking the entire thing and walking away from it, but no nation can do that.  So, the Germans consumed fuel, oil  and rations for something it could ill afford and didn't need.  German sailors, in turn, became radicalized and actually sparked the rebellion in 1918 that would bring Imperial Germany down.

The only part of the German Navy that remained viable was the submarine wing of it. But it was primitive and figured outside the morals of the Edwardian world.  Indeed, it quite frankly figures outside the morals of the world of 2016 as well.  Primitive ships that were barely able to engage in combat underwater, they relied upon stealth and darkness for cover, and normally attacked on the surface.  Tiny ships, they couldn't pick up the survivors of their attacks as a rule, and a single merchant seaman determining to fight on with small arms could sink them.  And yet Imperial Germany had to turn to them.

Before that, however, its High Seas Fleet would go back into harbor. Germany would report the British losses, which were truly grater than its own, and the Press would react as if it was a German victory, as seen here.

It wasn't.

Today is World Milk Day

Seriously, it really is. By decree of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

To draw attention to milk as a food.

Which is nifty, but I have to admit that I never pour myself a glass of milk (which isn't to say that I don't use it on my cereal, etc.).  I just don't like drinking the stuff.

The local news, June 1, 1916. No Jutland yet

But both the epic Battle of Verdun and the ongoing Punitive Expedition were.

And there's an education headline that looks surprisingly similar to those we read today.

Mid Week At Work: Hot Dog Vendors, Ebbets Field, 1920.

So, on the day thousands lost their lives violently at sea, what did the local news look like? May 31, 1916

Well, given that the Battle of Jutland was a naval battle, we can't expect it to show up in the day's news, even the late editions, at all.

Indeed, something that's easy to forget about the battle, as we tend to think of the later battles of World War Two a bit more (which also features some large surface engagements, contrary to the myth to the contrary) is that World War One naval battles were exclusively visual in nature.

That's not to say that radio wasn't used, it most certainly was. But targeting was all visual.  And as the battle took place in the North Sea, dense fog and hanging smoke played a prominent role in the battle.

Now, we note that, as while the British and German fleets were using radio communications, they weren't broadcasting the news, and they wouldn't have done that even if it were the 1940s.  And the radio communications were there, but exclusively military.  News of the battle had to wait until the fleets returned home, which is interesting in that the Germans were closer to their ports, so closer to press outlets.  Indeed, the point of the battle was to keep the Germans in port, or at the bottom of the sea.

So, on this day of a major battle, maybe in some ways the major battle of World War One, what news did local residents see?

The death of Mr. Hill, and the draft Roosevelt movement were receiving headline treatment in Sheridan.

I'm surprised that there was a University of Wyoming student newspaper for this day, as I would have thought that the university would have been out of school by then.  Maybe not.  However.  Interesting to note that this was published the day after Memorial Day, so it was a contemporary paper.  Now, the current paper, The Branding Iron, is weekly, I think.  The crises of the times show up in the form of UWs early ROTC making an appearance on Memorial Day.

The Battle of Jutland Commences: May 31, 1916

The epic clash of the German and British fleets commences off of Jutland.  The end result is still debated, but that the British retained naval dominance in the Atlantic is not.

Of small interest here, Jutland is that Danish peninsula that juts into the North Sea and which some believe gave its name to the Jutes, once of the three Germanic tribes that immigrated to Great Britain in the 400s.

The 1916 naval battle has gone down as oddly contested in its recollections, which it still is today.  The Germans immediately declared it a victory, but as British historians have noted, the end result was that the German fleet was bottled up for the rest of the war where it did nothing other than consume resources and, in the end, contribute to revolt against its employer.

The battle is seen this way as Admiral Jellicoe did not crush the German fleet and because the British lost more men and ships than the Germans did.  In strategic terms, however, its clear that the British turned the Germans back and sent them back into port. . . forever.  Strategically, therefore, it was a British victory.  The debate otherwise is due to the lasting strong suspicion that the British could have actually continued the contest and demolished the German fleet, which would have ended any threat of German surface action for the remainder of the war.  Admiral Jellicoe did not do that, but then as was pointed out by Winston Churchill he was the only commander in the war who was capable of loosing the war in a day, which no doubt factored in his mind.  Had the British guess wrong in the battle, and the early stages of the battle were all guess work, the result may well have resulted in Allied loss in the war itself.

Jutland stands out as such a clash of naval giants that its somewhat inaccurately remembered as the "only" clash of dreadnoughts, which it isn't.  It was, however, a massive example of a naval engagement between two highly competent massive surface fleets.  It wasn't the first one of the war, but it would be the last one.  In spite of the seeming ambiguity of the result, the battle effectively destroyed Germany's surface fleet abilities forever.

How did the average person celebrate Memorial Day in 1916?

We've been looking, as the few readers of this blog know, at 1916 a lot recently. This started off with the Punitive Expedition centennial (which we're still looking at and will be until its conclusion, next year), but we've also been figuring in a lot of day in the life type of stuff, and general 1916 news.  Indeed, as we've noted, some might start to grouse that this blog is becoming the This Day In 1916 blog, which it isn't (or doesn't intend to be).  Probably the flood of miscellanea that figures here so regularly, however, keeps that from occurring.

Anyhow, one thing I started to wonder is this.  How did the average American actually celebrate a day like this, Memorial Day, in 1916?  And by this I mean outside of the public observations?

Here, as pretty much everywhere, there are public observances.  One big one here is that middle school students decorate the graves of veterans in our local cemeteries, as depicted here on Some Gave All

Highland Cemetery, Casper Wyoming

Marker noting service in the 157th Aero Squadron during World War One.

Marker noting service in the 157th Aero Squadron during World War One.

Marker of the old military pattern noting service in the 2nd U.S. Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish American War.  The 2nd U.S. Vol Cav was raised in Wyoming.  It did not deploy everseas, in part because a severe train accident injured and killed a signficant number of its troopers en route to Florida.

Marker noting this veteran's service as a Horseshoer in the Field Artillery.

Marker noting this veteran's service as a Cook in the 24th Infantry during the Civil War.

Marker noting this trooper's service in the Army during the Spanish American War and World War One.

Marker noting this veteran's service in Co. F, 2nd Illinois Light Artillery during the Civil War.

Marker noting Civil War service.

Oddly, a big even this Memorial Day is one of the local high school's graduation ceremonies. That's not a normal Memorial Day event anywhere.  I can't recall the reason why this was scheduled this way, but the school district is fairly tightly constrained on when a graduation must occur and, if I recall correctly, use of the facility was not possible for any other day.  The local principal is game, stating:   "being able to celebrate Memorial Day with 400 graduates and over 3,000 people in the stands up at the Events Center, I just don't know how we could do it any better."  Last time, however, there were some miffed people, as in the case of this comment from 2014:  "It is as if [the district has] forgotten the sacrifices made to make this country what it is".  This time, with an oilfield slump going on, there haven't been many complaints.

But what about the other observances, other than public, that we could have found in 1916?  What did people do.

Now, I suppose they visited local cemeteries to visit the graves of their own veterans.  In 1916, there were still Civil War veterans left alive, so that would have been very much in mind, I'd suppose.  But what else occurred on this national holiday, in an age when more people took holidays off (and indeed, when I was young that was the case as well).

For example, in this day and age, we can expect a lot of barbecues on Memorial Day.  It's almost become the standard expectation of the holiday.

Did people barbecue in 1916?

I'm sure they had outdoor eating, perhaps more really than we do now (or perhaps not). But did they grill hamburgers?  Or was it a dog sort of day?  Was a lot of beer consumed?

I'm guessing the answer on the beer is likely yes.

 Shriners barbecue, October 21, 1922.  This must have been a pretty big event as Budweiser was clearly sponsoring it.  This isn't 1916, of course, but 1922 wasn't that much later

Did they barbecue?

Well, maybe.  To my surprise, there's a lot of photographs of barbecues in that period:

Big barbecue, September 11, 1915, featuring elk.  This looks sort of like we might expect on the Olympic Highway in some localities today, but for the comparatively formal dress.

Rabbit barbecue, following rabbit hunt, Texas, 1905.

GAR Barbecue, 1895.

None of these are backyard barbecues, of course. But it seems pretty clear to me that if you went to a big outdoor gathering, and there were some to be sure, there was a good chance that you were going to eat barbecue.  A lot of it seems to be the really traditional type at that, with roasted pigs and sausage, and other meats.

That's quite a bit different, of course, from the backyard barbecue or the backyard grill.  Were people firing those up, and maybe inviting a few friends over for burgers and dogs, and a bottle of beer?  

Well, maybe, but not in the same way.

The backyard gas grill wasn't invented until the 1950s, so that was clearly out.  Surprisingly, perhaps, the common charcoal grill wasn't around until that time either, so its a near contemporary of the gas grill.  Commercial charcoal briquettes were first introduced by the Ford Motor Company (yes, Ford) as a byproduct of automobile production, as a lot of wood went into early cars and they were trying to figure out what to do with the scraps.  and you'll note these barbecues tend to feature the proverbial pig in the ground, although I'm sure they weren't all that way.

I've seen, of course, outdoor brick barbecues, including at least one I'd fear to use in nearly any circumstance, and I'm sure people did that. And there there are fire pits with grates, which would be somewhat similar.  So I'm sure that some use was made of such things, although it would also be the case that most people didn't.

Stone and iron outdoor barbecue circa 1940s.

And I'd guess the barrel type of barbecue, or smoker, like the ones my former neighbors had, that they fueled with mesquite, can't be a new item either.  None of which is to say that the average person would have fired any of these types of things up on a typical early 20th Century Memorial Day, or any other day.

Even if they were barbecuing something, it probably wasn't hamburgers, the staple for such things today.  Hamburgers, in the fashion we conceive of them, the "hamburger sandwich", originated in the late 19th Century to the early 20th Century but they didn't become a really popular item until after World War One. White Castles, one of the first hamburger chains, dates to the 1920s.  So, in 1916, we couldn't expect hamburgers to be grilled up in the backyard, even if a person grilled up anything in the backyard, which as we can see would have been a lot less common.  People used hamburger, of course, but the hamburger, as in the sandwich, wasn't around quite yet.  It came roaring in when it did, but it hadn't arrived, except in a few localities on a local basis.  Indeed, if you ordered one, you'd most likely be getting fried hamburger, which is what a hamburger actually is. Salisbury Steak, in other words (which is the same thing).

FWIW, the Library of Congress credits Louis Lunch, a lunch wagon in New Haven Connecticut as inventing the hamburger, albeit with slabs of toast, not buns.  The restaurant is still in business and still serves hamburgers in that fashion.

Well, what about hot dogs?

You'd have a better chance of running into these.  Hot dogs have been around in common food circulation since the mid 19th Century.  Indeed, they had an association with street food and with baseball by the early 20th Century.

New York hot dog carts, 1906.

None of which means that people were serving up a lot of hot dogs at Memorial Day gatherings in 1916.  But maybe a few people did.

If there were backyard Memorial Day gatherings therefore, I'm guessing that they'd be more like the July 4th gathering depicted in A River Runs Through It.  That is, people cooked stuff and brought it. I'm guessing that would have more likely been the norm.

Which isn't to say that they gathered much on that day at all.  I'm sure some folks did.  I'd guess that some veterans of the Civil War did, in the north and west.  At this time, and well after it, Confederate Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, was a different day in the south.  Oddly enough, the first Confederate Memorial Day came a few years before Memorial Day.  In 1916, this tradition would have still been a somber southern one.

Which leads me back to where I started off.  I'm speculating, and don't know the answer to my question.  Maybe somebody here does?