Take Me Back

My husband and my dad are watching America, the Story of Us on Netflix this beautiful Sunday afternoon.  While I usually don't click on the show when I'm on my own, I do love watching the episodes of our history.

I have always loved history.....and I'm blessed that my husband loves it too. It amazes me how America has changed over the decades. Some changes have been for the better--others for the worse.

I often wish I could go back and live in a different era. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy many things and modern conveniences of today, but I have always wanted to go back to the 1940's. I don't know why--that particular era was one of the hardest times for the United States with both the ending of Great Depression and beginning WWII. I can't explain it, but I wish I could go back to live in that era for  just a little while.


I mean, I would LOVE to go back to the days of this:

My husband thinks I'm crazy, but I would go back to this style in a heartbeat! Give me a culture where I can put on a classy coat and a pretty hat without gaining stares and laughter! GIVE ME HATS OR GIVE ME DEATH!!

I would love to go back to the days where the radio was the evening entertainment for the family. Where radio dramas took imaginations to enjoy, where the news was heard rather than watched, where radio announcers had to have voice inflection and character of expression. I would love to go back where families read together or worked until bedtime. I wish I could go back to hard work ethic, working together for the good of the family, young women being raised with "home skills," and so many other things.

Don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful for the changes to technology that we experience today. But I truly believe that in trying to make life more "simple," we have successfully cluttered it. I wish that sometimes life were a little more simple, less overrun with the noises of "conveniences," and where family was the focus.

I'm not saying the 1940's was a perfect time. It was far from perfect. We won't know perfection until Heaven.

It was during this period that women found independence in jobs and began to desire equality with man in the job market. It was here that the family farm became less of an ideal and families began to move to the city. Changes like these would change the nation forever.

But also during this period African Americans were considered equal--and fought just as bravely in the war as did any other American man. Hard times united the nation under one goal.

This was a time of transition.....

and I wish I could have seen it.