Ridgewood in the 1960s and 1970s was a middle class dream: good schools, safe streets, and plenty of land for children to explore. Moms worked hard in the home and more than a few had side gigs and/or full time jobs. Only a few children had to eat lunch in their elementary school, at least from what I saw at Willard, while everyone else went home. Now all of the schools have cafeterias. I can't say what they are eating or if its anymore questionable than the tuna sandwiches on Pepperridge Farms white bread that I recall. I'll reserve my culinary judgment and just say the teachers got a bit of a breather from their students and we got outside to burn off our excess energy.
While we used to go out and play after school and during lunchtime, many children today are inside all day and rarely inhale a breath of fresh air, unless they have a physical education class scheduled for that day. I know my nephew sometimes children did not get home until 6PM because both of his parents worked. Luckily, there were after school programs available or he might have been a proverbially "latchkey" child.
The middle class of my youth had dreams of their own children living a better life than they had. This came about because we had role models everywhere, from our teachers, to the postal delivery men, to the neighbors on our block. They showed us what hard work and denial of simple pleasures was all about. These traits would allow them to accumulate the funds needed to send their kids to college. College was always equated with earning more money over the course of one's lifetime, and that is what most strove towards.
Cheap gas, strong unions, defined pensions, and an understanding that we were in this together all helped to accommodate middle class dreams. We were not competing in some sort of slapdash race to the lowest wage that can be paid for labor that we see everywhere today, in part due to globalism. There was nobody preaching the virtues of the "gig" economy with it's lack of safety net or worker's rights. It may well have been naive to believe this dream could ever exist, but there it was and people held tight to it.
Posts
