SteyrAUG
12-20-14, 02:51
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Rv6RasUo8&feature=youtu.be
First it's a rare short that's pretty hard to find. "The First Round-Up" (1934) from the Our Gang / Little Rascals series.
Second it's a little bit of retrospective on how life actually was in a "simpler time." Now certainly it is a Hollywood production, and a comedy at that, so obviously this isn't a documentary but there are some basic truths that can be supported.
Ok, so having watched the film let's get started. For anyone born after 1980 there really was a time kids, and I mean actual kids - not teenagers, really did go camping without any adult supervision of any kind. It didn't have to be the "life trek" depicted in "Stand by Me" but you also didn't have to be at least 12 years old.
During the 1940s and 50s my father, his little brother and their friends regularly went camping on the edge of town in Iowa by themselves, sometimes for more than one night. It really wasn't that much different than what was depicted in the short. You brought your own food, sleeping bag, etc. And a lot of times you discovered you weren't quite as prepared as you thought you were and you did better next time.
A half dozen 8-12 year olds cooking hot dogs on a stick over the campfire, what could go wrong? Well plenty, but usually nothing bad every happened. As my family owned a meat market on Main Street at the time, being able to bring a few dozen frankfurters wrapped in butchers paper was no hardship.
I heard stories of week long camping trips during the summer but I also heard a version that including a couple kids running into town for "supplies" every couple days. They thought they were Alaska grade outdoorsmen but the truth is they could charge things at the corner grocer on the family account and they could get anything they wanted from the meat market.
Then there is that race issue. Civil rights activist would have us believe black and white kids didn't do anything together until the invention of the freedom riders. Well that's not exactly true either.
Now granted our Iowa town didn't have a lot of black families during the 40s and 50s. I think I saw maybe 2 black kids in any of the class photos from my fathers elementary school days, but the schools weren't segregated and everyone sat in the same class and ate in the same cafeteria.
But even before that, during the war my Grandfather who would eventually serve on a B-24 crew (top turret) went to Texas for Gunnery School. Seems this was for a period of many months as my Grandmother came down to Texas as well to spend as much time with him as possible before he "shipped out." Obviously wives and kids weren't allowed on base so she rented a room as close to the base as possible. She ended up renting a room from a black family who lived within walking distance of the base and airfield.
Think about that for a second. A married white female with two very young children renting a room from and living with a black family in the "deep racist south" of Texas. According to many of my teachers such a thing wouldn't have been tolerated for a minute and would have resulted in a lynching. Well nothing happened.
My grandmother loved the "black lady" (I really do wish I knew her name) and any time my grandfather was allowed to leave the base she'd leave the kids with her so she could meet my grandfather for a meal or a movie or whatever they were allowed to do given the time available.
And horror of horrors my dad and uncle played with the black kids in the family. They went to the same local (apparently non segregated) park and played games with other kids. Seems nobody gave a damn if their white kids played baseball with some black kids back then. Certainly my grandfather didn't care, he was just happy his family was nearby and he could see them from time to time. I suspect it was a luxury not everyone on the base enjoyed.
Even worse, my grandmother cooked with the black mother in the same kitchen and they all sat down and ate the same food at the same table. I guess word never got to the local chapter of the KKK because they never showed up to burn down the house. And when my grandfather was sent to Italy my grandmother stayed the rest of the summer in Texas because her kids had become such close friends with the children of the family they stayed with. Keep in mind she was paying a few more months of rent to live in Texas when they already had a house they were paying for in Iowa. Probably the only part of the entire matter that my grandfather would have complained about.
But eventually they would move back to Iowa and one of my father's childhood friends happened to be jewish. Nobody would probably even know that were it not for the fact that my father frequently attended temple with him. Now if you told somebody that in the mid 1940s (when the US was actively turning away European Jews) that a kid from First UCC was going to temple they'd probably expect to hear a story about how the result was a minor US version of krystalnacht. Except, nothing happened.
Despite the novelty of the temple experience, my father eventually realized it was just another form of church and he already had to do that every sunday so he never got his own bar mitzvah. But they did end up being hunting buddies so that worked out just fine. Really besides going to temple, the jewish kids really didn't do anything that much different from the rest of the kids. There was a much sharper distinction when I grew up in south florida during the 1970s and 80s.
Now I wish I could tell you stories about how my father was "best friends" with those couple of black kids he went to elementary school with and how they all were hunting buddies and went to college together, etc. but that wouldn't be true. For all I know he never did anything social with the children of the few black families in our Iowa town.
But I know this, if he ran into one of those black kids out hunting, fishing or camping and they were a "decent sort" he'd have had no problem making plans with them to do more of the same next weekend. It wouldn't have caused him any problems with his other friends because all they really cared about was hunting, fishing and camping.
This would of course change a little bit in the 1950s and a racial component did come to light in my fathers world. He was a huge fan of early rock and roll and when he discovered the very related genre of R&B he loved it and continued to do so through the 60s.
Now I don't want to trivialize racism or suggest it didn't exist at all in Texas or Iowa. And I'm not going to suggest really horrible things didn't happen, but it wasn't "Mississippi Burning" every place you went. Al Sharpton would of course have you believe otherwise.
Seems in some ways things have actually gotten worse. Maybe if kids just went camping, fishing and hunting together instead of being taught to be black or white.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the short.
First it's a rare short that's pretty hard to find. "The First Round-Up" (1934) from the Our Gang / Little Rascals series.
Second it's a little bit of retrospective on how life actually was in a "simpler time." Now certainly it is a Hollywood production, and a comedy at that, so obviously this isn't a documentary but there are some basic truths that can be supported.
Ok, so having watched the film let's get started. For anyone born after 1980 there really was a time kids, and I mean actual kids - not teenagers, really did go camping without any adult supervision of any kind. It didn't have to be the "life trek" depicted in "Stand by Me" but you also didn't have to be at least 12 years old.
During the 1940s and 50s my father, his little brother and their friends regularly went camping on the edge of town in Iowa by themselves, sometimes for more than one night. It really wasn't that much different than what was depicted in the short. You brought your own food, sleeping bag, etc. And a lot of times you discovered you weren't quite as prepared as you thought you were and you did better next time.
A half dozen 8-12 year olds cooking hot dogs on a stick over the campfire, what could go wrong? Well plenty, but usually nothing bad every happened. As my family owned a meat market on Main Street at the time, being able to bring a few dozen frankfurters wrapped in butchers paper was no hardship.
I heard stories of week long camping trips during the summer but I also heard a version that including a couple kids running into town for "supplies" every couple days. They thought they were Alaska grade outdoorsmen but the truth is they could charge things at the corner grocer on the family account and they could get anything they wanted from the meat market.
Then there is that race issue. Civil rights activist would have us believe black and white kids didn't do anything together until the invention of the freedom riders. Well that's not exactly true either.
Now granted our Iowa town didn't have a lot of black families during the 40s and 50s. I think I saw maybe 2 black kids in any of the class photos from my fathers elementary school days, but the schools weren't segregated and everyone sat in the same class and ate in the same cafeteria.
But even before that, during the war my Grandfather who would eventually serve on a B-24 crew (top turret) went to Texas for Gunnery School. Seems this was for a period of many months as my Grandmother came down to Texas as well to spend as much time with him as possible before he "shipped out." Obviously wives and kids weren't allowed on base so she rented a room as close to the base as possible. She ended up renting a room from a black family who lived within walking distance of the base and airfield.
Think about that for a second. A married white female with two very young children renting a room from and living with a black family in the "deep racist south" of Texas. According to many of my teachers such a thing wouldn't have been tolerated for a minute and would have resulted in a lynching. Well nothing happened.
My grandmother loved the "black lady" (I really do wish I knew her name) and any time my grandfather was allowed to leave the base she'd leave the kids with her so she could meet my grandfather for a meal or a movie or whatever they were allowed to do given the time available.
And horror of horrors my dad and uncle played with the black kids in the family. They went to the same local (apparently non segregated) park and played games with other kids. Seems nobody gave a damn if their white kids played baseball with some black kids back then. Certainly my grandfather didn't care, he was just happy his family was nearby and he could see them from time to time. I suspect it was a luxury not everyone on the base enjoyed.
Even worse, my grandmother cooked with the black mother in the same kitchen and they all sat down and ate the same food at the same table. I guess word never got to the local chapter of the KKK because they never showed up to burn down the house. And when my grandfather was sent to Italy my grandmother stayed the rest of the summer in Texas because her kids had become such close friends with the children of the family they stayed with. Keep in mind she was paying a few more months of rent to live in Texas when they already had a house they were paying for in Iowa. Probably the only part of the entire matter that my grandfather would have complained about.
But eventually they would move back to Iowa and one of my father's childhood friends happened to be jewish. Nobody would probably even know that were it not for the fact that my father frequently attended temple with him. Now if you told somebody that in the mid 1940s (when the US was actively turning away European Jews) that a kid from First UCC was going to temple they'd probably expect to hear a story about how the result was a minor US version of krystalnacht. Except, nothing happened.
Despite the novelty of the temple experience, my father eventually realized it was just another form of church and he already had to do that every sunday so he never got his own bar mitzvah. But they did end up being hunting buddies so that worked out just fine. Really besides going to temple, the jewish kids really didn't do anything that much different from the rest of the kids. There was a much sharper distinction when I grew up in south florida during the 1970s and 80s.
Now I wish I could tell you stories about how my father was "best friends" with those couple of black kids he went to elementary school with and how they all were hunting buddies and went to college together, etc. but that wouldn't be true. For all I know he never did anything social with the children of the few black families in our Iowa town.
But I know this, if he ran into one of those black kids out hunting, fishing or camping and they were a "decent sort" he'd have had no problem making plans with them to do more of the same next weekend. It wouldn't have caused him any problems with his other friends because all they really cared about was hunting, fishing and camping.
This would of course change a little bit in the 1950s and a racial component did come to light in my fathers world. He was a huge fan of early rock and roll and when he discovered the very related genre of R&B he loved it and continued to do so through the 60s.
Now I don't want to trivialize racism or suggest it didn't exist at all in Texas or Iowa. And I'm not going to suggest really horrible things didn't happen, but it wasn't "Mississippi Burning" every place you went. Al Sharpton would of course have you believe otherwise.
Seems in some ways things have actually gotten worse. Maybe if kids just went camping, fishing and hunting together instead of being taught to be black or white.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the short.