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''See'' — [[Agrarianism#Civil_War|Civil War]] | ''See'' — [[Agrarianism#Civil_War|Civil War]] | ||
After being discharged from the Army Air Corps following end of the War in 1945, my dad wanted to buy a new car, but none were available. All industrial manufacturing had been drafted into the “war effort”, and there were even shortages of basic appliances like washing machines and refrigerators well into the late 40s after my parents married in 1946, their first child was born in 1948, before they bought a home in the early 50s and began to furnish it. Only then were household goods more readily available. As commercial production returned, engineers again took up the question of [[Planned_obsolescence|Planned obsolescence]] that had first appeared in the mid 1920s and 30s — what level of [[Fashion]] or shoddiness (necessitating replacement of goods) would consumers tolerate, which is to ask, to what height of | After being discharged from the Army Air Corps following end of the War in 1945, my dad wanted to buy a new car, but none were available. All industrial manufacturing had been drafted into the “war effort”, and there were even shortages of basic appliances like washing machines and refrigerators well into the late 40s after my parents married in 1946, their first child was born in 1948, before they bought a home in the early 50s and began to furnish it. Only then were household goods more readily available. As commercial production returned, engineers again took up the question of [[Planned_obsolescence|Planned obsolescence]] that had first appeared in the mid 1920s and 30s — what level of [[Fashion]] or shoddiness (necessitating replacement of goods) would consumers tolerate, which is to ask, to what height of wastefulness could [[The System]] aspire for “growth” in [[Capitalism#Love_of_Money|Love of Money]]. | ||
The | The wastefulness of [[The System]] stood (and still stands even more so today) in stark contrast to [[Agrarianism]] of original American culture in which frugality was practiced and desires by necessity were restrained. [[Desire#William_Leach|William Leach]] chronicles how the change to new American culture of [[The System]] transpired from the 1880s, which hadn't even yet touched my parents‘ families in the 1940s when they mostly continued living a life of original American culture with few and limited consumer goods, much like the Amish. By the late 50s, my maternal grandparents had already left the land and moved to town, but for a few years my grandfather continued leasing land on which to sharecrop cotton as he had before. My paternal grandparents remained living on 200 acres settled by my great grandfather in 1880 when Comanches yet roamed freely across Texas, where they had moved in 1934. There was no indoor bathroom only chamber pots and an outhouse, no electricity until around 1960, only chopped and split firewood for a wood heater, wood cookstove and a cast iron pot for washing clothes and butchering hogs. There was pitch black darkness at night, the heavens full of stars like I've never seen since by which my dad taught me to locate the little and big dippers. | ||
The original log cabin had vanished, but the barn with two log cribs prevailed, built from Post Oak trees felled by axe on the property. Lumber for framing the barn roof and attached sheds, from which the farmhouse was also built, was milled from the same Post Oak trees at a local sawmill. Up until the mid 70s (nearly a century after my great-grandfather had settled the place), my grandparents were mostly still raising a vegetable garden as usual, tending fruit trees (pears, peaches), keeping a dairy cow, milking, skimming fresh cream, making butter and cottage cheese, raising beef cattle, hogs, and chickens, gathering eggs, buying chicks from a hatchery to raise for fryers, butchering chickens and hogs, making sausage, and smoking sausage, ham, and bacon. The land was poor, deep sandy soil, but the Soil Conservation Service had taught my grandfather to peanut farm, by which he was able to make loan payments and not lose the land. | The original log cabin had vanished, but the barn with two log cribs prevailed, built from Post Oak trees felled by axe on the property. Lumber for framing the barn roof and attached sheds, from which the farmhouse was also built, was milled from the same Post Oak trees at a local sawmill. Up until the mid 70s (nearly a century after my great-grandfather had settled the place), my grandparents were mostly still raising a vegetable garden as usual, tending fruit trees (pears, peaches), keeping a dairy cow, milking, skimming fresh cream, making butter and cottage cheese, raising beef cattle, hogs, and chickens, gathering eggs, buying chicks from a hatchery to raise for fryers, butchering chickens and hogs, making sausage, and smoking sausage, ham, and bacon. The land was poor, deep sandy soil, but the Soil Conservation Service had taught my grandfather to peanut farm, by which he was able to make loan payments and not lose the land. | ||