I’ll stipulate that America in the 1950s was a thousand times better off than it is today. Even so, the era was not without its tiresome aspects.
Like “regimentation.”
I was a child, and therefor defenseless. And everywhere you looked, some adult was trying to militarize you. “Dress right, dress! Count off by fours! About-face!” You couldn’t get away from it.
And then in the Sixties–because you can only take this stuff so far before people’s heads explode–the whole business fell apart and gave way to drugs and hippies and cultural meltdown. If you lived through the Sixties, you’ll know that this era we’re stuck in now is only a re-run.
Yeahbut, yeahbut! It was for discipline! And discipline is good!
But we didn’t wind up with “discipline,” did we?
I recall that, and I didn’t care for it, either. Certainly, that was one of the things which gave rise to the counterculture of the ‘60s. Personally, I was never into the excessive hair lengths, drugs, free love, etc. of the counterculture, but I was quite in agreement with not being regimented.
Some of that may have come out of WW II, where millions of civilians were converted to military life, very rapidly. I would imagine that many a young man of my parent’s generation experienced some very abrupt regimentation, and many lived by those standards for the rest of their lives. If you dropped by the local VFW, even 30 years after The War, the patrons would be quite identifiable by their ultra conservative dress and grooming. Of course, these days, I’d fit right in.
I could never understand why we had to drill at the Y instead of playing games.