Women couldn’t shouldn’t wouldn’t back then
Hoosier David Letterman was on TV for 33 years. One of the funniest segments on his show was the Top Ten List when he would list 10 humorous items about a topic.
Comes now an article sent to me by Kevin who lives in Birdseye, Indiana, titled “Ten Things Women Could Not Do In The 50’s and 60’s” when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, Elvis was a student at a Memphis High School, Donald Trump had not sent a tweet yet, and glaciers were still receding from the Ice Age.
Kevin, this information is not entirely correct. Those of us who were alive when the earth was still cooling at that time, remember differently. The article stated that women could not:
• Take time off to have a baby. They could but they were not paid and often could not return to the same job.
• Run the Boston Marathon. For the life of me, that is an old Hoosier Axiom, I don’t understand why anyone would want to run a marathon. I tire running my mouth.
• Open a bank account. That is wrong. I know a woman who had a bank account during those long lost times. I am married to her.
• Breast feed in public. Why do some women wish to expose their breasts in public and feed a child? These same women will not and should not display their breasts in public places without a child attached to them. Why make a spectacle out of the feeding of a child. Some women just want to rattle the cage. Consider it rattled.
• Serve in Combat. Most men I know did not want to serve in combat and still don’t. Why do women want to do this now? I don’t know. Don’t forget Molly Pitcher of the Revolutionary War period and several women in the Civil War.
• Serve on a jury. The annals of time are full of the creative ways men have avoided jury duty. Despicable! I have been asked several times to report for jury duty and each time I was excused. I wonder what excuses women would have used back then: I am breastfeeding my baby and I am serving in combat while running a marathon.
• Attend an Ivy League School. Early colleges were begun to train men to become ministers and to know the scriptures so they could refute the wiles of Satan. That is why IVY Leagues schools excluded females for so long. Besides they could not and would not play on the football team. The first college football game was between Rutgers and Princeton November 6, 1869. They played twice that year and that constituted the entire first football season. Fast forward to 2017. What a difference. Females still cheer for males.
• Take birth control pills. Come on Kevin! I know a woman who was taking birth control pills in that era. In fact women by the thousands were doing so.
• Attend a military academy. I know, I know. What a bitter disappointment. I don’t know many females even today who want to attend a military academy.
Thanks for the article Kevin, but it is not completely accurate. Fake news. Sad.
[Larry Vandeventer. Go to my two websites – Larryvandeventer.com and wjrambler1956.com – and purchase my books. I grew up North of Calvertville and graduated from Worthington High School and Indiana State. Contact me at Goosecrick@aol.com or 317-839-7656.]
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