Aggiehawg, I grew up in Sharpstown. Was the big dirt hill the one at Bonham Elementary?

jopatura said:

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The younger parents don't pay any attention to their kids whatsoever - I predict young Gen Alpha will be very conservative and crave a very traditional family structure once they are adults. I like to say these parents are so checked out they never checked in, you can't even argue with them because they don't even engage about their kid.
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Evidently, there is a trend right now for young women to learn to bake bread, cook, clean, and other traditional things and call themselves "trad wives". They wear retro clothes, take traditional gender roles, rejecting feminism, all that stuff going back to the 50's.

fairrobh said:

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Aggiehawg, I grew up in Sharpstown. Was the big dirt hill the one at Bonham Elementary?

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No. Our neighborhood was still being built out, so the hill was a spoils pile from home construction. My elementary school was named Pat Neff, IIRC. And we were three blocks away from what started out a combined Sharpstown Junior and Senior High before a new senior high school was built.

Yes, I know that neighborhood wellmy sister still lives there on Sharpcrest St. I went to Sharpstown Jr. High and graduated from Sharpstown High in 1980.

aggiehawg said:

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fairrobh said:

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Aggiehawg, I grew up in Sharpstown. Was the big dirt hill the one at Bonham Elementary?

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No. Our neighborhood was still being built out, so the hill was a spoils pile from home construction. My elementary school was named Pat Neff, IIRC. And we were three blocks away from what started out a combined Sharpstown Junior and Senior High before a new senior high school was built.

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We had a construction dirt hill like that in our neighborhood. We live in very flat Lubbock, and in the neighborhood called Preston Hills, that WAS the Preston Hill.

fairrobh said:

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Yes, I know that neighborhood wellmy sister still lives there on Sharpcrest St. I went to Sharpstown Jr. High and graduated from Sharpstown High in 1980.

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I'm older. My brother went to Shapstown High. I went to Sharpstown Junior High for a few months and then Dad was transferred up north.

I was a Sharpstown kid (Sutton Elementary) until fourth grade, when my family moved to Alief.

My neighborhood in Alief was filled with kids. Whenever we were bored, we would round up everyone we could find to play football, baseball, street hockey, etc. Always had some kind of game going on outside in the street.

jopatura said:

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The ones that I really see helicopter right now are 41-45 that had their first kid after 35. Usually some conception intervention was used. They are all convinced they had horrible childhoods, every mental ailment under the sun, so they try to outdo each other to create "the perfect childhood" for their kids. Really if you were in middle school or high school during 9/11 and the subsequent ME war.

The younger parents don't pay any attention to their kids whatsoever - I predict young Gen Alpha will be very conservative and crave a very traditional family structure once they are adults. I like to say these parents are so checked out they never checked in, you can't even argue with them because they don't even engage about their kid.

The older parents - currently 45-55 - are obsessed with their kids being the best. They want their kid to be number 1. None of this participation trophy bull***** But at the same time they are going to take whatever weird niche their kid has and exploit the hell out of that.

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Agree with your observations:
My amateur sociologist opinion points to older parents and smaller families yielding more parental focus and "overthinking" everything. You are a different person at 45 than 25 and will parent differently.

Unfortunately most of the areas we grew up in Houston are the hood now. I graduated from Aldine High in 77 when it was more of a redneck school than anything else. That area is now dangerous and I know Sharpstown has been in decline for decades…..sad.

One of the other reasons I think the parents of Boomers let them run free was because many grew up in rural settings to begin with. So they had land available in which to roam. I know my folks both did.

Also in many many neighborhoods there were kids at every single house. Just a crapton of kids to play with. And we were outside rain or shine. Riding bikes through flooded streets after a rain was a blast.

EclipseAg said:

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I was a Sharpstown kid (Sutton Elementary) until fourth grade, when my family moved to Alief.

My neighborhood in Alief was filled with kids. Whenever we were bored, we would round up everyone we could find to play football, baseball, street hockey, etc. Always had some kind of game going on outside in the street.

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Sutton Elementary. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long, long time. I too attended Sutton Elementary from K through 4 before we moved to Lake Jackson after my parents divorced. We lived on Sharpview. My family moved there in either 69 or 70, I started kindergarten in 72 and we left in 76 or thereabouts.

Krautag81 said:

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I know Sharpstown has been in decline for decades…..sad.

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I've been saying for a long time that Sharpstown will be the new Bellaire. Hasn't happened yet but I drove through there not long ago and there are still some nice houses/streets, considering their age and price.

aggiehawg said:

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Also in many many neighborhoods there were kids at every single house.

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Yeah ... when Alief boomed in the '70s with new subdivisions sprouting overnight, the homeowners were mostly young couples with multiple kids. Many moved there specifically to escape HISD, and for a while, Alief schools were considered top-notch. Sounds funny to say now.

Jeff Foxworthy - It's a Different World

If you haven't heard this one, it's worth the listen.

EclipseAg said:

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Krautag81 said:

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I know Sharpstown has been in decline for decades…..sad.

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I've been saying for a long time that Sharpstown will be the new Bellaire. Hasn't happened yet but I drove through there not long ago and there are still some nice houses/streets, considering their age and price.

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Meaning what? Is Bellaire experiencing people doing tear downs and putting up McMansions?

I now live in Braeswood Place, which is east of Bellaire. I've studied up on Sharpstown for several reasons, mainly because I grew up there, but also because my 69-year-old sister and 90-year-old mom still live there.

The main problem with Sharpstown coming back like Bellaire can be traced to the unchecked proliferation of apartment complexes in the 1970's. This destabilized the neighborhood's social fabric, led to declining property values, and triggered a long-term cycle of disinvestment and crime.

The continued presence of aging, densely clustered, and poorly maintained apartment complexes in Sharpstown discourages long-term investment and homeownership, making sustained revitalization difficult.

"Meaning what? Is Bellaire experiencing people doing tear downs and putting up McMansions?"

Big time; for many years now.

fairrobh said:

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"Meaning what? Is Bellaire experiencing people doing tear downs and putting up McMansions?"

Big time; for many years now.

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We lived in Bellaire from about 1962-1966 then moved to a brand new 4/2 in Sharpstown. Then left Shar[stown for up north in late 1971. Haven't really been back to Houston since the late 80s for visits with my brother or sister when they still lived in Houston.

I do remember having fun going to Westbury Square for the shops with glass figurines, elaborate dolls, candy shops, etc. Is that place still around?

aggiehawg said:

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fairrobh said:

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"Meaning what? Is Bellaire experiencing people doing tear downs and putting up McMansions?"

Big time; for many years now.

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We lived in Bellaire from about 1962-1966 then moved to a brand new 4/2 in Sharpstown. Then left Shar[stown for up north in late 1971. Haven't really been back to Houston since the late 80s for visits with my brother or sister when they still lived in Houston.

I do remember having fun going to Westbury Square for the shops with glass figurines, elaborate dolls, candy shops, etc. Is that place still around?

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Westbury Square shuttered years ago. Some of the buildings are still there.

fairrobh said:

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I now live in Braeswood Place, which is east of Bellaire. I've studied up on Sharpstown for several reasons, mainly because I grew up there, but also because my 69-year-old sister and 90-year-old mom still live there.

The main problem with Sharpstown coming back like Bellaire can be traced to the unchecked proliferation of apartment complexes in the 1970's. This destabilized the neighborhood's social fabric, led to declining property values, and triggered a long-term cycle of disinvestment and crime.

The continued presence of aging, densely clustered, and poorly maintained apartment complexes in Sharpstown discourages long-term investment and homeownership, making sustained revitalization difficult.

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Very good point.

You see that a lot along the Braeswood/Bissonnet/Bellaire corridor. We went to an open house a couple of weekends ago -- can't remember the exact location -- but it was beautiful home on a very nice street that backed up to a disheveled apartment complex. Tucked inside the neighborhood; not a a major street. There was a run-down convenience store on the same street.

I've always been fascinated by how neighborhoods age and change and the various elements that lead to decay and revitalization.

AgRyan04 said:

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Anyone else's school have bomb drills?

We watched a VHS of some old newsreel about the danger of being bombed and then practiced getting under our desks for protections

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I lived in Shreveport in the late 70s and early 80s. We frequently had bomb drills because Barksdale AFB in Bossier City had tons of nuclear weapons and the consensus was that we would be one of the first Russian targets.

I remember a lot of this stuff but it needs to be properly framed. The US in 1980 was 80% white and you could go a long time without seeing any real diversity or people in other races outside of school. People generally self segregated even in public too.

As diversity has increased, social cohesion has decreased. This has been proven in numerous studies. It makes people anxious, increases distrust of neighbors, and more.

Additionally, we now have direct access to violent crime statistics. We know that diverse areas have much more crime than homogeneous white places.

Thus, the end result of all of this is that parents are much more neurotic and afraid for their kids. They have good reason to be too.

The path our nation has followed is the exact same path every nation has followed as the native population got replaced.

Paradise Ag said:

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And EVERYBODY had a buck knife.

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Some of us were fortunate enough to have parents that loved us enough to get us a Schrade.