You won't believe how much can change in 40 years

It’s 40 years this spring since I graduated from high school, and it’s easy to feel old when you realize how much the world has changed during those years. But if you really want to feel old, try comparing the changes in the past 40 years with those that occurred in the four decades before that!

In 1981, for example, I was driving a compact car called a Dodge Omni. But if I’d asked how much things had changed back then, my parents would have told me there was no such thing as a compact car in 1941. They would have told me that the most popular car that year was a six-passenger sedan called a Buick Century that looked about twice as big as an Omni. There was no such thing as a “compact” car.

They stopped making the Century as a full-sized car five years before I was born (although they used the name for a midsize car later on). My parents drove another GM car, a Pontiac, when I was a kid, but GM doesn’t even make Pontiacs anymore. And, of course, my parents weren’t driving at all in 1941: They were both in elementary school, which was called grammar school back then.

Here are just a few of the other changes that have taken place in the past 40 years, compared to what happened in the previous 40 years.

Today, we have 50 states, just like we did in 1981. In 1941, though, Hawaii and Alaska hadn’t made the cut just yet. The United States is home to 331 million people, compared with 229 million in 1981, and 133 million in 1941.

Virginia Beach has a population of about 450,000 today, which is a lot higher than in 1981, when it was 172,000. But compare that to 1941, when the population was a mere 2,600. Phoenix has more than doubled in size, to about 1.7 million people, since 1981, but in 1941, it was a sleepy town of just 65,000, about the same size as Fresno, Calif.

The median home price today is around $200,000, more than four times what it was in 1981 and nearly 67 times what it was in 1941. Buying a home a year earlier would have cost you $2,938, which would still be only $30,600 when adjusted for inflation.

Business

In 2021, we’ve got Tesla. In 1981, we had the DeLorean. In 1941, we had the Packard. But if the movies are to be believed there’s still a remote chance that a souped-up, time-traveling DeLorean might pop up in any of those times.

Today, we do most of our shopping online, but in 1981, indoor shopping malls were the place to be. Neither the internet nor the indoor mall existed 40 years before that, though. You went downtown and shopped in palatial department stores, where doormen often greeted you at the door, tailors took your measurements, and salesmen went around asking customers, “May I help you?”

Amazon and Walmart rule the retail world in 2021. Forty years ago, Kmart and Sears were at the top of the heap, but both are in such dire straits today that they merged and closed many of their stores. Back in 1941, Macy’s and Gimbels did battle in New York. Gimbels went under 34 years ago, but Macy’s was one of the few old-style department stores still operating in 2021. (However, the film Elf, released in 2003, supposedly took place at Gimbels.)

Wyndham Hotels is the world’s largest hotel company now, but it wasn’t even formed until 1981, when Holiday Inn reigned supreme. It’s still around, but few people remember the biggest lodging chain in 1941, which was called Alamo Plaza Courts.

Starbucks, where you could buy a $5 cup of coffee is the biggest food chain today. In 1981, it was McDonald’s (which now ranks No. 2). In 1941, neither one existed, and you could buy a cup of coffee for 5 cents are your local diner.

Politics

Today, Germany is a parliamentary republic. In 1981, it was two separate nations, one communist and the other a federal republic. In 1941, it was controlled by fascist dictator Adolf Hitler.

The map of Africa has changed a little since 1981. Zaire is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Sudan has split into two countries; Swaziland is now called Eswatini, which means roughly the same thing. But in 1941, the vast majority of the continent was under European colonial rule, parceled out among the French, the Belgians, the British, the Italians, and the Portuguese.

One of the few independent nations, Liberia, had been founded, ironically, by former slaves from the United States.

In 1941, Ronald Reagan was an entertainer making movies, and Joe Biden hadn’t been born yet. In 1981, Reagan was in the White House, and Biden was a U.S. senator from Delaware. In 2021, Reagan is no longer with us, and Biden is in the White House, having defeated another entertainer in the most recent election.

Today, we have three women on the Supreme Court. The first woman was appointed to the high court in 1981, which means, obviously, there were none in 1941.

Sports

The two most recent Rookies of the Year in Baseball were both Black, and the statistics of the segregated Negro Leagues were finally recognized by Major League Baseball. In 1981, no major postseason award winner was Black, but a Black man held the record for the most career home runs. In 1941, no Black players were playing in the white Major Leagues.

The man who would break the color barrier six years later, Jackie Robinson, was playing professional football for the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast Football League. His college teammate, Kenny Washington, was playing for the rival Hollywood Bears and would break the NFL’s color barrier a year before Robinson made his debut with baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers.

Basketball has changed a lot, too. In 2021, the three-point basket is the dominant way of scoring in the NBA. In 1981, it was the slam dunk. In 1941, there three-point basket didn’t exist. Just four years earlier, in 1937, the game had abolished the practice of holding a jump ball after every basket.

This season, the NBA’s highest-paid player (Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors) will make nearly $46 million. In 1981, a player by the name of Magic Johnson signed a 25-year deal for $25 million, or $1 million a year, that seemed insane at the time. Even accounting for inflation, Johnson’s contract would be worth “only” $2.89 million a year today.

But what about in 1941? The NBA didn’t even exist back then. Pro basketball was largely segregated, but an all-Black team had won the World Professional Basketball Tournament a year earlier. (That team, the Harlem Globetrotters, were purely scripted entertainment by 1981, but back then, they played for keeps — and usually won.)

A team called the Oshkosh All-Stars won the championship of the top pro league in ’41, the National Basketball League. It was made up largely of company teams sponsored by the likes of Goodyear, Firestone, General Electric, a packing company in Anderson, Indiana, and a Piston manufacturer in Fort Wayne — which later became the Detroit Pistons. Around that time, pay was $50 a week. (Today, sponsors put their names on arenas and their logos on NBA jerseys.)

The National Hockey League today has 32 teams, most of them (25) in the United States — even though “national” originally referred to Canada. Back in 1981, the league had 21 teams, but that’s huge compared to what it looked like four decades earlier, when there were only seven. (One of them, the Brooklyn Americans, went out of business the following year.)

Music

Today, John Legend is among the nation’s top musical performers. In 1981, a different John — John Lennon — was shot and killed. Forty years earlier, Lennon was just a couple of months old, and his famous songwriting partner, Paul McCartney, wouldn’t be born until the summer of the following year. One thing hasn’t changed, though: McCartney put out his 26th studio album in December, and it hit No. 1 in the U.K. and No. 2 in the U.S.

Taylor Swift had the top-selling album last year. She hadn’t been born yet in 1941. Or 1981.

AC/DC’s Back in Black was the best-selling album in December of 1981. The band recorded an album just last year, although record “albums” are a throwback item today: We’ve been through a couple of other formats (CD, MP3) in the meantime. Back in 1941, individual songs drove the market, and with big-band leaders Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey taking the top for spots for the year. Both were dead long before 1981 rolled around.

Swing dominated the charts in ’41, rock in ’81, hip-hop and pop in 2021.

Entertainment

In 2021, you could choose among internet streaming services, thousands of cable or satellite TV options, and the networks for your entertainment. Star Wars was the biggest entertainment property, just as it was in ’81, a year after the release of second film in the series, The Empire Strikes Back. But the biggest news was a streaming spinoff called The Mandalorian. Yoda appeared for the first time in Empire, while “Baby Yoda” was the star attraction in Mando.

You mostly stayed home from the cinema in 2021, because of the COVID pandemic. In 1981, the three major networks were still the biggest game in town, and Dallas dominated the ratings. MTV joined a small list of cable stations that included ESPN and CNN, which had been founded in the two previous years. The idea was to play all music, all the time. MTV’s still around, but hasn’t played much music for a very long time.

In 1941, the runaway box office winner was Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper. There was no TV. Programs could be found on radio, where comedian Jack Benny had the top-rated show for the second straight year. He earned a staggering $350,000 for 35 half-hour episodes, or $10,000 a pop. During the last season of The Big Bang Theory on CBS in 2019, each of four actors were earning $1 million per episode. Even with inflation, Benny’s salary today would be less than 18% of that.

The most popular video game today is Call of Duty. In 1981, it was Pac-Man. In 1941, there was no such thing.

Today, we do everything on our phones and on the internet. In 1981, there was no internet, phones were just phones, and IBM made its first personal computer, the 5150 (which was also the title of a Van Halen album five years later; sadly, guitarist Eddie Van Halen passed away in 2021). In 1941, Konrad Zuse introduced the world’s first programmable computer.

Which is what, ultimately, allows me to create and disseminate this brief history of the past 80 years.

Feel old yet?

Stephen H. Provost is the author of 11 books focusing on America in the 20th century, including five on the nation’s highways, two on sports, two local histories, a look at rock music in the 1980s, and a forthcoming history of shopping malls and department stores. All his books are available on Amazon.