A third-world country?

I  Grew Up In A “Third World Country.” 

There were palm trees everywhere.  The climate was subtropical, with a hot season and a wet season, but no real winter, spring, or fall.  All the buildings seemed to be made of cement blocks or stucco, with red tile roofs.  There were power lines and telephone poles everywhere. 

People threw trash where ever they wanted; there were no serious laws against littering.  Nor any environmental controls.  Cars and factories with smoky exhausts polluted the air, and nobody cared.  The water was polluted, too.  Fish were unsafe to eat, though everyone ate them anyway.

Alcohol and tobacco were advertised openly, even to teenagers.  Theoretically illegal, such sales were common.  Parents would often send children to the liquor store with a note.  Sexual exploitation of women and children was rampant too, though technically illegal.

Discrimination of all sorts was legal and open, where I grew up.  Organized crime controlled the local government, and the labor unions; cops were on the take.  Most workers made less than $3.00 per hour, except that women, teenagers, blacks, and Hispanics made far less than the “official” minimum wage, which was only $1.65 per hour.

Poor people lived crowded together in shacks and shanties, without utilities, sewers, or police protection.  There was no medical treatment for them, nor any sort of “safety net”, other than what families could arrange themselves.  Working hours were long, and labor was manual and brutally hard, for nearly all workers.  Most did not have insurance or retirement benefits. 

If a family had a car, it was usually old, beat up, and unsafe.  Few families had TVs.  Long-distance phone service was unreliable and expensive.  Internet access was non-existant.  Despite the heat, air-conditioning was unknown.  There were no medical clinics.  Children were not vaccinated until their parents could pay for the shots.  For the poor, this often meant “never.”  Smallpox, tuberculosis, and polio would periodically sweep through the community, leaving dead, crippled, and orphaned children in their wake. 

Every few years, a major flood or earthquake would damage or destroy portions of the city, as building codes did not require earthquake-proof construction, and the few existing laws were seldom enforced.  There were no flood-control basins or dams.  Despite continual public outrage, and a supposedly democratic form of government, nothing was done.  Local officials were more interested in taking payoffs than in public safety.  Corruption of this sort was considered normal.

Was this some Latin American “banana republic” or despotic Caribbean dictatorship?  No, it was Los Angeles County, in 1950.