A nifty send-up and update of the original, nicely done. Just don't bring back Hootenany, ok? It was forced watching in my home when I was pre-school and primary grade age. As I result, to this very day I am still "folked-up"! lol ;D

What OMR said..very good sequel to the original

Thanks, Old Man - wtih the garbage they call music today we could use some hootnanny. There are alot of things going on today to sing protest songs about.

Lord 2Ease, I adore miniManSongs, Sir !

Thanks, AFW - Times are still changing. Thanks, MsMorning - glad you enjoyed.

I don't generally read, vote, or comment on songs having to do with houses, especially those that were affordable for returning war veterans. (Hope the subliminal tag-you're-it came through ;-D)

(Or, seriously, that stereotype any widely-diverse group as all being bigots.)

A very nice boxes cycle.

Thanks, TT - I had in mind the corrupt city council we had at that time who took advantage of the post war boom to build cramped little houses on small lots. Now bigger houses are being built on the same lots leaving very little yard space. Thanks, John - have you been to So Cal? If so you would know what I mean.

One of my first subliminal learning songs. I thought I dreamed it. My dad had the TV on in the other room and I must have absorbed it in my sleep. It was a long time before I realized it was a real song. Good social history, which is what I believe the original was all about. TT: much of what little I remember of French literature involved a visceral hatred of the "bourgeoisie", which basically meant anyone who earned a living through work and was contented with his or her lot in life. A lot of leftist protest art and literature in our time seems to derive from the same sentiments.

2E, I lived for a while in Manhattan Beach area of Los Angeles. (fortunately, bought during a recession, and before Steven Spielberg put his studio there, *really* zooming prices.) The town was originally built for weekend cottages-at-the-beach for those wanting to escape the heat and smog of Pasadena, etc. The lots were 30 x 90, and some were cut in half, to 30 x 45. That's 1350 sq. ft., smaller than many houses. Also popular for rentals to pilots, flight attendants, etc. due to 10 minutes from LAX, and they weren't home all that much anyway, so small cottage was fine.

As LA boomed, the cottages were torn down, and two- or -three-story homes were built, with double garages. Ours was on one of those half-lots. The house had more sq ft than the lot (due to multiple stories). No yard to speak of -- no lawn maintenance! And the beach a short walk away.

The plain fact of the matter is that land in LA became very expensive, as the metro area grew from a few hundred thousand to 8 million+. If MB or any other town required, say, 100 x 100 ft lots, we'd not have been able to afford it. So this is a case of let the free market do its thing. Those who don't care about a yard, or can't pay for one, will buy the ones you described, and those who want a yard will either pay the price, or move waay out (desert, Antelope Valley, Riverside, etc.) and maybe commute three hours a day. You just can't cram eight million people into a radius twenty minutes from downtown, especially if high density is unacceptable.

FWIW, I understand that you can have all of the lost you want in some areas of Detroit for $100 each. So you could buy a dozen of them and have your own vast estate. But for some reason, more people want to live in SoCal than in Detroit -- go figure! :-)
SoCal was just a victim of its own popularity -- moderate climate, economic success: oil producer long before movie producer; defense industry due to usual fair weather for test flights, plus desert areas over which to test experimental planes, etc., and such a diversity of recreation within driving radius: mountains, skiing, desert, ocean, Yosemite, rafting, etc.

No one can ever repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, though for some reason, Congress has been trying to do so for the past century or so. (I/we have written about that, I think.) Cheers.

Patrick, left-wing has always been very anti-middle-class; hence the frequent designation as "elitist snobs", condescendingly looking down on the "working class", who (they think) are unable to take care of themselves and need the Government to run their lives. Never mind the fact that many factory workers in the US would be considered incredibly wealthy by 2/3 of the world's population.

The alleged "worker's paradise", the Soviet Union, did indeed consist of exactly that: an elite of Government officials with second homes and limousines, and the rest of the population living in cramped housing or on collective farms, with no possibility of upward mobility.

And *that* is what the Left hates and fears: upward mobility, lest the vast "working class" discover that they can do just fine without the micro-management of a Leftist government. Hence the massive taxes on higher incomes, and other punishments for success, and enough Gov interference and taxation to keep the economy from growing as it otherwise would.

Fiddlesticks - pardon the expression. Politics aside, Jolleyland Burbank was the original ticky tacky. Houses were built of cheap materal and had no style. It was segregated and the people were stuck in some kind of ultra conservative twilight. Bourgeois means middle class values - materialism and lacking in spirituaity and education.

I hope my partner doesn't see that expression. ;)

It's good to know that you're so spiritually superior to the rest of us, though I'd put my formal and informal education - including philosophical -- up against most people's. And I didn't think that non-bourgeois, spiritual people engaged in stereotyping, such as that of hundreds of millions of widely diverse individuals falling into the general category of "middle class", or values thereof, which made this country into the affluent nation that gives you both the material means (home, food, computer, Internet access) and the freedom to voice your criticisms of the hand that feeds you.

Last tidbits, then I'm outta here, so you can have the last word: T. Jefferson originally intended that famous phrase of "the unalienable rights of Man" to include "Life, liberty, and property", but the latter was stricken because at the time, it might have been construed as another justification for slavery. (Yes, I know he owned them and all. Yes, I know he didn't live up to his own ideals. Most of us don't, if we do in fact have ideals.)

We take our affluence for granted, but in the post-WWII years, those houses were the only ones most people could afford. (Soldiers were paid very little back then, or did you not know that?)
I grew up in one such small, ticky-tacky house, and never felt deprived or poverty-stricken. Those architectural masterpieces that you'd have preferred to be built would have made my family permanent renters. American Dream was to own your own home, "a little cottage with a white picket fence". That dream became real for many people.

If you look at the economic context of those times instead of today, you might understand better. And do you blame people who'd just come out of, first, a Depression, then, a World War, or risked losing all able-bodied male members of their families in same, for wanting some stability in their lives? It's just so easy to take potshots from a distance, when you're the beneficiary of the affluence that arose from their "middle-class values". Cheers.

There's nothing wrong with a cottage with a picket fence as long as it is well built by honest people and in an integrated neighborhood with diverse nationalities. Jolleyland was built over a vineyard and winery.

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