that's pretty hollow to claim you understand the era you didn't experience.Wouldn't need to have experienced it first hand to know that there is a vast difference in the times.
WWII, not even 15 years following WWI, and equally as important to his statement, immediately following The Great Depression. A time when a pair of shoes for a school aged child was a big thing and not because he wasn't getting the latest Air Jordans.
But keep on believing in that notion I guess.