Posted on 04/27/2024 10:38:51 PM PDT by RandFan
Check out the YouTube circa 1956.
I want to know if life was like that: Congested dance halls, Rock n' roll, a post-War boom?
Seems like another world... One you kind of hanker for.
Can any Freepers recall the era depicted?
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
We lived in Jersey in a quiet suburb about 30 miles from Newark. My older sister had a friend who had a job there, and during the riots the front windows of the building she was in were shot out. She was lucky, because the National Guard was coming down the street she was on and the rioters left to loot another area. I didn’t understand what was going on at the time, or why, still don’t to this day. Rioting and looting isn’t going to help your cause, and burning down your own neighborhood is beyond stupidity.
Simpler times. Fewer people in the world. Businesses closed on Sundays; it was a family day. Most families were in church Sunday morning. No personal computers, Internet, cell phones, or video games. Kids played outside, in the woods, rode bikes. Black & white TV with 3 or 4 channels. News people that were journalists not entertainers, and they reported the facts and didn’t try to tell us how or what to think. Families ate around the table and talked. Holidays were for family. No Interstate highways. A trip was an adventure. Stops along the way to see and do stuff. Roadside picnics. Neighbors talked and socialized; sewing circles, chatting over the fence, community dances, church dinners. People were friendly and more caring and took time for each other. Doctors made house calls. Health care before the government got involved (Medicare and Medicaid) was about and not money. X-ray taken and read at hospital was $25; that was a substantial sum but not like the thousands it costs now.
Simpler times. We are worse off now in my opinion.
“As a kid I enjoyed a fearless freedom unknown in today’s America.”
Amen. I born in 1947. We were a much freer country in the 50’s. For me it was the 60’s when we went off the rails. Now we live in a country where every aspect of our lives in regulated by government. No one to blame but ourselves. We as a people allowed the government to take over our lives.
Oh, it sure was a different time. We respected our teachers and our parents. We got outdoors as much as possible, were tanned by Memorial Day, which reminds me of the parades and the great feeling of patriotism. Memorial day parades, 4th of July parades, Labor day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The biggest problem in my school were the wise guys with spitballs. Block parties, neighborhood barbecues. A great time right up until about the mid sixties, when things started to change, some for the better, and some not so much.
Cars that had no plastic parts. Seats were made of cloth or leather. If it lasted a 100K miles before wearing out you were lucky. On hot days it would sometimes vapor lock. Sometimes when on a trip you would have to stop and clean and reset the points in the distributor. And them old Fords always had a squeak in the front end. Flat tires always required pulling the tube and patching it. On long trips you would pack bread and lunch meat to have lunch at a road side park that consisted of a picnic table under a tree. Lots of gravel roads in rural areas consisting of chuck holes and mud holes when it rained. Free cigarette samples arriving in your mailbox and using cards and a clothes pin an your bike spokes to make it sound like a motor bike.Saturday night was bath night in a wash tub set up with water heated on the cook stove, first the kids, then mom and then dad last so we would be clean for church in the morning.Listening to big sisters idolizing Pat Boone singing love letters in the sand on the radio.When radio stations played a variety of music on the same AM station from rock and roll to motown and country thrown in. Variety shows on TV such as Steve Allen and George Burns and good ole Ed Sullivan. Game shows such as I’ve got a secret and what’s my line and don’t forget Groucho and the secret word for a hundred dollars.Reruns of the little rascals and the 3 stooges. Oh and the Alfred Hitchcock hour.Tarzan and Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin movies.
There was no pornography available on the magazine or news stands. No swearing or indecent language on TV or radio. It was only shortly after that a book like "Lady Chatterly's Lover" would be contemplated by publishers who used the imprimatur of the Bishop of Boston as their OK to set a novel before the public.
Were deeply in the Cold War then, and nothing tolerating communist ideas would have appeared without very strong objections. Scenes from movies like "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951, Vivien Leigh/Marlon Brando) or the song/dance "Moonglow" (click here) ( from "Picnic", Kim Novak/William Holden) were tapping on the doors of decency standards in those days.
You simply cannot know from this standpoint what it was to be daily immersed in the culture of the '50, or how sorrowful one like myself feels to have lost that life.
I saw thaose movies when they first came out. I was entranced by Kim Novak--she was only a little older than myself, now 91--and withdrew from movies like the one with Frank Sinatra ("Man With a Golden Arm") that introduced the ways of the drug culture, and went on to live a decent life as an arist, faithful to her husband and after he died, to another.
The past is the past (thankfully, when wholly considered).Now, I only think of the future, which is continually unfolding, ever and forever.
See you there?
“The man who actually WON World War 2 became president.”
I was but a pre-teen in that era and recall much of it. It was a very simple non-stressful era where things went of quite smooth. I do recall on the political front was a strong anti-communist trend nation wide.
And yes, Ike was President. I recall a school classmate who made the following remark: “They are making Eisenhower dolls, you wind them up and they do absolutely nothing”. He was obviously parroting a comment from his democrat dad.
The point to be made, is if everything is going smooth, what is there to do with regards to making new laws? Our national legislature does not have to be in the perpetual law making business that expands our government. Ike was a believer in small govt and he warned us of the military industrial complex. I’d say since he did little to nothing makes him a great President. Compared to Carter, where everything he did was wrong, and Ike was a super prez.
Now we need a president that will undo decades worth of leftism.
I lived through the ‘50s and remember it as being impossibly different than what we have become today. (1) There were ridged standards of dress, behavior, and expectations. Men wore hats and women wore dresses on most occasions. My father put on a suit to go to the auto parts store, and I never saw my mother in a pair of pants, ever. (2) In some ways there was less division between classes. Buying a house was far easier, but not everyone could afford a TV. Gas was 15 cents a gallon and that price included an attendant who pumped it and checked your oil. However, it was far tougher if you were penniless or unemployed. (3) There was a strong undercurrent of pessimism about the future, not present today. We were trained at school to shelter under our desks in case of a nuclear attack, which most people considered inevitable, especially when China got the bomb. There were frequent, often monthly, practice air raid alarms and every city had nearby shelters stocked with food and water. Part of this anxiety produced a deep distrust of science, and especially foreign-born scientists. We were, as Tennessee Williams put it, “A world waiting for bombardment”. (4) As Americans, we were secure in our culture and had no doubt that we were the best and strongest society in the world. We envied others nothing, except their exotic food on occasion. (5) Amid all this stability, we were restless for something different. Eisenhower was often viewed as a do-nothing president who spent his time golfing apart from governing. This set the stage for the explosive ‘60s, and all the rapid change which has followed.
Dad wore a fedora and I wanted one.
The video was typical Hollywood production. A bunch of professional dancers, some faking screw ups, or pretending to be novices.
In reality it would be a dancefloor full of girls dancing with other girls. The guys would huddle together along the walls talking about cars and ogling the girls.
For me it would be more very late fifties and early sixties, but I had an older sister.
Peak America. Before “diversity” became the national religion and Americans were told they were a bunch of racists who had to allow every bizarre religion and 3rd world person into America and that every normal, Christian-based moral standard was ‘wrong’ because it didn’t respect the freaks and nuts.
Now we have trannies on tv and in your child’s library.
“But remember, not everyone joined the counterculture, not everyone demonstrated, dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution or dodged the draft.”
No but the ones who did went into government, academia, media and are very much into control of those who didn’t. They stole the last election and will try for the next one.
Like with Social Security? Medicare? Baby-killing? Those are totally addictive like cocaine or fentanyl for those who accepted and are in enmeshed in any of them (like me, for instance) without any other income.
Late 40s for me as well. My dad had been a Master Sgt in the army. Men knew how to work in that era. He worked in management of a commercial construction company and in 1950 built our own suburban house virtually with only one helper in each trade. Worked until 2:00 am for 16 months. Was the best suburb in KC.
The kids that grew up in FDR’s depression and the went out and kicked ass in a two front war were tough. He lived until he was 90 and would not have suffered what we have now.
You confuse expense with investment.
The money to rebuild created societies that were composed of customers that bought the goods we sold them.
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I don’t remember a lot about attitude in high school. it just was and consisted of both fun and work. For my family, the 50’s were prosperous times. The construction business was good.
I was in the band and that was a sub group of the student body that was special. I dated my wife our senior year of ‘59-’60. We went to different schools 200 mile apart but hung in there and were married on my graduation day. In the ultimate act of defiance, I cut college graduation to get married. Our class of ‘60 has lunch the first Friday of every month.
There was the Drive In scene, but I didn’t participate. We looked to the future and it was seen to be composed of engineers. Me and my friends were intent on engineering school.
When you met someone you learned: Where they lived, Where their dad worked and Where they went to church.
From my point of view, the 50’s were just life. Times were good. School was fun and demanding. life was good.
I was just a kid born in 1952, so I didn’t witness any of that first hand. But my dad came home a war hero in the late 40’s, got married to my mom in 1949, had my sister in 1950 and then me and 3 more after that.
Judging by all the photographs from those times, the social scene was pretty crazy. I remember my parents going out quite a bit and leaving s with a baby sitter. I’d say every single weekend and then some. I can only imagine what it was like for the young adults that were still single. Lots of alcohol and loud jazz music.
One thing to remember. The alternative to going out on the town was staying home and reading a book or listening to the radio. The homes were not set up for entertainment - the televisions were tiny. Hardly anyone had a pool. There were no movie rentals - you had to go out. The more extroverted hosts would host card games or bore people with slide shows of their trip to whatever, or force friends to listen to an accordion performance.
Going out was the only way to really have fun and there were no drunk driving laws yet - and little fear of STDs. So yes, the dance halls were filled, as were the roller skating rinks, the bowling alleys, movie theaters, restaurants and everything else. Things were hopping after the war.
I'd go back even farther--to 1930, which should be obvious from my posts on fatima's and Kathy in Alaska's threads.
I hated and still hate “Rock Around The Clock”.
NOT Rock & Roll to me.
Elvis, Everly Brothers, Paul Anka, Buddy Holly were REAL Rock & Roll groups.
Rock & Roll really got going in the early sixties.
I was probably one of the last American kids to experience Saturday matinees. The US Army base in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, where my father worked as a Department of Defense Dependent Schools teacher, featured Saturday morning matinees. They would begin with a cartoon, and then a serial such as "Radar Men from the Moon," "Zorro's Black Whip," or "Panther Girl of the Kongo," and then the main feature would be a movie such as "Hands Across the Border" or "In Old Amarillo" starring Roy Rogers or even a horror movie such as "Dinosaurus."
Kids stateside could see all of these on TV, but the experience is not the same as seeing them in the theater.
50’s were great. $.15 hamburgers, rock and roll on AM radio, pizza parlor openings, every body had a new car, patriotic celebrations, a lot of American Pride, black people actually ran their own businesses and black men lived at home with their well behaved children. If there was a problem it was punks with black t shirts and cigarette pack in the sleeve. That was me. The punk that is.
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