What were the 1950s like?

YouTube ^ | April 28 | Me

[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?

[Albion Wilde]

Eisenhower was often viewed portrayed by envious Democrats 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.

As Ppresident, he did as he had done as a commanding general, which was to organize objectives and goals and expect people to perform, without fanfare. He did not work for the applause, or nightly television PR, or clicks and likes. He did amazing things, such as the first Civil Rights bill since Reconstruction, initiating the superhighway system, integrating the military and government schools, and continuing to put peace initiatives in place with foreign countries. And the liberal presstitutes whined and complained.

[dfwgator]

Next to Reagan, Ike is my favorite President.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Yes, it cracks me up that kids think they are living lightly on the earth when they throw away pounds of single-use plastic every day!

Before 1960, hardly any products came in plastic containers. As you say, cloth sacks, paper bags, waxed kraft paper wrap for meat and fish, metal toothpaste tubes (that stayed squished and didn’t spring back!), even glass jars for toiletries.

I’m watching the first seasons of “Death Valley Days” and look for how things were wrapped for customers in the general stores. Early kraft wrapping paper and twine in abundance. Of course, kraft paper required the Kraft process and paper mills and they were fairly new at the turn of the 20th Century. The kraft process was invented by Carl F. Dahl in 1879 in Danzig, Prussia, Germany. U.S. patent 296,935 was issued in 1884, and a pulp mill using this technology began in Sweden in 1890.

I didn’t know that the kraft process was invented in Danzig. That happens to be where my Dad was born!

[dfwgator]

Before 1960, hardly any products came in plastic containers.

I blame him...

[ridesthemiles]

I was born in 1939.

I remember my dad taking me to Truax AFB to watch planes flying out at night, during WW II.

I remember the farm a mile away that raised MINKS & they were very angry at the AIR FORCE JET planes that panicked the MINKS. They would attack and kill each other.

I remember picking strawberries in the early daylight at a neighbor farm. Got paid by the box.

I remember riding my pony all around & learning where all the wild asparagus plants were & bringing some home. I also knew where “Jack In The Pulpit” plants grew. Could get water for both of us at any farm nearby & SOMETIMES even a fresh cookie. Could ride at a walk—for hours...bareback.

I remember a one room school = 8 grades-14 kids-1 teacher & a MERRY GO ‘ROUND. Water was brought in every day in a milk can & put into a dispenser. 2 out houses behind the school.

I remember taking care of 40+ dairy cows/calves/pigs/7 boarded horses/ chickens/ sheep & Labrador puppies (for Christmas presents) all over in the kitchen. 3 bitches== over 30 puppies. A scissor gate at door of kitchen. Breaking ice for horse water—STILL DO THAT TODAY. Searching in the snow for halters ONE horse could always get off.

I remember trudging to the barn in winter & shoving the sliding door aside & going into a WARM BARN Full of cows.

I remember squirting milk to a ‘barn cat’-—but you could NOT pick them up-—They were WILD. I remember getting kicked a few times when power was out & e had to milk by hand.

I remember carrying 10 gallon cans of Fresh milk (with my brother) from the barn to the milk house where a concrete tank full of cold water held the milk until the truck came & picked up, leaving clean cans. When the milk truck couldn’t get thru the snow-—milk went to the pigs.

I remember “SNOW FORTS” on each side of the 2 lane road & snowball fights across the road at recess. Piles of snow pushed up by the plow could get high enough some winters to “Touch the glass insulators” on the phone poles.

I remember “multiple cords hanging down from the driveway light for “head bolt heaters” so vehicles would start. COLD WISCONSIN WINTERS.

I remember the farm manager using COCA COLA SYRUP on bolts that had rusted. ===Overnight & the lug nuts came loose. (THAT STILL IS TRUE)

I remember school bus rides to football games in other towns & being forbidden from singing “99 Bottles of Beer”. Bus driver (Chemistry teacher) would pullover & stop until we behaved.

I remember Tues May 21, 1957—2 days before graduation & watching it SNOW outside the windows of English class.

I remember that all our Proms were the night before the marching band competitions & getting NO sleep before marching & playing.

I remember EVERYTHING getting deathly quiet just before a possible tornado & OPENING up all house windows & ALL the livestock getting out into the middle of the fields away from trees. Then-when threat passed, running around & CLOSING all the windows because rain was coming.

I remember moving oats from the opening in the upper level of the barn into a LARGE bin with a flat wooden “rake” as the oats were coming off the elevator into the bin closest to the barn wall. Never could wear a good enough face covering against the dust.

I remember making “Forts” in the hay mow where we could play in winter. 40++ cows ==ALOT of bales of hay.

I remember being on the top of the bales on the trailer behind the baler & when a wheel ran over a rock, the trailer would rock ALOT at the top. I HATED THAT. Was always afraid I would fall.

I remember large litters of cute baby pigs & wanting to play with them, but being forbidden from doing so because MAMA SOWS are REALLY dangerous.

I remember stealing a bottle of JIM BEAM from my mother’s stash & putting it into the chicken water dispenser. DRUNK chickens are very funny-—but no eggs for 3-4 days wasn’t when 7 people ate eggs at every breakfast.

I remember gathering cows in late day for milking on my Welsh pony-—and the time our 2 year old bull chased me back & forth. BULL went to OSCAR MAYER the next day. WE continued Artificial Insemination. THAT IS the REAL AI ....

I remember I bought my first car—1957 Pontiac when I turned 18 in 1957 and spent a lot of time outrunning the County Deputies-—they could NOT catch me. (Today you get a ticket in the mail:”You were observed’...) IN those days, they HAD TO CATCH YOU.

I remember I was #2 on the police “HOT SHEET” for my street racing-—#1 was a guy who became very successful with sprint cars & midgets.

Would NOT TRADE THAT ONE ROOM SCHOOL EDUCATION FOR ANYTHING.

LOTS of other memories...

Still have ANNUAL HS reunions. Class was 93. I think we are now down to about 40.

[linMcHlp]

Yep. Also, the milkman brought eggs, cheese, cream, milk.

[wgmalabama]

I was born 25 years too late or 100 years to early. Gen-x

[ridesthemiles]

Chicken feed came in patterned cotton & was used for dish towels. I STILL HAVE A COUPLE-—FROM THE 50’s.

[ridesthemiles]

Eisenhower built the Interstate highway system because when WW II broke out-—it took over 5 days to move military unit convoys across the country-—and they had PRIORITY.

[Bob Wills is still the king]

Here’s Merle for a reminder. Charlie Pride also did a great version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu_8M2L6kHY

[Albion Wilde]

Thanks for your interesting post about kraft paper (for the uninitiated, it is the various grades of brown paper used for wrapping or constructing corrugated cartons).

We were fortunate as a nation to have abundant timber. All that scrap wood pulp and sawdust from the mills, and also cotton rags and scrap fiber from textile mills, is the raw material for sturdy paper. I toured paper mills as part of my job in the 80s. The sour stink of the fermenting paper mash was overpowering! And the paper-making machinery was amazing.

Because paper in the 1950s used to be made from original fibers, it was higher quality than the recycled stuff of today, where the fibers have been broken down again and again. Even the tissue paper that they wrapped your clothing purchases in at the department store was such excellent quality, home sewers saved it to make patterns with.

One of the delights of my childhood was receiving the shirt cardboards around which my dad’s business shirts came folded from the dry cleaners. My mom did all the laundry for the entire family, adults and kids, except for those five white shirts, washed, starched and steam pressed at the cleaners. Some of the shirt cardboards were just coarse-textured and gray; but sometimes they would come with a white paper coating on one side. The gray ones could be used to construct small containers, or houses and roadways for toy cars, but the white-on-one-side ones were great “canvases” for pencil drawings or tempera water color paintings!

[Albion Wilde]

Chicken feed came in patterned cotton & was used for dish towels. I STILL HAVE A COUPLE-—FROM THE 50’s.

Yep! "Flour sack dresses" were a big thing for little girls, and some grown women. Big sellers at the church bazaar. I still have one of my grandmother's flour-sack aprons from that era!

[ridesthemiles]

OUR farm house had running indoor water-—about around us did now.

DAD bought 120 acres/house/barns/other outbuildings/2 tractors/other machinery in Nov 1947 for $12,000. House & building were circa 1903 or so. AIR FORCE vet was our farm manager. Dad had a full time job. Made $12,000 a year-—I h was A LOT in those days.

I HAVE THE ABSTRACT from that land. Goes back to about 1852.

We got TV around 1950 & it went off at 11 PM.

WE pasteurized our own milk—2.5 gallons every other day. NO cafeteria—even in high school.

PB & J sandwiches for 4 kids every day===a WHOLE LOAF of Wonder bread.

HOMEWORK was mandatory & bedtime was 9:30 PM thru 11th grade.
Later on Friday nights if a game.

Could buy 8 oz of milk in carton for 5 cents at high School-— but NO cafeteria.

Also had school lockers with NO locks-—never a problem.

Had HOME EC classes & was in 4-H. Showed a heifer at County Fair.

Friday night football/ basketball was the most entertainment we had.

When A & W opened up in town of 4100-—THAT was a BIG DEAL.

Today, ALOT of our farm is now HOUSES & APARTMENTS-—TOO MANY & TOO CLOSE TOGETHER.

MY Welsh pony could find a way to get out & we could always find her cozied up to a neighbor draft horse who was grazed on a chain...next door. She lived to about 27.

Hunting season-—all HS kids old enough to drive always had guns on racks inside their truck cabs. NEVER AN ISSUE.

WE had at least 7 long guns in the house & there were NO keys for the doors. Old fashioned skeleton keys. House was never locked.

This thread has opened up the floodgates.....

[ridesthemiles]

Good for you.

I also remember ‘MILK STRAINER PAD DOLLS’.

There was a STRAINER that fit into the bottom of the WIDE funnel used to pour milk from the milker into the 10 gallon cans. I could use some of those-— UNUSED-—with different colors of yarn to make “BIG HOOP SKIRTS/shawls/ & BIG HATS on dolls.

Mostly, I was a bookworm.

[ridesthemiles]

DID NOT have running water inside

[RckyRaCoCo]

Dad wore a fedora and I wanted one.

The insurance salesman who came to our house had one...made the mistake of leaving it in the living room with us little 1950's innocent (devils) while he was in the kitchen trying to sell insurance to my parents.

...doubt my parents bought insurance that day

...pretty sure the salesman had to buy a new hat

[fidelis]

I was very young but it seemed every woman wore a dress....men wore suit coats and ties to church...

I wear a suit and tie to church. I probably stand out like a sore thumb, but I don't care. I know God accepts us just as we are, but out of love and respect for God we should go before him wearing the best that we have. Not every man can afford to run out and buy a suit these days, but even slacks, a clean shirt, and a tie (easily found at a second-hand store) is an upgrade from the sandals, cargo shorts and wife-beater shirts I often see there. And, yes, I wish women would wear dresses more often. I appreciate the ones that do.

[fidelis]

I was very young but it seemed every woman wore a dress....men wore suit coats and ties to church...

I wear a suit and tie to church. I probably stand out like a sore thumb, but I don't care. I know God accepts us just as we are, but out of love and respect for God we should go before him wearing the best that we have. Not every man can afford to run out and buy a suit these days, but even slacks, a clean shirt, and a tie (easily found at a second-hand store) is an upgrade from the sandals, cargo shorts and wife-beater shirts I often see there. And, yes, I wish women would wear dresses more often. I appreciate the ones that do.

[nomorelurker]

“This thread has opened up the floodgates.....”

Getting up at 4 AM to help Dad and Uncle feed hay to about 100 cows on week days finished that in time to ride bike to school.
Hay bails were stored in old abandoned sharecropper houses. Fun handling bails of hay with coons, possums and skunks in the dark at 5 AM on 20 degree mornings.
Mother sewed together flour sacks so late summer brother and I could pick cotton still remember the 25 cents when I first got paid.
We went to school in town but the rural schools all shut down during the cotton harvest so whole families could pick cotton most money they made all year.
Going to cotton gin with grandfather, manager was always a man who had lost one arm to all the machines.

Late 1950’s NE Texas.

[JAKraig]

I was just a kid in the 50’s but I remember them well. Women for the most part didn’t work outside the home, they raised their kids. People didn’t lock doors, I remember once when my parents sold their home and bought another they went to closing and they were asked for keys to the house, they didn’t have any. They had to get a lock smith to put locks on the house with keys to complete the sale.

Kids played outside until supper time. You could hear parents on their front porch hollering their kid’s name to come home for supper. Seems like everybody did that. It was a time of feeling safe and secure. You knew who your neighbors were and which ones would tell on you if you did something you weren’t supposed to do.

It was a time when if a girl got in trouble, that’s what we used to call it, that she would go away to visit some aunt or cousin somewhere, have the baby and give it up for adoption, and nobody was supposed to be the wiser, it would likely never be mentioned in mixed company.

I remember when we got our first TV, it was a little 8” job. There was only one TV station at the time, I think it was 1953, we were supposed to be one of the first 1000 people in Louisville, Kentucky to have purchased a TV.

It wasn’t all good. There were truly poor people who didn’t have running water in their homes, people that used an outhouse. I remember visiting someone once who had an outhouse and I needed to go, ulgh! What a stinky dirty experience. From then on I never needed to go when I visited there again. I remember someone visiting us that didn’t have running water in their house, the kids flushed the toilet over and over again.

There weren’t any plastic containers, everything was glass or paper. Supermarket bags were paper.

I remember when the first McDonalds opened in our town, I think the burgers were fifteen cents. The white Castle was in existence before the McDonalds and their hamburgers were only six cents.

Seems like bowling was a thing back then and little league baseball. Soft drinks like Upper Ten, Seven UP, Teem and many others were really a big thing then. Seems like everybody smoked. I remember that everybody I knew smoked, I started when I was 11. My parents weren’t happy about it and told me it would stunt my growth, I’m 6’4”, but I did quit over 50 years ago. Beer and cigarette commercials dominated TV advertising.

There was no such thing as seat belts or interstate highways and if you had 65000 miles on a car it was time to get rid of it. I remember a Mercedes ad that the guy in the ad was bragging about he had gotten 150000 miles on his Mercedes.

Nobody talked back to their elders back then and a father’s word was the law. You might go to your mom and try to get her to make your dad see it your way but you didn’t bank on it.

I remember my first job after school was for seventy five cents an hour then the minimum wage came in and they gave me a dollar and a quarter an hour when the minimum wage was a dollar, I thought I was rich. The store I worked for would pay everybody in cash each week. There was a long table. You would get your pay, then pay the federal tax, then the state tax then the city tax, then the Social Security and last but not least the unemployment tax. I loved it and wish it were that way today. We knew how much money we made and how much we paid in taxes.

I can’t say that I particularly miss those days, certainly parts of it I miss but today we all seem to be so rich. Everybody I know has more than one car, hardly anybody did back then. Everybody today has a cell phone, back then there was one phone in the house, if you were lucky. Maybe some well off guy had a window air-conditioner but people didn’t have A/C back then but now everybody does, even in their cars.

We live more comfortably now and there really aren’t any destitute poor around, today you know somebody is poor because they weigh 400 pounds.

I have no desire to go back to those days but there were some good things about them.