All this talk of Elvis on Milton Berle put me in a nostalgiac mood ...
I was born in '51 and have 7 older siblngs...the first born in '38. My mom and dad are gone as are 2 brothers. When we were all together we agreed that the '50s and (for them) the years immediately after the war (the Big One) were fantastic. I pretty much grew up in a "Beaver Cleaver" household except my mom didn't wear pearls when house cleaning. We did wind up with one "black sheep" but even he eventually wound up to become a good citizen.
I wasn't an adult in the 50s, but my 50s experience was great. We had the neighbors who fought every Saturday night when the father came home drunk, but were in church on Sunday morning. We had the mean neighbor woman with the "grown over with weeds yard" who scared us and kept the ball if we hit it over her fence. Our doors were never locked. We played all over the neighborhood in safety. We rarely got by with anything because all the neighbors were outside sitting on their (front) porches. Happiness and joy was a baseball game on a wornout field in the middle of our neighborhood. My childhood even included milk and cookies after school. We had a retarded boy (yes "retarded" was an acceptable term) who lived across from us. We, meaning the neighborhood, loved him and protected him. He went everywhere we went. If anyone even thought about making fun of him we ganged up on them. Geesh, no one is ever going to believe it, but it's all true.
Of course there was sadness. Accidents happened. People died. We all came together as a neighborhood and helped the one in need. Even if it was the last piece of bologna in the fridge, it went to a hobo walking along the rr tracks nearby.
As a family, things were great from '65 to '80, I just personally wasn't too thrilled at the time. It was really hard being a conservative at that time.