[arthurus]

Use of "like" goes back at least to the 50s.

[Lee Heggy]

"Use of "like" goes back at least to the 50s"

It's a Maynard G. Krebs thang.

[Graybeard58]

Use of "like" goes back at least to the 50s.

My first recollection of it was when the "beatniks" used it in the early 50s.

[firebrand]

I don't think "like" goes back as far as the fifties in the current usage. "She was like" in place of "she goes," for the even older "she says," had been around for quite a while before I first saw it in a novel: Ann Tyler's The Accidental Tourist.