I was born in 1957. Dwight Eisenhower was in the second term of his Presidency. I remember the black-and-yellow fallout shelter signs posted on the sturdiest public buildings letting you know where to seek safety in case of nuclear attack from Russia. I remember when teenage girls and women wore crinolines (look it up) and everyone was dancing the Peppermint Twist. I watched the Beatles come over from England for the first time to perform on Ed Sullivan, and I know exactly where I was when John Kennedy was assassinated. The later '50s and most of the '60s, the nerdy boys wore narrow black ties with white cotton short sleeve dress shirts and pocket protectors and crewcuts. The racy boys wore pure white T-shirts tucked into blue jeans with their cigarette packs rolled up inside the sleeve, carried Zippo lighters and drove Thunderbirds, Corvettes, old Cadillacs and Chevy Bel Airs.
The girls wore crinolines under skirts and dresses and yes, there were poodle skirts, bobby socks and patent leather shoes. If you were gay you were in hiding, and sometimes you were a suicide from the strain of it all. If you were black you stayed in your black world, and in the South of that time you did not use the same rest rooms nor eateries as the white man, you did not walk the same side of the street as a white woman, and voting was a new privilege.
If you were in any way out of the norm of the day in your religious outlooks or lack thereof, race, sexual orientation or career aspirations, you could be sure of no opportunity to live and work openly as an individual true to yourself, and plenty of criticism because you were different.
Women aspiring to things other than housewifery had few avenues for their aspirations.
Personal depressions and discontents were widespread and hidden. Very little real help was available to those struggling with mental illnesses or general unhappiness, and nothing was out in the open. If you had a brother who was depressed, or a suicide, or "not doing well", it was Not Discussed. Not in public, not at the dinner table, not in church. If a person really derailed, he or she was institutionalized. If someone was beating the stuffing out of his children behind closed dooors no one knew and if they did they never said.
People watched Leave It To Beaver and couldn't figure out why their own family wasn't like that.
Things were superficial and surface. If your lawn was mown, your house well-kept, your family showing no outward cracks, if everybody stuck with their particular program as dictated by their race, sex, income, religion and social strata, then things were just fine.
Cars were CARS - Chevelles, Cougars, Chargers, Barracudas, Furies, Camaros, GTOs, Sunliners, the cars were the art of the era. Big, fast, beautiful. Chrome, winged hood ornaments, flash. The cars and the music, they were the thing. You cruised around, you dragraced, you went to drive-in movies and drive-in diners where chicks on rollerskates hooked your food tray on the edge of your rolled-down window.
John Kennedy's death marked the beginning of 24 hour news coverage as we know it today, a television watermark. I watched live as Jack Ruby shot Lee Oswald to death, an unprecedented experience until that day, now taken for granted.
The government got monies for NASA, and men walked on the moon. Rock and roll was not here to stay, and was blown to bits by the Beatles and the Stones and later, psychedelic junk by stoned-out kids on electric guitars.
Lots of things are better today, and lots aren't. It's a lot easier to be who you are today, and a lot easier to get help if you're not okay or somebody's beating you to a jelly behind closed doors. Issues such as child abuse, domestic violence, any sorts of family or emotional distress can now be discussed and addressed openly, and dealt with in much better ways.
It's a lot more okay now to be not affiliated with any particular religion, or to reject religion. Race and sexual orientation are non-issues everywhere except in the most closed and backward of environments.
T.V. is better. Growing up, the whole country had three channels - ABC, CBS, NBC. You got them in on your antenna as best you could. Now, there's everything. Food Network. ESPN. FOX CNN. Bravo. A and E. et al et al.
There was no 911 emergency network. You dialed "O" for operator and she got the cops, or the fire guys, or the ambulance. It was slow, often fatally slow.
We grew up under the stalemated threat of nuclear fun and games with Russia, and then the long nightmare of VietNam. We had Lyndon Johnson as president, one of the worst this country has ever suffered under. In '67 the nation started to slide full-tilt into drugs and deep discontent, and Martin King and Bobby Kennedy were both shot to death during our time. In the space of five years my generation experienced the assassinations of three of the most pivotal figures of the time, Kennedy, King, Kennedy. It was not a good time.
Today, cars should be ashamed to call themselves cars, they're so monotonous and boring. But clothes and furnishings and decor all beat the '50s with a very big stick; I believe all '50s suburban furniture has been burnt, which is as it should be.
Kids today generally are too lazy, they've got it too easy, they're for the most part overprotected for far too long, are developing little common sense or practical skills, and they for the most part do not think well or originally and demonstrate no wish to. The kids of the '50s and early '60s put today's kids right in the shade and leave them there.
Today few have a driving work ethic, and many do not value the things they have. Most don't have to work for what they have, unlike past generations. Since the economic boom of the '80s, which has never really ended, U.S. youth have gone soft. The kids who are lean, driven, fit and strong are the minority now, whereas they were the majority for all our history until now.
There's a lot more I could write about those times, but that's a thumbnail picture.
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