The Origin Of "The Fifties"

[BlueTrain]

My impressions were that the cultural changes we think of as the 1960s didn't happen until the 1970s, the summer of 1968 not withstanding. There were a lot of things going on and they were not necessarily related. There were also a lot of things that the more conservative people didn't like and there was something of a backlash that probably pretty much killed the progressiveness of the previous ten years. Likewise, it should not be assumed that tolerance meant approval. Anyone remember billboards that said, "Beautify America--Get a haircut!"

One of my cousins, six years older than me, never liked to tuck in his shirttail. Very 1950s. Now you see men dressed like that in catalogs, shirt unbuttoned, even.

 

[Bolero]

Late 61 was not a typo neither was it typical of Sociteies Cultural changes as they came in Mid 60's to late 60's, re Haight Ashbury, SF, etc..... its just what I noticed as change from early 1960 to late 61.

Lizzie you are correct in that the Detroit riots of 1967 were purely racial, having nothing to do with cultural change...
I lived those riots in a Detroit near suburb, wife and 2 little babies in a Duplex... next door was a Detroit Fireman stationed in the middle of the riot area, he had many, many scary stories that I cannot go into here.
The riots started early morning 2:30am or so in a Blind Pig on 12th street just Northwest of downtown Detroit City, a Blind Pig was a Bar establishment that had Gambling and Drinking going on after closing hours, 99% Black patronage...
several Detroit cops (all white in those days) got an attitude and raided the place, killing two black fellows, then all hell broke loose and mostly NW Detroit began rioting...
It was all un-necessary and very violent and did not serve the black community at all, it helped trigger further White Flight Migration.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The 1943 Detroit riot started from a misunderstanding during a traffic jam -- whites believed that blacks had attacked a white woman, black believed that a white cop had killed a black youth. The 1943 riot, though it's not as well remembered today, was as violent in terms of personal injury, as the 1967-68 riots. There were active efforts to get the media to suppress the full breadth of the Detroit riot in 1943 because it was seen as not helpful to the war effort, but it remained a very deep very vicious scar in the city long after. 1967 tore that scab off.

William N. Robson's radio documentary, "An Open Letter On Race Hatred," tried to ameliorate the national tension stemming from the 1943 riot, but any impact it had didn't last long. A few years later, Robson would find himself blacklisted for his views.

 

[kaiser]

When I lived in Detroit during the late 1980's I worked with a guy who was teenager at the time of the riot in 1943. He said that his Dad worked at Ford in Dearborn where Ford security people actively looked for people to make their way east of Woodward and join in the fight as they feared that the riot could spread to the western parts of the city. He said that he Dad said that the "order" came from the top.

 

[hbenthow]

My mother (born in 1950) grew up in Louisiana. She was a fan of Elvis from the moment she heard him, and her father and mother (born in 1927 and 1930, respectively) also loved him from the get-go and had no notion of him being too wild or rebellious (even though they were Catholics). Maybe it had something to do with their Cajun culture (I find that Elvis tends to appeal even more to southerners than to the population at large, and Cajuns in particular are famous for their Laissez les bons temps rouler! attitude). My grandmother was then and still is a huge fan of Fats Domino.

Neither my father or mother grew up with any fear of atomic annihilation. My mother recalls having been shown a film in school that portrayed KGB agents arresting Soviet citizens in the dead of night (implying that these people were never seen again thereafter), and the fear of communism* stuck with her because of it. But neither my father or mother recall anyone believing that nuclear destruction in America was likely to happen (despite being familiar with what atomic bombs were). The apparent attitude where they lived was that America would probably never be subjected to an atomic attack, and they couldn't do anything to change whether such a thing happened anyway, so life just went on. They and everyone they knew (to the best of their recollections) even payed virtually no attention to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

My maternal grandfather had a good job with the Ford Motor Company (he was promoted several times.) My grandmother (and my mother, once she was old enough) had part-time jobs cooking for the Ford workers. While they weren't poor, they (like many in rural and small town areas of the southern states) didn't have all of the modern conveniences that people in other areas of the country tended to have. They had electricity and running water, but no toilet or refrigerator (they had an outhouse and an icebox). However, my mother's richer friend (who lived in a plantation house that still had a patched-up hole in the wall from a Civil War cannonball) had the aforementioned modern conveniences.

My father (born in 1953) grew up in a fairly middle class environment. His father was the owner of a butcher shop in a small Louisiana town, and his mother was considered to have made a great "catch" by marrying him (she was the daughter of a "dirt farmer"). If I'm not mistaken, they had all the typical modern conveniences you'd expect a middle class person of the 1950s to have, but certainly weren't anything like Ward and June Cleaver in temperament or personality (let's just say that they weren't very "mild-mannered", and leave it at that).

* Speaking of communism, my father's great aunt escaped from Hungary, and had frequent nightmares about communists coming to arrest her in the middle of the night (something she had witnessed happening to others in Hungary). When the movie "Easy Rider" was being filmed, a scene was shot outside her house in the middle of the night, without her permission. She was awakened by bright lights that made her yard look as bright as day. She assumed that the communists had come for her, took out her shotgun, and fired at the film crew. To this day, I still don't know if she was just firing a warning shot, or was actually trying to hit them.

 

[EngProf]

My mother (born in 1950) grew up in Louisiana. She was a fan of Elvis from the moment she heard him, and her father and mother (born in 1927 and 1930, respectively) also loved him from the get-go and had no notion of him being too wild or rebellious (even though they were Catholics). Maybe it had something to do with their Cajun culture (I find that Elvis tends to appeal even more to southerners than to the population at large, and Cajuns in particular are famous for their Laissez les bons temps rouler! attitude). My grandmother was then and still is a huge fan of Fats Domino.

Neither my father or mother grew up with any fear of atomic annihilation. My mother recalls having been shown a film in school that portrayed KGB agents arresting Soviet citizens in the dead of night (implying that these people were never seen again thereafter), and the fear of communism* stuck with her because of it. But neither my father or mother recall anyone believing that nuclear destruction in America was likely to happen (despite being familiar with what atomic bombs were). The apparent attitude where they lived was that America would probably never be subjected to an atomic attack, and they couldn't do anything to change whether such a thing happened anyway, so life just went on. They and everyone they knew (to the best of their recollections) even payed virtually no attention to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

My maternal grandfather had a good job with the Ford Motor Company (he was promoted several times.) My grandmother (and my mother, once she was old enough) had part-time jobs cooking for the Ford workers. While they weren't poor, they (like many in rural and small town areas of the southern states) didn't have all of the modern conveniences that people in other areas of the country tended to have. They had electricity and running water, but no toilet or refrigerator (they had an outhouse and an icebox). However, my mother's richer friend (who lived in a plantation house that still had a patched-up hole in the wall from a Civil War cannonball) had the aforementioned modern conveniences.

My father (born in 1953) grew up in a fairly middle class environment. His father was the owner of a butcher shop in a small Louisiana town, and his mother was considered to have made a great "catch" by marrying him (she was the daughter of a "dirt farmer"). If I'm not mistaken, they had all the typical modern conveniences you'd expect a middle class person of the 1950s to have, but certainly weren't anything like Ward and June Cleaver in temperament or personality (let's just say that they weren't very "mild-mannered", and leave it at that).

* Speaking of communism, my father's great aunt escaped from Hungary, and had frequent nightmares about communists coming to arrest her in the middle of the night (something she had witnessed happening to others in Hungary). When the movie "Easy Rider" was being filmed, a scene was shot outside her house in the middle of the night, without her permission. She was awakened by bright lights that made her yard look as bright as day. She assumed that the communists had come for her, took out her shotgun, and fired at the film crew. To this day, I still don't know if she was just firing a warning shot, or was actually trying to hit them.

Where you were in the US during the 1950's and '60's probably had some influence on whether you thought you would be blown up in a nuclear attack.
I spent my early years in Detroit and there was no doubt we were a prime target - for sure. We not only did the "duck and cover" drills, but each kid had a Civil Defense (CD) tag issued with our name and our blood type on it so they could help us after the bombs went off (or identify us). Since my blood type was A-positive, my tag had a big "A+" on it. I told my friends that the government had graded us and I was the best.

After moving to Nashville in the latter part of the fifties there was less concern about being wiped out. We would debate whether the Russians would consider us a priority target or not and worth a bomb.
For example, my father obtained information on how to build a fallout shelter, but never got around to actually building one.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you lived anywhere in the Northeast, you knew you were finished if the missles went off. I lived about two miles from the fuel depot that supplied the easternmost fleet of B-52 bombers, and every year -- well into the 1960s -- the local paper published a pull-out "What To Do In The Event Of An Air Raid" section that we always kept in a drawer in the kitchen. Our town's air raid siren was on my street, and was tested twice daily.

That said, I was most terrified as an adult in the 1980s. "We have signed legislation to outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes" was not a funny joke.

 

[Fading Fast]

Growing up outside of NYC, you knew if it happened, you'd be toast, but somehow, it was a concern but (for my family and me personally - not commenting on how anyone else then or now felt) we weren't actively worried about it the same we we do terrorism like San Bernardino, Paris, etc. I think we - and we never talked about it this way - believed MAD would prevent it from happening, but terrorist takes just one or a few individuals.

I remember the reports of Reagan's "we begin bombing..." comments coming over the radio. I believe it was - at the time - present as him making a joke that wasn't suppose to be caught on air, but later I also heard it was one of those "intentional" slip ups - a psy ops thing. Has there ever been a definitive answer on that one - true accident or planed? Also, at the time, being told it was just a "dead mike" joke, I took it at face value and it didn't concern me - maybe I was / am a fool.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was working in radio when it happened -- it was not heard on the live feed down the network line. I learned about it when it was revealed on the UPI wire later that afternoon, after the actual broadcast -- I think it was a three-bell URGENT, not a bulletin or a flash, so it was considered a significant story but not a break-into-the-program story.

It was leaked to the media either by someone either on the broadcast crew at the White House, or by the White House itself, so you can draw your conclusions from that. Psy-ops or not, I remember that my reaction was disgust. Some jokes just aren't funny, no matter who makes them.

 

[Fading Fast]

I was working in radio when it happened -- it was not heard on the live feed down the network line. I learned about it when it was revealed on the UPI wire later that afternoon, after the actual broadcast -- I think it was a three-bell URGENT, not a bulletin or a flash, so it was considered a significant story but not a break-into-the-program story.

It was leaked to the media either by someone either on the broadcast crew at the White House, or by the White House itself, so you can draw your conclusions from that. Psy-ops or not, I remember that my reaction was disgust. Some jokes just aren't funny, no matter who makes them.

I remember there was a reasonably big media / political storm around it at the time, with the usual sides lining up as you would expect. However, I was in college in the time, and it went by with hardly a ripple - even though, some segment of the college population is very political and will protest or advocate loudly for their beliefs - and of course the college paper editorials commented on it, but the day-to-day political "noise" didn't get louder for that one.

 

[VintageEveryday]

What annoys me is the people who pine for the romance of the 1950s. The Poodle skirt version, anyway. That never really existed, as we already know. It annoys me that ( for example) those time warp wives (they have several videos about them on youtube) go out of their way to fill every inch of their homes in stereotypical 1950s things. Everything's pastel, polka dotted, black, white, chrome. The woman looks like a pinup model as opposed to a housewife, the guy looks more like Leave it to Beaver than a breadwinner. It's so kitschy and artificial. I have a soft spot for tastefully done 1950s style, but i like the borderline art deco version of decorating. My point is is that the kitschy stereotypical decor and behavior of these time warp wives is enhancing the poodle skirt stereotype of the decade.

 

[2jakes]

What annoys me is the people who pine for the romance of the 1950s. The Poodle skirt version, anyway. That never really existed, as we already know. It annoys me that ( for example) those time warp wives (they have several videos about them on youtube) go out of their way to fill every inch of their homes in stereotypical 1950s things. Everything's pastel, polka dotted, black, white, chrome. The woman looks like a pinup model as opposed to a housewife, the guy looks more like Leave it to Beaver than a breadwinner. It's so kitschy and artificial. I have a soft spot for tastefully done 1950s style, but i like the borderline art deco version of decorating. My point is is that the kitschy stereotypical decor and behavior of these time warp wives is enhancing the poodle skirt stereotype of the decade.

I found it odd that '50s television shows depicted mothers/wives "dressed up" at home doing kitchen work.
My mother dressed up when going out in public. We all did, whether to the store or movie downtown. But not at home.
I don’t recall seeing people in shorts, tanks tops at the stores or downtown like I
see today at the malls.

There’s one thing that was different where I was raised.
I grew up with five sisters in the 50s.
In my part of town, poodle skirts and “pompadour” teased hair was the uniform.
Every girl in school wore those huge skirts.
And if you didn’t watch "American Bandstand” hosted by Dick Clark , you were
considered an L7.

I was an L7 because I preferred the “Mickey Mouse Club” but they wouldn't let
me watch it.

 

[GHT]

Neither my father or mother grew up with any fear of atomic annihilation.

That's a thought that I have often pondered on. The Baby Boomer generation were so called because of the population explosion following WW2. Why would you invest in a large family if you thought that they could, or would, be vapourised at the touch of a button?

I found it odd that '50s television shows depicted mothers/wives "dressed up" at home doing kitchen work.

If Eva Gabor had dressed down in Green Acres, would it have been so successful a sitcom?

 

[2jakes]

I found it odd that '50s television shows depicted mothers/wives "dressed up" at home doing kitchen work.

If Eva Gabor had dressed down in Green Acres, would it have been so
successful a sitcom?

If Audrey Meadows had dressed up in “The Honeymooners”, would it have been so
successful a sitcom?

 

[BlueTrain]

I keep wondering if the baby boom generation is an accurate term. My father was one of twelve, my mother one of five. Yet no family in our neighborhood had more than three and most no more than two. Historically, families were always large, if people actually got married. But families in the 1940s and 1950s were never that large. My wife, though, was one of four. But she claims that her father wouldn't stop until he had a boy, which was the last one. On the other hand, both of her parents, both born in the 1920s, only had one sibling. Both my parents were born before WWI. So it may be that compared with the birth rate between the wars, the post-WWII birth rate may have surged.

Sometimes, thinking back, it seems like different parts of my hometown were in different decades. There were a couple of real mid-century modern houses. One was proudly advertised as an all-electric house. It had a "car port." The other, which I frequently visited, had a tiny kitchen, a double garage, an open floor plan, a cathedral ceiling and a most unusual feature of a bathroom with an outside door. It was a rather small house, too, as was the other. But most houses in town were at least fifteen or twenty years old by the time I came along. My next door neighbor, a widow woman, had blond Scandinavian living room furniture.

Motion pictures undoubtedly influenced us as teenagers but not necessarily in the way you would expect. For instance, I loved the "beach movies" of the early 60s. The ones with Annette Funicello. Clearly they were all set (and filmed) in Southern California but I never really made any particular association with California from watching those movies. In fact, they probably had little influence on my life at all, not directly, anyway. They just made me go to the movies more often.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Baby Boom" simply refers to the overall national birth rate, which jumped from a Depression-era level of about one and a half births per hundred women per year to over two per hundred per year in the years after the war. That doesn't seem like much when you look at it that way, but it was enough to produce 78 million people during that particular statistical anomaly. That was enough of a burp for that generation -- and especially the first half of that generation -- to dominate American social, political, and popular culture for far longer than any other generation in the last hundred and twenty years or so. That's why it's significant, not the simple numbers.

It's likely, though, for a lot of reasons, that the millennial generation will exceed that record.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I'm among the earliest Boomers - born in 1947. One of the features of growing up in the 50s was the frantic pace of school building. Towns all over America were putting up schools in advance of the kids starting classes. Kids starting college were encouraged to go into education because the shortage of teachers was so acute. Sometime kids went half days because the new high school wasn't finished yet and they had to go to school in shifts. The old square building on a block was abandoned because they couldn't expand. Instead towns purchased huge lots and adopted the Bauhaus style so they could throw out new wings or run up multiple stories as needed. I've revisited schools I attended in the 50s and early 60s and they have wings and stories that weren't there when I attended. In the small Texas town where I graduated from high school, the Boom was advancing and the town itself was booming during those years. The class of 1960 had fewer than 100 students in it. Mine, the class of '65, had more than 640.

 

[BlueTrain]

I suspect that was true everywhere, the building of new schools. It's still going on, too, where I live. At the same time, they're tearing down old schools where I'm from in West Virginia, because of the decline in population. In general, I'd say that both immigration both from abroad and from other states has resulted in a continual need for new schools. In places with a declining population, they have consolidated schools and have sometimes built new and larger school to accommodate the larger student body in individual schools. They were still building one room schools in parts of West Virginia in the 1950s, incredibly enough.

In my hometown, I attended junior high school in the building my mother graduated from high school in 1932 (when she was 20!). But it had a recent addition. My father never attended high school. I went to the new high school. Previously, there had been three primary schools and one high school but I'm not sure what the grade distribution was. Since then, there has been yet another, even larger, high school, the old high school being demoted to middle school. The junior high I attended had a fire but the addition remains in use as an elementary school. One of the old elementary schools was torn down, one is no longer used but the other still is. They also have something called "intermediate schools," grades 3-5, others are K-6. There was no kindergarten when I was in school.

 

[2jakes]

I remember it as pre-primer and amazingly still exists in the streets of Laredo,
where I first discovered that some penguins could be mean when
I couldn’t regurgitate the prayer completely when I was six.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother, who attended school in the 1940s, attended her first two years in a two-room school, before moving up to a three-room school built in 1930 for the rest of grade school. I started school in the 1960s in that same three-room school for my first two years, and then moved up to a slick new elementary school built in 1962 for the rest of my grade school years. But we both attended the same high school, built in 1949 -- and a real dump by the time I got there. The 1960s elementary school was also falling apart by then, and by the late '80s was condemned, around the same time the fire department burned down the 1930 school for practice.

The big building wave hit in the early 90s in that town -- and it was boomer parents who insisted on it, given that the district had lost its accreditation due to the shoddy condition of its facilities. The 1962 school was torn down for a new one, and the 1949 high school was reconfigured in such a way as to be unrecognizable. Today kids in that district enjoy facilities that my generation could have only dreamed of. Imagine not eating lunch in a coal bin.