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Someone on the forum sent me this link. Since he isn't posting it, then I'll do so for you other old farts. You younger guys might enjoy looking at this bit of history with 50's background music. It's really cool 
http://oldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheFifties
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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JimB
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Registered: December 2006
Messages: 349
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Yep, I remember it all well!! And yes, it was great to revisit it all. Also a big yes to Mom being much more of a threat than the principal.
Thank you Paul!
JimB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Amazed the 57 "Nash" metropolitan made it. That was an English car designed for the US market. They did their best to disguise it, but see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Metropolitan for the parentage.
A few stayed in England and you can see them at classic car events
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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unsui
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Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
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No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 18:06] |
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Like Timmy, almost the only thing I recognised was the Nash Metropolitan.
I got to be 16 on December 4 1950. My parents never had a car until I encouraged my mother to learn to drive in the mid '60s and my father bought her a car. He never could drive!
But we had an austere time of it then. Rationing didn't end until 1953. Today I shopped in a supermarket; the quality and variety we take for granted today was unthinkable even in 1959.
I spent two years in the Royal Navy doing national service before going to university. Military service was tougher then, I think.
I think the Wolfenden Report (on homosexuality and prostitution) was published in 1957 and recommended repealing the laws that prescribed prison for men that got caught. It took ten years before the law got repealed. Sir John Wolfenden's son Jeremy was my age and I met him occasionally. He was a bit of an embarrassment to his father because he was very out and very promiscuous. As Philip Larkin put it "Sex was invented in 1963".
I still have the guide to the Festival of Britain (1951) and I went to the exhibition on the South Bank twice. It's full of the British version of the furniture of those days. Drabber and more utilitarian than the US versions.
Everybody smoked. Every man wore a hat. It took many years before bright colours and lightweight fabrics got into clothes. Most swimwear, for example was knitted wool.
We had no central heating. In winter we would wake up to find ice on the inside of the windows. One walked everywhere or used public transport - in London the combination of buses and tubes made it easy to go anywhere and usually a lot quicker than today. But we walked! In 1955 I invited a friend to dinner at home with my parents and we talked until all the buses had stopped running so I walked him home and then walked back to my own bed - Hampstead to Chelsea and back is about twelve miles!
Sorry! I got carried away. I blame Paul.
Love,
Anthony
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Wow! Us kids find you old guys' lives fascinating.
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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Altho I was never abused physically, I was emotionally. But setting all that aside I remember how uncluttered life was in the 50s. Everybody played baseball in a vacant field down the road from the house. We all walked to the neighborhood store (Food Town)and traded in the empty bottles we had found for a nickle apeace. The Saturday matinee at the theater was 10 cents to get in, a bag of popcorn was a dime and a coke was a nickel, 3 hours of total happiness for 25 cents. The first new car I remember was a 1952 Plymouth. Actually I think as kids we were just oblivious to the things that adults had to deal with. Its odd but things seemed bigger then. Our front yard was small but seemed like 100 achers when we had to mow it with a push mower. Oh well, I ramble.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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of COURSE the Metropolitan was a piece of shit! It was an Austin!
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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unsui
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Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
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No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 18:06] |
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unsui
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Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
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No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 18:06] |
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Everyone was less risk-averse then. Cars didn't have seat belts. No one wore bicycle helmets. Food containers weren't tamper-proofed. Loose dogs roamed our neighborhood. As a six-year-old, I walked alone to friends' houses several blocks away. My kids never had that experience.
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Dear Roger,
Thank you for rambling. I wouldn't want to be the only one!
And, yes, the freedom to wander was much greater for children then. For most of 1944 I was nine years old and I travelled daily to school and back - about a mile to walk to the station, then a journey of six stops on the tube, then I got out at Hampstead and had quite a short walk to school.
My nine year old grandchildren have never walked to school or back alone and it's only about a mile and a half. When they were smaller (seven) and went to their local primary school which was only about 300 yards away they still never went alone.
Yet children mature earlier now than they did then. It is, truly, a different world.
I used to marvel that my grandmother had grown up without motor cars, telephones, radio, aeroplanes, refrigerators or electricity in any form (except lightning), but the world was still recognisable to her and she died at 94 years old. I think the pace of change is increasing!
Love,
Anthony
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