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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Remembering the 50's
Remembering the 50's  [message #51119] Thu, 26 June 2008 17:09 Go to next message
CallMePaul is currently offline  CallMePaul

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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 Smile

http://oldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheFifties



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There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51120 is a reply to message #51119] Thu, 26 June 2008 18:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
JimB is currently offline  JimB

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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
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51121 is a reply to message #51119] Thu, 26 June 2008 19:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

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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
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51122 is a reply to message #51119] Thu, 26 June 2008 20:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
unsui is currently offline  unsui

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[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 18:06]

Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51123 is a reply to message #51119] Thu, 26 June 2008 21:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
acam is currently offline  acam

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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
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51124 is a reply to message #51119] Thu, 26 June 2008 22:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
CallMePaul is currently offline  CallMePaul

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Wow! Us kids find you old guys' lives fascinating.
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Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51125 is a reply to message #51119] Thu, 26 June 2008 23:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Roger is currently offline  Roger

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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. Smile



If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51126 is a reply to message #51122] Thu, 26 June 2008 23:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

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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
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51127 is a reply to message #51126] Thu, 26 June 2008 23:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
unsui is currently offline  unsui

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Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51128 is a reply to message #51123] Fri, 27 June 2008 00:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
unsui is currently offline  unsui

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Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51130 is a reply to message #51119] Fri, 27 June 2008 04:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
brit is currently offline  brit

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Messages: 76




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.
Re: Remembering the 50's  [message #51132 is a reply to message #51125] Fri, 27 June 2008 07:44 Go to previous message
acam is currently offline  acam

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Location: UK
Registered: July 2007
Messages: 1849



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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