Education

Let Me Teach You About the 1950s

I was a kid but I was a real smartypants

I was a kid in the 1950s and a punk kid in the 1960s and I kept my eyes open and steered clear of monkey business. Those days were different and you would have wished you had packed a bag and gone to Kansas City if you see my drift. So listen up then get the Hell off my porch.

Dogs Ran Loose

So if I got on my Schwinn and rode over to the ball diamond every yard had a mutt just waiting. Soon as they saw me pow they were running and barking, mad as a hornet. My shoes would hit their fur but they never knocked me over and I was calm and cool about it. It really kept me on my toes see? If I suggested to my neighbor Mr. McEvoy to walk old Queenie on a leash, he would think I was one of those pinkos and tell me to stash it or he would “fetch the belt”. I do not remember ever seeing an adult doing any kind of exercise except working in the yard or carrying two cases of Schlitz down the driveway. Dogs ate whatever was around and might eat several meals going house to house. Mine really liked bologna after it got old. Dogs chased cars too and needed a good dousing with a vinegar-filled squirt gun to keep them from biting the tires.

Girls Ran Like a Girl

Girls playing field hockey or tennis would run real funny with their thighs tight together and their feet splayed out, then they would fall down and get all giggly. A girl couldn’t run a block, it just was the way they were made. Suddenly in the 60s girls started being made different and they could run fine. Their legs got unglued I guess. They also stopped losing at everything when they were up against a boy which was a fine kettle of crappie if you see where I am going. In the 1950s if a woman wanted exercise she might go to the beauty parlor and use the vibrating slimming machine with a belt. They would get together at the Junior League and do other stuff but don't ask me what.

Girls Roamed in Packs Because There Were no Cell Phones

Cell Phones made a slow entry into the world in the 1980s. Before that girls just had their parent’s old black phone in the hall. In the 1950s your house might be on a party-line so not only would your mother listening on the phone in the playroom know all your secrets, but so would all ten neighbors down to Sluggo Jobbin’s house and he would make loud snorting noises. Boys didn’t talk on the phone much, if you wanted to play ball you just went to the ball diamond on your bike. There were always some palookas hitting fungoes. A girl might call see but you just listened while she chattered like a squirrel and thought about how nice she looked at the Sock Hop.

You couldn’t text, Snapchat, or email your friends but girls still liked to talk so they formed packs and hung out in the park or drove around eight in a car. If a girl was separated from her pack beyond the sound of a voice I think she just kind of shut down until she ran across them again, like unplugging a radio. Getting a date took the courage of a rhinoceros. You had to find her first see then follow her a while to see if she was all cheerful or kind of grumpy-like. Then you would come down from that tree and walk up to her real shaky while her 12 friends, who all knew you were from loserville, looked at you like a possum dead a week. When she shot you down they would all hoot like baboons and that would frost your balls let me tell you.

Everyone Smoked

This included children who often began around age 12. Whenever we got together at Larry’s house for penny poker we would drink cherry Kool-Aid and eat Screaming Yellow Zonkers and smoke Salems or Kents. I am not sure where they came from, someone’s Dad probably. Usually, you smoked in the woods cause if your Mom caught a whiff she would give you major grief even though she smoked three packs a day. Later smoking was mixed with drinking Southern Comfort or Cherry Sloe Gin or Peppermint Schnapps and barfing. If you needed to barf you would have to crank down the windows if you were in a car and lots of times they got stuck so all those old Mercurys smelled funny. If you could, you could heave the barfer out the back door and peel out. Those old Mercs had big trunks and if we were sneaking three guys into the drive-in and they all barfed that was a real mess.

TVs Were Small and Heavy as a Bag of Rocks

By 1952 there were 20 million TV sets in the USA. My family got one around 1956. You picked up the TV signal with your rabbit ear antenna and there were just 3 networks. CBS came from a station 80 miles away so the picture was real fuzzy making it best to avoid those programs altogether. Leave it to Beaver started in 1957 and was my favorite show except for the Three Stooges. I recall mother June in her fancy dresses and pearls always doing housework and the very snazzy pipe-smoking father Ward who always set Beaver straight. Not like my Dad who would sit on a folding chair in the garage at night and smoke cigars and drink Bud. My Mom liked Lawrence Welk because he was really clean and had good manners but I thought that show was bonkers even then.

Everything was put in jello

Jello was viewed as sophisticated and upper class and often served at potluck parties and bridge socials. One recipe called for 3 chicken breasts (cooked), 1 teaspoon of minced onion, 1/2 cup of olives, 1/2 cup of celery, 1 cup of mayonnaise, some cherry gelatin, and cold water. Ladies would serve this stuff in crystal bowls or brandy glasses if they were high class. Ambrosia salad was and still is made with pineapples, Kool Whip, nuts, and small marshmallows mixed in fruit gelatin. It was called Ambrosia because it was “luxurious and exotic”. Supposedly lamb and beef were put in Jello but I have never seen this first hand. My Grandma would make me go to her King’s Daughters and they had four kinds of jello with pukey stuff and little pasty meat things on Wonder Bread. I liked my Grandma but I also had to wear my wool short pants so that was a real torture session.

Go back to the 1950s? Well yeah, I would cause I was a kid and all my joints were loose and I could play ball and run fast as Joe Stander and he was pretty fast. Now I am stove up and crotchety as a backyard mule. I do like my phone though and my Facebook friends. I like the Netflix and calling the Uber if I need to go to Walgreens. You know you got me thinking about all those yard dogs long dead now and running around with the guy upstairs. I’ll be seeing them soon and I hope they don't hold me throwing rocks at them against me. Now get your clown shoes off my porch.