What do you remember "PERSONALLY" about your life in America in 1950's ??

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Sourdough

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Not what you have read or seen on TV. Nor what your daddy told you about the period 1945 through 1959. But (ONLY) if you lived that period, what do you remember. I'll throw it open to anyone on this forum who was alive and living anywhere on earth 1945 through 1959.

I am specifically interested in your memories of life post WW-II till end of 1959.
 
Sorry I can't help, as I am another boomer from 1960. I do hope to see some good stories on this thread!
 
Sourdough said:
Not what you have read or seen on TV. Nor what your daddy told you about the period 1945 through 1959. But (ONLY) if you lived that period, what do you remember. I'll throw it open to anyone on this forum who was alive and living anywhere on earth 1945 through 1959.

I am specifically interested in your memories of life post WW-II till end of 1959.
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Unfortunately might be slim pickins'. My FIL was born in 1934. There have been several things I've asked him specifically, ie. meat in winter, electric, daily routines. If you had a specific topic or question, I could ask him. He is very intelligent and "with it." I wasn't alive yet.
(My Gma was born in 1924 and there were several things I asked her also - specific also).
I appreciate the knowledge of those who knew other eras also.
 
I grew up in the 50s and 60s so some of the things I remember are from the 60s.
I didn't mean to mislead anyone.
I remember the government was not your nanny.
We had a lot more freedom than we will ever have again.
Nobody dictated what we could or could not do.
I could buy 22 shorts for 25 cent a box at the gas station then go to the town dump and shoot rats all night long. The town cops would show up some times and often as not they would shoot a few rats themselves.
I carried a pocket knife from second grade on. It was normal and not one kid was ever stabbed nobody ever pulled a knife in a fight.
We cut ourselves occasionally like all kids did but it was no big deal. The school nurse put iodine or mercurochrome on the cut slapped a band aid on it told you to be more careful and sent you back to recess or class.
We rode in the back of a pickup, had no seatbelts or car seats in the cars or trucks.
Life was simpler back then. It wasn't all great but we tend to not remember the bad times as much.
If you did something bad you could expect to be punished. If it was at school you could count on more when you got home.
 
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In 1950 I was two.
By 1960 I was 12.
Around age 6 or so I began to develop my life long interest in WWII, since it was still fresh news in this country.
Growing up in the South I was also very aware of racial segregation, although it didn't actually affect me.
I remember that Dwight Eisenhower was a good president, perhaps one of the better ones. Reagan was about the only one better, certainly no one other than him, not even Trump.
The 1950's was prosperity on a major scale.
 
I was born in 62, so leaves me out.
But husband was born in 53, and grew up outside of Sacramento, CA in a rural area. He'd take his loaded 22 rifle, and walk down to the river for some fishing, swimming, and plinking. No one batted an eye. Oldest of 4 kids, his parents were teachers. They lived just fine, but frugally. He was sick alot as a kid, so not much for sports, but stuck with academics. Alot of fruit and nut orchards around them. The kids would work for the farmers picking fruit and nuts to make some money.
 
dademoss said:
Not a thing, I was born in 1960
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Well, I was born in 1956.
I don't remember much from before age 5.
Burned into my brain, was my mom taking me into the downtown building in Huntsville, AL to get iron-shots in my hiney because I was anemic. They hurt like hell and left a huge blue bruise on my butcheek. :(
The smell of old wood and cigar smoke was overwhelming.
And I remember the black 'elevator operator' closing the 2 metal scissor doors before moving the brass lever to make it go up.
Also remember us kids (that were too young for school) sitting in that big black Dodge with the windows down while she went shopping.
Oh, and my dad (NASA engineer) actually coming into our room when mom told him that I had built an outboard motor out of tinkertoys and hung it on the end of the bed. You could wrap a string on the pulley on top, pull it, and the prop down below would spin.:D
He never smoked, but everyday when he came in from work, he stank of smoke because he worked in an office that everyone smoked in. :(
 
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I moved to Alaska in 1950 and stayed for over a year. I don't remember those times. Most of my early memories are from Norwalk in Los Angeles County. I remember when I was in my single digits, certainly by the age of seven, walking a mile, by myself, every Saturday to catch a double feature at the theatre. Wouldn't want to try that today.

I remember the Eisenhower campaign. I wish I still had that "I like Ike" button. My father was heaven into politics then. Not running for office but working behind the scenes. He was part of the dirty tricks team. When the Watergate scandal happened I was nonplused. That was standard practice for both parties. My father was is a democrat.

We lived in a tract house across the street from the family meat market. There was a Hugh walk-in refer with two doors and sawdust on the floor. At the other end of the street there was an old mansion on some acres. There was a string of play houses made to look like a Wild West town. The kids that played in it were adults by the time I found it. The houses were quite run down. We had a concrete incinerator in our backyard and I remember burning trash. While we owned that house those incinerators became illegal and my father tore it down. I had several out of body experiences in that house.

There was riding on the shelf behind the rear seat blocking Mom's view in the rear window. I remember the first seatbelts. They were an inconvenient and unused accessory. The folks bot the grandparents Buick Roadmaster. I still love that car. Well, no reason to make a book out of this.
 
Caribou said:
I remember the Eisenhower campaign. I wish I still had that "I like Ike" button
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The teacher gave ever kid two. One for mommy and one for daddy. I wore both that day.
 
Amish Heart said:
No one batted an eye.
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We took out guns to school on the school bus. The boys put them in the coat closet (no lockers) Guns, coats, and lunch bags in the closet. I would ask the bus driver to leave off on the other side of the mountain, and I would hunt my way home, sometimes I would hunt for home.
 
Sourdough said:
The teacher gave ever kid two. One for mommy and one for daddy. I wore both that day.
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You forgot the pic. :thumbs:
PO-i-like-ike-button_busy_beaver_button_museum.png
 
How many here have read Bill O'Reilly's book A Bold Fresh Piece Of Humanity? That was EXACTLY how I grew up, and it was what I remember of the 50's. We were both born in the city; grew up on the South Shore of Long Island; and attended Catholic School for as long as we were in school, which was a long time. It was a Beaver Cleaver life. My mother didn't work until all of the kids were in school. We only had one car. Milk and bread were delivered weekly. We went shopping about once every two weeks on payday.

Afternoons after school we watched the Mickey Mouse Club. Saturday mornings were cartoons. TV was wholesome. Leave it to Beaver; Father Knows Best; Wyatt Earp; Have Gun Will Travel; Maverick. Perry Mason may have had some seedy characters, but the good guys ALWAYS won.

We grew up in a middle class neighborhood that was not intergrated, and people wanted desparately to keep it that way. My first taste of racial differences. It wasn't strife just yet.

We lived like that until 1962 when we moved to Arizona.
 
Buying a box of 22 “shells” (that’s what everyone called them) at the 7-11 at age 10 and riding my bike to the woods at the edge of the sub division with my very own Winchester rifle to plink at pine cones.
Today a kid would be taken out by the SWAT team and his parents arrested for that.
That held me In good stead a few years later when I was government property and learning to effectively use the M14 rifle. The city boys were way behind the curve.
 
I remember riding with Dad to buy gas for the car. The guy would hand crank the pump, and gas would get pumped up into a large glass jar on top of the gas pump. Then he closed something, put the hose in the car and opened something and the gas gravity flowed from the jar into the tank. We went into the dirty station to pay, and the guy grabbed binoculars and ran outside, looked up in the sky, went back in the station, and studied a chart on the wall (big chart) full of airplanes. He cranked up the phone and described the airplane he watched, and the direction it was headed, and estimated altitude. That is so burned in my memory, I think I could pick him out of a line-up. This was South-South-Central Pennsylvania.
 
I must have been 8 or 9 when I stumbled into a pawn shop. A Luger caught my eye. A recent war trophy. The store owner pulled it out, let me handle it, and told me that it could be mine for $9. Been kicking myself ever since. There was no such thing as an FFL, that came about in 1968.

The grocery store across the street, where my family had their meat market, was owned by a Japanese family. Grandpa had delayed their being deported to the camps during WWII for long enough that they didn't loose everything. We had a very large Mexican clientele. Not everyone was fluent in Spanish but everyone behind the counter spoke enough to sell meat.
 
in 1950 I was 2, we still had rationing until 1953.
life was much simpler back then, all the kids played outdoors , no computers or mobile phones back then, we had the red public phone boxes everyone remembers, they still exist in some places but arent used much, people didnt lock their doors hardly any crime even in cities, the 50s were the era of the Teddyboys and winklepicker shoes and drainpipe trousers. and skiffle, pre rock and roll.
 
I remember the alcoholism and damage to many returned soldiers.
I remember many that stayed home to start a business were better off than those returning.
I remember how those that stayed home were judgemental of those with problems from the war.
I remember those days.
Things got better in terms of jobs and living standards as the gov did not want alcoholic killers running around with nothing to do.
 
I remember walking to grade school (including kindergarten). Our classrooms had no A/C but did have windows that were about 6-feet tall or so.

There was a milkman that gave us kids big chunks of ice to suck on during the summer.

All of my friends were in Cub Scouts and later in Boy Scouts.

I remember TV being interrupted for long periods with updates on the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

One of the kids brought a little transistor radio to 3rd grade so we could all listen to John Glenn circling the earth in space.
 
SLADE said:
I remember the alcoholism and damage to many returned soldiers.
I remember many that stayed home to start a business were better off than those returning.
I remember how those that stayed home were judgemental of those with problems from the war.
I remember those days.
Things got better in terms of jobs and living standards as the gov did not want alcoholic killers running around with nothing to do.
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The same was true for returning vets in the 60’s and early 70’s.
In fact I’d wager returning combat vets have been just the same since the beginning of organized warfare.
I know I was.
Sober today though the Grace of God, the 12 Steps and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
 
I remember searching the sky and finding Sputnik.

My family sponsored a Mexican widow and her five kids to come to America. I remember helping deliver a pickup load of furniture to their first home. My grandparents hired her as a housekeeper. they found out that she was illegal. They had her move back to Mexico, hired an attorney to bring her in legally. This became a family project. Today I call her Aunt.

The 50's was my time to go to car races at abandoned airfields and to dirt bike races.

In November 1959 we moved back to Alaska. We loaded up the three of us and the dog into a Karmann Ghia with all our possessions. Going through Canada there were several sections of unpaved road in excess of 100 miles each. When we got into Prince Rupert we dropped the car at the barge company. the next barge was about a month later. We sat in the hotel for a week waiting for weather to clear so we could fly to Ketchikan on a Grumman Goose. On my 11th birthday the dog delivered seven puppies. My father took them out and drowned them as they were born. The next day we flew out to our new home. The folks didn't want to explain why we cam into Canada with one dog and left with eight. Finding a rental with eight dogs, seven of them un-housebroken puppies? Not going to happen. It was the worst birthday of my life.
 
Cabin Fever said:
I remember walking to grade school (including kindergarten). Our classrooms had no A/C but did have windows that were about 6-feet tall or so.

There was a milkman that gave us kids big chunks of ice to suck on during the summer.

All of my friends were in Cub Scouts and later in Boy Scouts.

I remember TV being interrupted for long periods with updates on the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

One of the kids brought a little transistor radio to 3rd grade so we could all listen to John Glenn circling the earth in space.
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We can call it close enough, but technically the Bay of Pigs was 1961, and John Glenn was 1962.
 
My primary interest (among everything 50's) is Food stamps, foods impossible to find even with required stamps. Rationing of many things other than food, tires. innertubes, fuel, etc.. And other lingering effects of WW-II well into the late 50's.
 
kenv1950 said:
I remember it was the best decade of my life .
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For me also. The 50's by a huge margin the best. The 60's "SUPER SUCKED" for me. The 70's would be my second-best decade.
 
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