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The cars were like tanks back then. My husband owned a 57 Olds, older than me, and that thing was tough! I think I'd feel safer in those cars versus todays for sure.
Good thing, considering how lax the drunk driving laws probably were.
Now, in this experiment, what age do we get to be in our travel back to the 50s? Our current age? I'm middle-aged, so I'd be an Old Maid then. Too late to find a husband, so I wouldn't be able to enjoy that pastel kitchen much. I'd probably seek work as a telephone operator. And I'd wear crinoline slips under swirly dresses to work, with a pointy bra and a girdle underneath it all. And I'd drive my lavender car with fins to my operator job.
"Hello...operator?" I haven't heard that in decades. I never grew up in the 50s, but as a kid I imagined I'd grow up to be an operator, and little did I know that by the time I grew up, there were no job openings for them.
Do you realize how much maintenance tanks require? Actual crash statistics prove you incorrect.
Bouncing around the inside of a 57 Olds would be like putting a china teacup in a blender. Seatbelts, airbags, and bodies designed for crash protection do make a difference.
I wasn't debating crash statistics, just commenting. Whatever.
Gays were legally considered to be perverts, and could be jailed for it. Beating them up was a favorite pastime for adults, and in some areas Jewish kids were also beaten up by other kids.
I remember my sister-in-law had a revolver loaded with blank cartridges, and we used to drive around and shoot at blacks who invariably ducked for cover or flattened out on the ground. She thought that was hilarious. Blacks were called Negros or the n word ..... "N..... work" was the word used for a job that was extremely difficult or dangerous, and paid little.
Little boys played team sports, made forts to play at war, had stick fights, played cowboys and Indians, and in general got very dirty. We went all over the neighborhood as there was no media-driven paranoia about child molesters, even though they were as common as today. Little girls stayed close to home and played with dolls ...... I don't know what else they did, but they didn't usually get dirty. They were considered contemptible until we all hit puberty.
As there are more people, now perhaps so. But I don't know.
I grew up during the 50's and men could beat their wives and kids half to death and no one interfered.
Women who were victims of domestic violence had few options. No crisis shelters, transitional housing, nothing. If you called the police, you would have to fill out a complaint against your husband before they would interfere. Only the foolish didn't realize that he'd be back before long and there would be heck to pay.
Some escaped, but most just saw it as their lot in life and endured.
If this was perfectly acceptable public behavior, imagine what they were doing in private.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that domestic violence became criminally prosecutable. While there are a few cases of extreme domestic violence going to court (usually involving murder), beating on your wife and children was considered discipline and law enforcement generally didn’t respond. In some states, it was actually illegal to prosecute men for spousal abuse as it was considered a form of sexual discrimination. Why 1950s America was *Not* Magical!! | Indiana Jen
In the 50's, men were masters of their households and could do whatever they wanted. Many who came back from the war may have beens struggling with PTSD and sudden bouts of rage. Who knows?
There is a reason that that mandatory reporting laws were passed in the 60's. There was reason for the feminist and civil rights movements... Those reasons existed in the 50's.
As I said, I didn't experience any of the things you mention, and I didn't know of anyone who experienced those things, either.
I grew up in the 50's. I am retired now but the profession I had. a health insurance claims adjuster, which I began in the late 60's would not have been given me in the 50's as women were not allowed in that profession. Even as late as the early 70's some insurance companies would not hire women for that job.
It would have been rare for a woman to own a house and there is no way I would have lived in the suburbs which at that time, unless it was one right next to a city would have been too far away from the services I required since I didn't and still don't drive.
If I wanted to pack my computer, there would be no provider to give me service. My Kindle would be useless as well. So presume I could only pack things like clothes and books and things like that. I couldn't renew my drug prescriptions because they weren't created until much later. Too bad for me.
Your scenario is pretty limited so I will have to say "No thank you."
If you were white herto male. A lot of women today would hate it. The mindset of surburia was that men worked to take care of their wives and children. Women did not work. My mom nearly joined the first group which became Hanna Barbarra as an animator. Dad said no, he didn't want her to work. She told me later she had regretted that all the time since.
My mom and all of her 7 sisters worked during at least a portion of the 1950s. Remember, many women were working... filling the jobs when many man were drafted in WWII in the 1940s. Women were no strangers to the workplace in the '50s.
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And I'd make sure I had a fresh polio vaccunation. 1952 was the year the epidemic peaked. People lived in fear of it. One of my dear friends in Jr High walked with a brace and was hard to understand and I stood by her when the idiots teased her. We didn't know that ANY of us could have been her. And you had the McCarthy hearings and the marginalizing or demonizing of anyone who didh't fit the mold.
Yes, there was polio. But there wasn't AIDS. There was good and bad in every decade.
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