Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have a treasured article from the Cuban Missile Crisis--my own Bendix CD Cumulative Dosimeter. It measured up to about 450 RADs, Any reading over about 50 RADs and you were one sick puppy. If you pegged the scale you were probably finished since LD50 is about 450 RADs. I got it since my dad who was in the US Army Corps of Engineers and was tasked during that emergency with Civil Defense and National Recovery activities after the war. Dad made sure everyone in the family had one and I wore it to school. We lived far enough away from Portland or Salem Oregon and the Columbia River Dams in the Cascade foothills that our part of the USA would probably not get bombed and weren't down wind of anything but the Pacific Ocean. I wondered how bright the flashes off to the North would be. My version of "Panic in the Year Zero". Fortunately I never got to find out.
I remember the sense of hope and optimism of that time. Eisenhower played golf and people were glad Congress did nothing. Interstates improved travel. People lived their lives and as someone said survived -made it through the negatives because they had been through worse.
Dad got me up to see Sputnik and told me that the world had changed forever and there would be so much exciting to come. Schools followed the space race and pulled out the TVs to watch rockets go up, orbits to be made, and ultimately land on the moon and return. Our Navy scooped the returnees out of the ocean and we were thrilled.
JFK brought a flashy style and vision with him and Viet Nam and Gulf of Tonkin.
LBJ and McNamara's whiz kids ran the war in Viet Nam. The handful of advisors became many active warfighters. The War of Poverty and War in Viet Nam running concurrently. I always liked Lady Bird and her interest in nature and the environment. Wild flowers you see by roadsides today were her cause. LBJ continued the Civil Rights Effort mostly because it was good politics.
After that it does become more sociological.
Basically the 50s and 60s were not as some seem to imagine them. Not everyone bought into the left wing politics hippie drugs free sex and protesting mantra although we may have dipped our toe in now and then. We may have worn bellbottoms, vest and had long hair but it was just fashion, not belief. There were true believers but not as many as some may think.
I think a lot of us are ready to talk about things that were -- through some nationwide and tacitly understood cultural agreement -- simply never spoken of.
I remember the sense of hope and optimism of that time. Eisenhower played golf and people were glad Congress did nothing. Interstates improved travel. People lived their lives and as someone said survived -made it through the negatives because they had been through worse.
Dad got me up to see Sputnik and told me that the world had changed forever and there would be so much exciting to come. Schools followed the space race and pulled out the TVs to watch rockets go up, orbits to be made, and ultimately land on the moon and return. Our Navy scooped the returnees out of the ocean and we were thrilled.
JFK brought a flashy style and vision with him and Viet Nam and Gulf of Tonkin.
LBJ and McNamara's whiz kids ran the war in Viet Nam. The handful of advisors became many active warfighters. The War of Poverty and War in Viet Nam running concurrently. I always liked Lady Bird and her interest in nature and the environment. Wild flowers you see by roadsides today were her cause. LBJ continued the Civil Rights Effort mostly because it was good politics.
After that it does become more sociological.
Basically the 50s and 60s were not as some seem to imagine them. Not everyone bought into the left wing politics hippie drugs free sex and protesting mantra although we may have dipped our toe in now and then. We may have worn bellbottoms, vest and had long hair but it was just fashion, not belief. There were true believers but not as many as some may think.
For better or worse the 50s and 60s were the formative years of the baby boom. From the vantage point of 1969 who would have thunk Jerry Rubin the founder of the Youth International Party (The Yippies) would make his fortune on Wall Street. That two Stanford dropouts both named Steve would make a single board computer and change the world. and a Harvard dropout named Bill Gates would convince IBM to use his DOS to run their PC rather than write it in house. or that guys like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barrack Obama would all be successful two term Presidents.
I remember the 1950's, 60's and '70. I went from a nice kid to a stepfather owned slave to a Vietnam river rat to a college kid more interested in not getting shot at than trying to prove anything.
After I remember I get a shot of whiskey and start forgetting. I live for now and hope for a better tomorrow. The past is dead. RIP.
In 1955 I was four, so I guess I grew up during the period of 1955 through 1975. What was it like? A lot like today, except we didn't have all the technology back then. And whether you understand it or not, computers and the Internet are a big deal. That's the one thing I would change if I could. I wish I had all that information growing up. It's not as if I didn't have a good education. I probably had the best education money could buy. Still, there was so much I didn't know or understand. So I made a lot of stupid mistakes. Maybe that's just part of life, I don't know. Anyway, I'd go back and do it all again.
I was born in 1978, my dad was born in December 1949 and my mom was born in May 1950 (so obviously both of them were children of the 60s, as it were). They weren't hippies. My dad served in Vietnam, and my mother was raised in a conservative small town in western Ohio. She still has those values to this day, and I feel lucky that they were passed down.
I remember my mother telling my sister and I several times while we were growing up that she wished we had a taste of growing up in the 50s and early to mid-60s. According to her, people were more trusting back then. You didn't always have to lock your doors. She loved being raised where she was. She had a great childhood being raised by parents I eventually idolized. Dad's childhood was much the same, as I understand.
I would love to get a taste of living in those days. Much less, if any, political correctness. Better family structure and societal morals across the board (sorry to anyone who disagrees with that, but IMO it's tough to argue). More respect. You could smoke and drink without being shunned.
Of course, I say all that with foreknowledge of how the world has developed since. But because of the way I was raised, I think of the 1950s and really any time before about 1965 as "the good old days" before the 60s went nuts.
In 1955 I was looking forward to being a Cub Scout. My brother was 5 years older so it was sort of a Wally and Beaver existence. Sometime around then the county came out and put a "Slow Children" sign out in front of our house. I always blamed my brother but he was sure it was for me. We, of course, had a big Collie dog. We played little league baseball in a wheat field....my dad was the manager. Mom was the Den Mother.
The school burned down (we had nothing to do with it, really) and we were parceled out to local churches for grades 2-4 (my missing years) and then got back into the rebuilt but still decrepit school building in 5th grade.
During most of those years I lived in and/or around Ferguson, MO, of recent fame ...or infamy. We knew enough to avoid the local police since they were already a little bit over the top...I only had one bad experience. They brought my brother home one evening because the kids were having too much fun and strayed on to a construction site. Nothing serious. That part of St. Louis County was filling up with subdivisions to originally accommodate the soldiers and their families after WW-II but it later became a haven for White Flight. Our little local church was established because of gas rationing in WW-II and folks couldn't drive to church in the city.
I was a champion Boy Scout...just didn't go in for all those awards and ranks. There were so many kids in the Boy Scout Troop that we had over 110 kids going to summer camp together...we moved like an army. Napoleon would have been proud. Baby boomers almost never did anything alone or in small groups. Junior High and High School are a blur -- I wasn't much into what they had to offer. I graduated in 1966. We had a good wrestling team and a few years of good football. I recall my English teacher ran off with one of the Biology teachers to San Francisco as the advance party for the Summer of Love. I saw Haight Ashbury but didn't stay....I had an aunt and uncle there close by so it would not have worked out well.
I managed to be the first in my family with a college degree....in history (1970). They all wondered what I was going to do with that. I figured I'd be seeing a lot of history in Viet Nam but that didn't happen...divine intervention. My best friend enlisted as a Marine and was killed in action within about ten days after arriving in Viet Nam. My brother was drafted but went to Bayonne NJ. He was married by then. I landed a government job (state) that actually required a college degree (so there...you doubters) but it only paid about $450 a month...which, amazingly, covered all of my expenses and I had pocket money. There was a little bit of 'weed' and booze but not much. Mostly music. I was still in Ferguson but with a roommate.
By mid 1975 I was seriously involved in a relationship...I proposed marriage late that year. We were married in early 1976 and got job transfers and moved out of town. The rest is history.
At the time of the Cuban missile crisis I was 24. I was living in a fleabag rooming house on a rundown, seedy street at the northern end of Hell's Kitchen because that's what I could afford and working in Midtown Manhattan. What did I do? Just what thousands and thousands of other New Yorkers who didn't have the luxury of staying home and playing End-of-the-World did, I went to work. Some of the older, well paid guys who lived in the suburbs could afford not to show up.
I was on edge, and thought it was a crap shoot which way it would go...and my recollection is that this was the feeling of most of the people at work. But being at work with other people and being busy in those days was a good palliative to the fear.
And leaving work, it was Friday I think, I looked up at all the tall buildings on my way to the subway and I thought, "Wow, I love this place and I'm glad I made it here...even if it's only for three years." And then it was over.
On a different note: I never, and I mean never, saw "Leave It to Beaver."
Last edited by kevxu; 07-31-2015 at 03:50 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
