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I was 3 in 55. I loved that time and a person could work a blue collar job and manage to own a little bungalow and a car. We had meat almost every day. Tomatoes tasted better for some reason lol. Of course life was not about having the largest house on the street or the newest car...just having that little house was quite a blessing. My dad was a cop...a hero back then and a WWII vet who never mentioned much about it. The 60's brought us the best music ever. I do not think that it can be duplicated, that rock history, that story. Just not the same with all the computer crap making music in a den now. What those rock Gods did with broken down, or homemade guitars was incredible. The 70's were exciting with all the much needed social changes, peace and love talk and bringing down the oppressive gov only to now have those kids in leadership roles bringing back an iron curtain and building a bigger, more evil empire in my opinion. There was a growing darkness during the late 60's and early 70's with the uprising of serial killers. Hollywood could be a scary place then. I loved the Ca surf scene and that is where I spent most of my free time...driving up and down the 1 and surfing and CA dreaming. So sad it is gone.
It was just a bit less complicated then.
Without a doubt the availability of even a much smaller version of the internet would have made quite an impact. But I am less sure that would have automatically meant the reduction of fear.
Just as background, I was born in 1938, and in 1975 I went to work in a brand new, state of the art multi-million dollar computer center - at a time when I, and most of the rest of the country knew zip about computers. Over the years I worked there I saw communication go from closed networks like Arpanet, Janet to the more open Bitnet and finally the thriving proto-internet Usenet. Since then there has been the explosive expansion of the internet and the phenomenon of social media.
My feelings are rather different from yours, I think. I would make two - admittedly - huge generalities based on my own life in the period we are talking about, and the impact of the computer. The period from my childhood to my access to a computer world was certainly marked by fears not necessarily quickly alleviated by the level of information that newspapers, radio and TV provided, but on the whole is was more carefully presented, i.e. standards were more demanding. However, the lack of instant mass communication on the part of the public also meant that rumor, hysteria, fear-mongering, agit-prop and garden variety nutbaggery all proliferated slowly...even very slowly or hardly at all in some cases.
Jump ahead to the AIDS epidemic of the 80's, and our post-80's world, and what I find in addition to the vastly greater and quicker availability of hard facts and background knowledge is also the virulent growth of something dangerously toxic. I can remember that one of the most marked differences between the newsgroups and sites on Usenet and those on the internet that supplanted it was the sudden and pervasive presence of hate postings, disinformation, etc. Now extremism and hate are rampant on the internet - in groups, web sites and blogs - and social media, and emanate from the U.S. and Europe as much as they do from the Middle East and other areas at odds with the West. In my opinion the development of mass computer communication has embedded news and education in a vast morass of propaganda, distortion and disinformation which passes itself off as the former, or a correction of the former. As a result, ignorance, hate and hysteria permeate the fabric of everyday life now as they never did in the period from '55 - '75, as I experienced it.
I agree that there is such a thing as TOO Much information. I read Future Shock about three times when we only had to read it once, but I think it should be read again today. It has some very good points. Toffler saw the emergence of a society which gave everyone too many choices. There was an example of a kid looking for a doll. There's two dolls, and the kid doesn't love either, but takes the least disliked. Not enough choice is limiting. Twenty dolls and the kid is overwhelmed. All the options leads to more stress since the differences are so small. The optimum of maybe ten she picks the best but doesn't have to sort through the small stuff.
We celebrate the explosion of information, correct, rumor or not, as expanding our world. In a way it does, but it also makes us pay less information to all of it. We make it background wall paper. Some of it is vital, some meaningless but we pay about the same notice to it all as it passes us by.
Consider the difference between the missles and 9-11. Both kept tv's on all night. Both had little real information, and much rumor. Both made us all wonder when/if there would be worse news. But with the missles, it was quiet fears. Atomic war was a terrifying thing, but we could take some comfort from Walter Cronkite saying there were reports of this or that. He was family. We ate dinner while he told us the news.
9-11 was a drama of unimaginal porportion. In a way they are bookends. The missles were a horror which didn't happen. It was the one which did. But everyone was on edge, waiting for the next one. Which city would it be? Repeats and repeats of the same horrors. Ash covered people wandering down the street, stunned and looking like extras from some bad science fiction movie. Numbers we didn't want to take in. But what if we hadn't had all that information? What if it had been news reports in black and white, with mostly reporters telling rather than showing? Would our imagination have filled in the spaces? Would it have been more or less 'real'?
The missles and Kennedy's death were two of the first times when the the mass media/continuing coverage showed the power of information and seeing it for yourself which our currently overloaded society continues to crave.
We had no air conditioning. Period. Think about that for a while, now that it is August.
We had the mall, which mom let me and my friend go to on Saturday. First authentic Valley girl here, at the first Mall in Los Angeles. The stores were happy even if not a lot got bought since shoppers liked seeing others around. It saved me from a valley summer though junior hi. We also had what today would be refered to as a swamp cooler. It was window ac size and had a strong fan. But it had a space for some water and ice and it cooled off the area. Houses were also built with less big windows for the sun to heat up. My room didn't ever get overheated. We had good walls and smallish windows, and I had blackout blinds which never got opened. No AC was one reason why housed normally were not plastered with large windows.
My house now was built in 1930 and has thick walls and small windows and a window ac and one that is mostly a fan works fine.
I think the case can be made that this period (1955-1975) was the high point in race relations in America. The civil rights movement had broad support amoung whites and its leaders were genuinely admired. There was a lot of optimism. Most people believed that the Star Trek vision of a truely post racial society was coming. How many white people today admire so-called civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton? How many are still confident that solutions to racial conflict will be found?
I grew up in the 1940s-50s and through the 1950s a full time African American help was not uncommon for the upper middle classes in my neck of woods (mid-Atlantic east coast). My father was an attorney and we had our own version of Hazel, as did most of our neighbors, who were doctors, lawyers and corporate executives. I distinctly remember seeing the maids in their uniforms walking in pairs or groups to/from the bus stops early in the morning and in the evenings. They did not live nearby.
They were becoming rarer as time went on, replaced by cleaning women, and by the late 1960s most of the maids had disappeared.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sheena12
However, what was with all of the shows that featured an absent parent or a live in servant? None of these people IRL were the types to have servants. A cleaning woman? Sure. But "Hazel" in the house of an attorney? Or Alice in the Brady Bunch? He was an architect. They were not super rich.
1955 was very different from 1975 so it's odd to lump the two years together.
People who came of age in 1955 were not the same people who came of age in 1975. They had vastly different experiences.
If I had to make generalisations covering the entire 1955-1975 period and comparing it to today it's that times were indeed slower. Things were less rushed. We didn't have cell phones or emails, so you could leave the office behind when you finished for the day. The disadvantage of today's media-centric world is that less of your time belongs to you.
The sheer volume of instant media from all political perspectives has made people much more jaded, which is something I would have never thought possible after having lived through Watergate and Vietnam.
The United States was also a much "whiter" country in those days. I am not implying this is a good or bad thing, but it's the simple truth. The sheer diversity of the present day United States is a marvel when I remember the 1950s. I remember when California was as much as 90% white.
With only circa 3 billion people in the world it was a lot less crowded then, and life had a slower rhythm to it. It was possible to hitchhike all over the world without worrying too much about safety. FREEDOM still meant something, and GPS couldn't track you, and finding a place to tent for the night was rarely a problem (as opposed to nowadays when everything appears to be owned). The world had far fewer fences and fewer rules. People talked to each other. Communities still existed and we knew our neighbor's names.
I didn't cross the pond from Scotland (and Europe) 'til 1974, so my experience isn't an American one. Still, I liked Aspen a whole lot better in 1974 than I do now, and the same goes for just about everywhere that isn't waaaaay up in the mountains and consequently remote.
My father put a window a/c in my parent's bedroom about 1952. When he died in 1967 and my mother sold the house, it was still the only one.
In the fall you put what were called "storm windows" into the window frame outside, so that you had a temporary double window to keep in the heat in winter. In the spring these were taken down and screens were put in their place. On the beastly hot nights a window was left open in every room and a fan was placed at the top of the stairway on the second floor to try to keep the air flowing throughout the house and make it somewhat cooler.
We left all the windows open, (at night, to get those wonderful cool breezes in Colorado)in the 1950's through early 1960's; during the day, we just kept the screen door latched; with the door wide open.
What is sad, is that so much has changed. Can't leave the windows open at night or the door during the day; some fool may come in and rob you blind or worse.
I think the case can be made that this period (1955-1975) was the high point in race relations in America. The civil rights movement had broad support amoung whites and its leaders were genuinely admired. There was a lot of optimism. Most people believed that the Star Trek vision of a truely post racial society was coming. How many white people today admire so-called civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton? How many are still confident that solutions to racial conflict will be found?
Not a high point; merely a starting point.
The Fifties were a time when African-Americans on the police forces of any major city were still as rare as hens' teeth, and jobs as simple and un-demanding as driving a tractor-trailer rig were still usually reserved for whites. The true integration of major work places didn't get under way until the early Seventies, and much of the foundation for that had been formulated using a model based on the military. That is where most of the real, honest progress in the cause of civil rights found its most important toe-hold.
Unfortunately for all concerned, there remains a less-motivated component within the cause of civil rights who seek equality of result rather than equality of opportunity; who see the cure for an uneven distribution of bread as to ration it, rather than to bake more of it
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 08-02-2015 at 06:29 AM..
I was born in 1955 in Gadsden, Alabama and spent my entire childhood there, so my experiences were tempered somewhat by location and regional attitudes. I remember the White and Colored drinking fountains at the Sears store, and being sad because that would make all the little colored kids feel bad when they saw it. There was a definite line drawn between the black and white living areas of the comity, and the black area around Tuscaloosa Avanue was openly referred to as Ni***r Town. I clearly remember when black people started branching out and buying homes in 'white neighborhoods', and hearing people say "There goes the neighborhood". I remember KKK roadblocks to raise cash, with buckets held out to receive the contributions. When I was old enough to drive, I once gave the finger to the Klansmen as I passed without donating, and then worried for days that they would somehow track me down and burn a cross on our lawn. In 1969 our school was "integrated" by court order. One black girl and one black boy were bussed to our school every day and clung to each other in fear. I remember in 1973 when I was attending night classes at the local college, race riots closed down the main street to school and some motorists were injured by bricks thrown at their windshields. I remember thinking that black people certainly didn't get a fair shake in our country, but that behavior like that wasn't going to help anything.
I remember watching almost every space launch on TV, and seeing the moon landing. I remember when they build Disney World and my father applied for an electronics job there while we were visiting the park but he wasn't hired. Yes, we had the duck-and-cover drills at school, but I didn't know enough to be worried about world affairs. I was always worried that while I was crouching under my desk, my dress would hike up and my underwear would show.
My friend next door was a cool kid who bought every single Beatles record that ever came out and handled them carefully by the edges and never scratched them. I wonder to this day if he still has all those records. We both bought Monkees records, and we once wrote to the Monkees Fan Club asking if they would send us some posters and T-shirts.
As kids we ran all over the neighborhood with orders to "go outside and play, and don't come back inside until dinner". I can clearly remember being at least a couple of miles away from home, and no one wondering whether I was safe. Something like "I'm going to Becky's house" as I went out the door was all the info my mom needed. My dad wouldn't let us play "army" or pretend to shoot each other, so we played as much baseball as you can play with just 3 or 4 kids. We climbed trees at lot.
Doors were never locked, and on Saturday morning when the milkman came, he would tiptoe in the back door and put the milk right in the refrigerator while we were all still asleep.
I remember prizes in cereal boxes, riding down to the little store with 30 cents and getting a bag full of candy. We went to church every time they opened the doors.
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