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Quote from cablejockey: Sounds like all turned out well.
Yes, it did. We are a happy family. BUT what I forgot to mention was the most important influence in my life: my mother who graduated first in her high school class but was unable to continue her education because she came from an immigrant family who did not believe in educating women. As the mother of two daughters she made sure that both of us attended the best private schools in our city and would definitely attend college. To this day she is so sharp; at 93 years old, she can still beat her PhD. holding children and grandchildren at Scrabble and other mind games and remembers a lot of her high school French vocabulary.
It seems that liberals idealize the 1960s and conservatives idealize the 1950s. To each side "their" decade was a period of rainbows, lollipops, and sunshine and was destroyed by other side. It was magical I tells ya! Oh, and that other decade was pure evil with nothing of value. Evil!
The 1950s did have its good sides. People seemed to have a stronger work ethic, there seemed to more emphasis on being active in the community, it seems like it was a great time to be a kid (excluding coming from a really f--ked family, but every decade sucks if that's the case), the seeds of the Civil Rights period had been planted, and entertainment was just starting to really break through and was just starting to become edgy (at least for the time).
However there was a lot of ugliness as well. I should make it clear that I was not even alive in the 1950s, so my opinions of the decade comes from family and a fair bit of reading on the period.
Familial dysfunction wasn't as widely acknowledged during the 1950s, it certainly did happen and there was very little people could do to actively help it. It was merely something you just didn't talk about, so if your uncle was touching you or if Daddy was an alcoholic or if your wife was repeatedly cheating on you or your husband hits you; you just had to grin and bear it. Get a divorce? What will the neighbors think? Consoling? What the hell is that? Your uncle is touching you? Come on, only perverts who hang out in back alleys do that, not a guy who won a Silver Star charging a *** machine gun nest.
And just because married couples on television didn't have sex, doesn't mean that real people followed suit. My mother was born about four or five months after my grandparents got married and she wasn't a premature birth. How did that happen? But my grandma was a grown woman at that time, had she been a teenager, well she would have either gotten an abortion in Mexico (or had one conducted by a nurse in the family who used to conduct illegal abortions in the 40s and 50s) or her mother and her would have gone an extended vacation and my grandma would come back with a new "sister". And yes, it happened pretty often in the 1950s.
And how many times did men make small talk about their spouses to obviously gay men. Men so outrageously gay that today nobody would even assume they were in the closet. They would talk to these guys and often be on extremely friendly terms with them while deeply suspecting that Johnson from accounting was "a fairy", but they would tolerate this man on one condition, that he keep up a facade that was fooling nobody. Had he been openly gay, he would find little support (and a lot of hostility) outside of Greenwich Village in New York and parts of San Francisco. This is what I find so sad and fascinating, that so many people who I've talked to who were in their 20s and 30s during this period can think of a few cases like this. They knew someone who was obviously gay, even if they weren't quite sure at the time what gay even was, yet they tolerated this person as long as they were to keep up the charade. They would observe the unhappy wives who probably thought the reason why their husband is extremely uncomfortable in bed had something to due with their appearance and were completely ignorant of how no amount of feminine beauty could cause their husband to enjoy having sex with them.
While I do not think the 50s were an evil time in the slightest, I think in many ways it was admirable. I just don't think that people should try to make it into a time that it wasn't: people had sex before marriage, cheated on their spouses, slept with the same sex, had sex when they were teenagers, and so on. Or ignoring that there a lot of ugly aspects to the 50s as well: rampant homophobia, blatant sexism (the ads where the husband literally pets the wife on the head and says "good girl" and it's not meant to be ironic or even humorous just shows how bad it was), racism was still very common, and if you had emotional, mental, or family problems, there wasn't much help available to you.
My next will probably be about ragging on the 1960s.
Rock & Roll began while Jazz was possibly at its zenith. Great literature- Mailer, Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc. Cool architecture and design- Saarinen, Eames, Nelson, Eichler, etc. Great films by Hitchcock, Wilder, Kazan, etc.
The Space Race, the Jet Age, Cool Cars (ever see a Vette from the 50s?), perhaps the best decade in Baseball (especially if you are a New Yorker although it ended badly), Playboy Magazine began, boozing was normal and LSD was legal, Beatniks, and Modern Art.
And it had its share of radicals like Paul Robeson and C. Wright Mills.
The fifties actually had much more crime than today, it just wasn't as publicized
.
I was living in the 50s and there was not more crime, hidden or otherwise .
It was a time of change for the better ,unlike today . A young black man had a good chance to grow up but not to advance in most cases, but that was changing . Today too many blacks end up kiling each other or in prison . They also leave their wives and children . The ones who do get famous insult their own race by marrying whites or hispanics instead of black women . Seems freedom wasn't the answer to all their problems after all . Freedom never last without morals . Whites and blacks in this nation will soon learn this but it may be too late .
Most mothers black and white didn't have to work . Most knew how to cook something besides Hamburger Helper. They didn't have epidemics of sexual diseases or obesity . They had closer family relations and less depressed , none were on drugs for questionable disorders .
Society was basically kinder . We didn't have road rage, children killing other kids in schools or commiting suicides like today .
When the hippys ,later turned greedy yuppys came to run the corporations and the people of this nation it was the begining of the end of America . Now our children are taught perversion in our schools ,soon nothing will be taboo for us .
Immigrants came to work and then went back home instead of staying and using up our resources , closing down our hospitals, and demanding we care for their large families with food ,shelter and medical care . Ike sent some back who thought they would jump in line of others waiting to come in legally .It was called 'Operation ******* " . Our borders were safe from criminals coming in to do us harm .
Mosque were not going up everywhere much less footbaths or radical militant camps like Islamburg in Virginia and other places . Now they want to sue anyone who disagrees with their theocracy. Our leaders are bringing the enemy in on us ,imo. I think we will find out why soon .
We were never so divided as we are today ! Multiculturism is a cancer to any society that embraces it . We use to be Americans , now we are african Americans,arab Americans, irish Americans ,etc,etc,etc, .
You better believe the 50s were better warts and all !
Our food was safer because we grew it on our farms ,it didn't come from China, Chili or Mexico .
It seems that liberals idealize the 1960s and conservatives idealize the 1950s. To each side "their" decade was a period of rainbows, lollipops, and sunshine and was destroyed by other side. It was magical I tells ya! Oh, and that other decade was pure evil with nothing of value. Evil!
The 1950s did have its good sides. People seemed to have a stronger work ethic, there seemed to more emphasis on being active in the community, it seems like it was a great time to be a kid (excluding coming from a really f--ked family, but every decade sucks if that's the case), the seeds of the Civil Rights period had been planted, and entertainment was just starting to really break through and was just starting to become edgy (at least for the time).
However there was a lot of ugliness as well. I should make it clear that I was not even alive in the 1950s, so my opinions of the decade comes from family and a fair bit of reading on the period.
Familial dysfunction wasn't as widely acknowledged during the 1950s, it certainly did happen and there was very little people could do to actively help it. It was merely something you just didn't talk about, so if your uncle was touching you or if Daddy was an alcoholic or if your wife was repeatedly cheating on you or your husband hits you; you just had to grin and bear it. Get a divorce? What will the neighbors think? Consoling? What the hell is that? Your uncle is touching you? Come on, only perverts who hang out in back alleys do that, not a guy who won a Silver Star charging a *** machine gun nest.
And just because married couples on television didn't have sex, doesn't mean that real people followed suit. My mother was born about four or five months after my grandparents got married and she wasn't a premature birth. How did that happen? But my grandma was a grown woman at that time, had she been a teenager, well she would have either gotten an abortion in Mexico (or had one conducted by a nurse in the family who used to conduct illegal abortions in the 40s and 50s) or her mother and her would have gone an extended vacation and my grandma would come back with a new "sister". And yes, it happened pretty often in the 1950s.
And how many times did men make small talk about their spouses to obviously gay men. Men so outrageously gay that today nobody would even assume they were in the closet. They would talk to these guys and often be on extremely friendly terms with them while deeply suspecting that Johnson from accounting was "a fairy", but they would tolerate this man on one condition, that he keep up a facade that was fooling nobody. Had he been openly gay, he would find little support (and a lot of hostility) outside of Greenwich Village in New York and parts of San Francisco. This is what I find so sad and fascinating, that so many people who I've talked to who were in their 20s and 30s during this period can think of a few cases like this. They knew someone who was obviously gay, even if they weren't quite sure at the time what gay even was, yet they tolerated this person as long as they were to keep up the charade. They would observe the unhappy wives who probably thought the reason why their husband is extremely uncomfortable in bed had something to due with their appearance and were completely ignorant of how no amount of feminine beauty could cause their husband to enjoy having sex with them.
While I do not think the 50s were an evil time in the slightest, I think in many ways it was admirable. I just don't think that people should try to make it into a time that it wasn't: people had sex before marriage, cheated on their spouses, slept with the same sex, had sex when they were teenagers, and so on. Or ignoring that there a lot of ugly aspects to the 50s as well: rampant homophobia, blatant sexism (the ads where the husband literally pets the wife on the head and says "good girl" and it's not meant to be ironic or even humorous just shows how bad it was), racism was still very common, and if you had emotional, mental, or family problems, there wasn't much help available to you.
My next will probably be about ragging on the 1960s.
There is nothing ' gay ' about homosexuality .
And if the hippys and homosexuals had of stayed in the closets and flop houses and out of our schools and universities, our children wouldn't be dying of so many sexually transmitted diseases and other symptoms of immorality .
Bad is good and good is bad now, so bad is what will come to this nation,imo.
It's the Godly against the un-Godly, the democrat vs the republican, the many cultures clashing and America stands complacent and silent . Illegal and legal immigrants stand in our streets and fly their flags of hate in our face, perverts march naked with children in tow in parades and teach our young school kids how to have oral and anal sex ,just to humor a few abnormal ' very militant' hateful citizens .
Radiacls stomp our flag and threaten us with more terrorism . Millions of illegal criminals protest in our streets and threaten to take over our nation and we just sit back, pay for most of it with our taxes and allow it when we could peaceully put a stop to it by voting out the dictators and liberals from office and taking back our country .
Stay at home mothers didnt just diappear the minute the 50s were over, and were't always at home before the 50s. For decades before many women had to work to survive, in factory or service jobs and their children had to be looked after by realatives or on their own. If you were priveldged and rich, the custom was to have nannys and governessess look after your children, so they didnt see their mothers much.
The 50s have been nostalgasized and people forget that things were not all ideal. A lot of crime got overlooked when the police forces were not connected back then and they worked in their own districts--communications were laughable. I think they had the telephone and a teletype to pass on information. No real forensics either. Plus with prejudice and emotions ruling things, many innocent people were convicted and executed. Child molesters and serial killers had a hey day. Just because we didnt hear about them didnt mean they still werent operating in the shadows and getting away with murder.
I agree that a lot of things were swept under the rug and you were encouraged to move on and forget about it. The decade had a lot of good things too. Peace of sorts, prosperity and ideals, are what we think of about that time.
I wonder what future generations will say about the present time.......
Women also didn't get married and leave the workforce. They often worked until they were pregnant -- hiding the pregnancy as long as they could. And because women were looked at as baby makers, when they didn't produce it was sorrowful.... and there was no choice in the matter -- you were supposed to have kids. It took my mom five years to get pregnant and she remembered the whispers and looks of pity...
Life wasn't that easy, either. I was born in 1959, and I can remember helping my mother and sisters with laundry. She had an old wringer washer, so she'd braid our hair so it wouldn't get caught in the wringer and she'd feed the clothing through the wringer into the rinse tub and we'd agitate by hand and then we'd feed the laundry through the wringer into the second rinse and agitate by hand and one more wring and mom would hang out the laundry.
Every time I see a wringer wash tub lovingly changed into a wonderful retro planter I am SO freaking happy that one more wringer has bit the dust.
No thanks -- I'm glad I get to be married to a wonderful guy, choose to not have children, and live today where life is a LOT better for us girls.
As a Black-American I don't care for much before 1970.
As a white man, I can appreciate your comment. I think they integrated the military in 1950. I grew up in a Pa. white neighberhood and high
school. In 1953 I was in Parris Island boot camp and made black friends
in my platoon. One of my friends was Al, a black from Philadelphia Pa.
Upon graduation Al and me had a Greyhound bus ticket to Pa. for a 30
day leave. We were young proud Marines and wore our uniforms home
on the bus with a bottle of whiskey between us. They still had black-
white segregation in the southern states. When we got on the bus the
driver said Al had to sit in the rear! I told the driver Al was sitting with
me! We sat where we wanted to and the bus makes numerous rest
stops along the way. Our first rest stop had white only & black only
mens rooms. I never seen that up north and neither did Al. I told Al
they can go to hell and if anyone challenged us we would deal with it.
Nobody did! We remained friends all through our service including our tour in Korea. So I guess racial hatred has to be taught!
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Doowopmarine
