I was born in 1951

All my gay friends who were born in 1951 are dead. Since sometime in the '90s. I'm glad you're still alive, r0.

OP I was born in 1959. I remember all those things as well. I also remember when people had impulse control and knew how to act in public. When a middle class life was obtainable, being mega obese was rare, and people took responsability for their lives instead of blaming others.

I remember when you had to bow to authority even if they were idiots because authority figures were always right especially to parents. And theater fags who were lousy at sports were ostracized and mocked. Even their parents regretted having them. My sister says things are different. I certainly hope so.

good old days

You are clearly a member of the Republican Senate, R3. We remember all that like it was this week!

I was born in 1950. I have you beat by a year.

1952 here. Glad there are at least TWO people older than me!

I wish men still wore hats.

Suits for flying?

Me too, r8.

I like the look.

1944 here. No Datalounge for fun bitchery in the old days. Now, people are nasty bitches everywhere.

I'm older than you, my darling. Not to worry.

Great to hang out with people who remember hula hoops, Howdy Doody, and if you're a native San Franciscan, Mayor Art.

r13 I was ON "Mayor Art!"

This is how I think about my life now.

R14 Now tell me you know what a Pineapple Pussy is and where Magnolia Thunderpussy was located and I'll blow you in Union Square.

[quote]I was ON "Mayor Art!"

Oh jeez. I hope his wife never found out.

I remember at least one poster who said he was in his nineties. I hope he's still around.

R18 Only in spirit.

Me may be, r18, but you’ll have to speak up a bit for him to hear you.

Nope. I beat you by 2 years...and no, I don't feel old.

I would imagine you are somewhere in the 60th to 70th percentile in terms of DL posters age, OP

One of the fascinating things about this place for me is how clearly so many of you remember the 50s, 60s and 70s.

My parents are a little younger than you-- born in 1955 and 56--but their memories of those days are not as vivid, or at least they don't talk about them as much.

The downside is that some DLers forget that the world has changed dramatically in the past 40 years and tend to forget that the last 25 to 30 years actually happened, but mostly I get great history lessons from this site.

YOU'RE NOT THE OLDEST QUEEN ON HERE DAHLINK .

Born in 1950 - still part of the festivities until I reach the finish line. Glad I was born then as things seem to heading downhill fast. Climate change, rogue Govt., financial instability and social unrest. But, I do have hope that things will even out and improve with the involvement of those younger (excluding the 'Base' of course).

We've come a long way technologically and medically but humans still haven't figured out how to get along. If I had one wish it would be to banish ignorance which would be a start in getting the human race to evolve just a bit more.

Until then - Cheers!

1960 here , and I clearly remember the social upheaval of the mid to late 60s . My dad watched Walter Cronkite every single day of my youth . The rate of deterioration socially began (in my opinion ) in the early 80s . Until that point people still acted like they cared what others thought . With the "greed is good" era,its all been a fast track to where we are today . Rude,stupid greedy assholes who dont give a shit about anyone but themselves . Im with the poster upthread who said he was glad he was on the downslope , I am too . I cant imagine what it will be like in 20 years .

Not even close, OP. Lots of eldergays here. The plague did do a number on those of us living in bigger cities in the 1980s. Thankfully, some of us have survived.

I was born in 1954. Also remember all the things other eldergays mentioned above. But I can't believe NO ONE has yet mentioned Captain Kangaroo. Come on the Captain, Mr. Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Moose. . .

OP here and I guess I am surprised by the estimate that there are many here older than I. (I still remember junior high school arguments about whether it's "older than me" or "older than I." Has to do with "than" being a preposition or a conjunction -- does anyone even know what those two things are today?)

The main reason I come to Datalounge is that it teaches me what's going on in popular culture in ways that surprise my friends -- as in, I know the names of all kinds of minor 20-something celebrities etc that none of my friends do. It's a very, very minor achievement, but at my age, anything works.

1954, you old farts.

1959 here. R25, you are so right. Things started going down the shitter in the 80's. Some might say the 60s or 70s, but I believe it was the 80s.

R30 I agree with you -- in fact, I suspect it was Reagan and his whole "greed is good" mentality and, of course, his dependence on the religious right and his empowerment of them that destroyed the country.

You old boomers should do us all a favor and kill yourselves. You are using up our air and using up our SSI too. Sometimes it's just better to die than to live and use everyone's resources. What more can you accomplish? You can get dryer hose really cheap at HD and pick up some duct tape while your're at it.

Pluck your magic twanger, R32

1950. I was raised in LA and as a kid there was an empty storefront across the street, and A R T painted in big block letters on the painted window. Late at night there'd be bongos playing and cool jazz, with voices reading what I guess I now know as poetry. The residents drove a Morris Minor convertible - they often wore black turtlenecks, goatees. Walking by the Morris once and a young woman with long straight blond hair was sitting reading (I remember it as Nietzsche, but that must be a manufactured memory). Her smile as she said "hello little cute boy"... almost made me straight. I love the span of years I've been given. I am so sorry for the younger kids and what they have now.

R32 This kind of trolling is so ubiquitous it has no meaning any more. Just static.

I have you all beat.

I’ve been on DL ever since I started receiving Google alerts that someone here was posting under my name.

olivia you forgot to mention to op your favorite words.

You’re so young OP, so young.

Poor Olivia doesn't realize how often she's posted here.

Are you kidding, Joan?

The bitch barely realizes she’s actually alive.

OP, either you have already or will turn 69 this year. Congratulations! You've reached the age when the jokes tell themselves.

77 is better, you get 8 more

I was born in 1956 and you girls are making me feel like chicken again. Thank you!

No problem, r42.

You want-a that parmigiana?

There was a poll done five years ago. How old are you?

I remember three terrible assasanations and I wonder why good people were assassinated but this one major blowhard is still living?

[quote] Does that make me the oldest person on Datalounge?

Are you serious? We have posters here who remember the McKinley administration.

You sound like a real treasure, r32.

I had a friend who won on the Grand Prize Game!

Ike was prez when I was born. Woodrow was prez when my parents we born.

Woodrow?

You mean Tommy Woodrow?

I was born in 1944 in the Lebensborn maternity home Heim Ardennen, in Belgium. I was stolen by an American Lieutenant Colonel and smuggled to Connecticut in 1945.

Forwarding you IP address to ICE R51.

Anyone born before 1941?

Damn. You are 30 years older than me....

I just want to express respect for your experience and gratitude for your willingness to share.

1954 here and I can remember segregated water fountains and rest rooms in Texas.

1951. Harry Truman was President when I was born. I shook his hand when I was ten years old. James Michael Curley (the Rascal King and often Mayor of Boston) gave me a flag at a Fourth of July parade. I took the train to Florida with my grandmother most winters, sleeping in a Pullman car. I remember her Packard, too. I remember flying on a Constellation when it was the largest and fastest passenger plane. I remember getting amphetamines easily from the family doctor as a teenager. I remember fountain pens. I remember the introduction of Tab, the Princess phone, zip codes, and the direct dialing of long-distance calls. I remember a diet candy called Ayds and sleep sofas made by a company called "Castro Convertibles." I read somewhere that the people who owned it offered Fidel Castro a million dollars if he'd change his name.

I also remember when gay men were called "fags" in polite conversation and lesbians were referred to as "mannish" and African-Americans were "colored people." I remember polio, most cancers being fatal, most car crashes being - if not fatal - then pretty serious because there were no seatbelts. Or airbags. Or even pretty good brakes. I remember when everybody (or so it seemed) drank and smoked and respected Roman Catholic priests, too.

Things have changed.

Also born in 1942, OP. You are just a kid.

Born in downtown Los Angeles. The entire Los Angeles county was solid orange groves as well as, Orange County.

No smog. No TV

[quote][R13] I was ON "Mayor Art!"

I was on Captain Fortune on KPIX.

[QUOTE]Pluck your magic twanger…

Actually, it's PLONK your magic twanger, Froggie.

You’re 69 OP. You”re not even the oldest person in this thread probably.

I was born the shortly after Ike got the Republican nomination for president. The nurse brought me to my mom and asked me what she was going to name me. My mom didn't know yet so the nurse suggested Dwight. My mom asked the nurse why the name Dwight and she said he'd just been nominated for President.

Thank God my parents were registered Democrats.

[quote]Thank God my parents were registered Democrats.

You're damned lucky they didn't name you Adlai.

1951. There were a lot of kids my age in our neighborhood. During winter we were out sledding all the time, we had decent hills. When the "flying saucers" (aluminum discs) came out we all got one and were thrilled we could go even faster. I don't see kids out playing in the winter anymore.

1955

Only you, R53.

r60 We must be about the same age (Sep '52 here.)

[quote]I was on Captain Fortune on KPIX.

I don't remember him. I remember Captain Satellite on KTVU - Channel 2.

R62. I had the same experience in the 1960s. However when my nephews were coming of age in the early 2000s, I would visit over the holidays, and I always would comment that there was no one outside. No "coasting" as we called sledding it in Boston. Big hills, small hills, it didn't matter; we were outside all day with our Flexible Flyer sleds and flying saucers (the older aluminum versions and the newer plastic saucers). No street hockey games, no snowball fights, no building snowmen. And no kids walking around the neighborhood asking neighbors if they could shovel driveways, walkways, etc. to make a few bucks. Where do kids get money nowadays? We used to get it by shoveling in the winter and cutting grass in the summer. Now kids would rather die than do anything like that.

When I would visit, I asked if they would go skating (indoor rink), which they were very willing and which I used to do every Saturday morning as a kid. Kids just don't go "out to play" and hang out and wander around the neighborhood on their bikes and come home when the lights come on. To be fair about my snow comments above, it doesn't really snow the way it did years ago. It gets cold and there is the occasional snowstorm, but it just doesn't snow like it did.

I'm 1955

"There were a lot of kids my age in our neighborhood."

Same here. My parents first home was a new 5 room bungalow, purchased using VA financing. The neighborhood was tremendously homogenous: veterans returning from WWII, getting married, having kids, purchasing their first home, 100% white and 90% Catholic. If you wanted to play, you went out to the street and found someone among the hundreds of kids hanging out in the street. When we outgrew that house, the "move up" house in a new neighborhood had the same demographics: WWII vets, 100% white and largely Catholic, purchasing a bigger, more luxurious house with 2 bathrooms family rooms, garages, A/C, etc. And once again, hundreds of kids to play with, right outside your front door. No need for play dates here.

1951. George Gobel, Rochester, Gracie at my grandparents. Russian attack drills at elementary school. High School (1969!) was Robert E Lee. We had the 2nd largest Confederate flag in the world. Father cheered MLK assassination, JFK and RFK too. I wiised up, moved to NYC 1970s. Travel in Europe, Mexico, Canada with no preplanning or contact with home. Just adventure. A wild ride, all of it. My younger husband adores my stories -- or pretends to-- and I'm glad as hell I lived in worlds other than this sad sad one.

[quote] You're damned lucky they didn't name you Adlai.

Or Estes.

BTW, GREAT post, r56!

If you were born in 1951, the Beatles released a new album in America during each of your teenage years.

I remember that night at Ford’s Theater when shots rang out.

The kids in my neighborhood play outside all the time. The pendulum has swung and I don’t think parents are letting them sit inside and play on the computer. Once I looked out and they were having a bonfire and swinging burning sticks around! That’s the kind of thing we did in the seventies.

1945, i remember my mother listening to the radio in 1952 when the rethugs were elected and bawling her eyes out. wise woman...she knew they would destroy us.

R56, I was born in 1951 and never heard gay men referred to as fags in polite conversation. They were referred to as homosexuals.

I never heard anyone talk about homosexuals until I was in high school. Then, and only now and then, would someone refer to someone famous, or someone in school, as homosexual. The word gay was just starting to become common. I never heard the word fag.

1953 here. It's always nice to know I'm not the oldest in the room.

I can show you a newspaper column in the Boston Globe (the classy paper: the Herald was the tabloid) about Boston's Combat Zone from the early 1970's describing "the hookers and the fags."

It was more common than you might think.

No, not when another was born 1935.

In small town U.S.A., not much had changed by even 1981.

[QUOTE]I was on Captain Fortune on KPIX.

[quote]I don't remember him. I remember Captain Satellite on KTVU - Channel 2.

Captain Fortune was on KPIX in the early and mid-'50s, even before KTVU went on the air in the mid- to late '50s. His real name was Peter Abramson and he had a KILLER ass, which this very young gayling noticed from the first time I ever saw him. He had a puppet sidekick named Short John O'Copper (as opposed to Long John Silver). I also liked watching Fireman Frank on KRON, Channel 4. I used to wonder what he looked like naked. God, I was a horny little bastard.

1948 here, but look like 1998!

Born in December 1949. The day my sister was a kid in the audience of the Mayor Art Show in SF (1964), I was caught shoplifting a candy bar.

That's the extent of my criminal career.

Other things I remember fondly (many already mentioned here): Schwinn bikes, yo-yos, metal roller skates with a key, roaming far and wide from home as a kid, hula hoops, buying chunks of milk chocolate by the ounce at Woolworth, and my lively young parents (long gone now).

Great stories, but this thread is unnerving some way I can't quite put my finger on.

I love these stories. Please share some more. And to the leldergays, much respect to you: you were the first ones to fight for our rights, and I can't imagine how much shit you had to endure back then just for the simple fact that you're gay.

eldergays*

Born in 1955. I remember watching the Nixon-Kennedy debates on TV. I wanted JFK to win the election because I thought he was much more handsome than Nixon.

R67, I grew up near Boston and I think we called it "coasting" too. Weird, I haven't thought of that in years.

Big Brother Bob Emery, Rex Trailer & Pablo on Boomtown, Major Mudd.

Captain Fortune - Nope. KPIX - Yep, Channel 5, CBS affiliate.

Fireman Frank - Nope. KRON - Yep, Channel 4, NBC affiliate.

Captain Kangaroo - Absolutely!

Captain Satellite - Absolutely! KTVU Channel 2, from Jack London Square in Oakland.

Anyone remember Channel 44 and Channel 36 out of San Jose?

Also Captain Bob, R90.

R90 R92. also in Boston: Captain Kangaroo and his sidekick, Mr. Green Jeans. And "Pablo," Rex Trailer's sidekick.

Bozo The Clown, who was played by Bob Harrington of Channel 5, WHDH, and his wife, Jean Harrington was Miss Jean, host of Romper Room. Miss Jean would hold the hand-held mirror that spun around and say Hello to everyone whose mother send in the name of their kid to Channel 5.

Boston Movie Time that came on at 5:30pm each weekday eve, weird right before dinner.

I grew up in the NYC suburbs and loved a cartoon called Crusader Rabbit. I've never heard anyone veer mention it again. Anyone here remember it? It was the first animated show ever produced for TV.

I loved Crusader and Rags, r94, and have mentioned Crusader Rabbit in the past. It was my favorite cartoon until Rocky and His Friends appeared in 1959.

I grew up in the NJ suburbs of NY. You?

We had Crusader Rabbit in San Francisco, but it's at the outer limits of my memory.

I remember Crusader Rabbit. Also the puppet shows Foodini and Pinhead, Beany and Cecil (which later became an animated series) and, of course, Burr Tillstrom's Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

I was on the Big Brother Bob Emery Show and also Rex Trailer's Boomtown several times. Pablo (Dick Kilbride) and his wife (Pauline) became friends of mine.

I used to send my drawings to Uncle Fred Sayles on his [italic]Junior Frolics[/italic] show. It was a Newark, NJ, thing, but I think it ran throughout the NY metro area. Anyway, he would always show them on his show, and this boy I would eventually have a crush on (Kirk M.) would tell me how cool each one was the day after he saw it on TV.

Kirk grew up to become an artist, actually. I've been painting abstracts the last two years.

[quote]I loved Crusader and Rags, [R94], and have mentioned Crusader Rabbit in the past. It was my favorite cartoon until Rocky and His Friends appeared in 1959.

Crusader Rabbit and Rocky and Bullwinkle were both created by Jay Ward.

I was also born in 1951. I remember watching the live broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" starring Julie Andrews, for whom it was written, in 1957.

My first report card in 1958 didn't have grades, instead the teacher hand wrote a progress report each quarter. Imagine doing that for 25 kids (we had big classes, it was the baby boom)

I loved Crusader Rabbit and another show called Brother Buzz about a bee. This was in SF, I think BB was on NPR (KQED CH 9).

1961

I got a "Baby Secret" Doll from Santa. It was under the tree with tinsel on Christmas Day morning.

I also KNEW to the bottom of my little heart, after seeing The Supremes perform on the Ed Sullivan Show, that one day I would wear the gowns they wore , have the cute, short hair cuts they had and would dance and sound like them.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who remembers Crusader Rabbit. R95 I grew up in Westchester. Old enough to remember the atom bomb drills where either we would be told to sit under our desks, or, later, we'd all go down to the basement and wait until the drill was over. We had no idea what an atom bomb was, but we knew not to be too scared because if you could be saved by sitting under your desk, it couldn't have been too bad.

[quote]We had big classes. It was the baby boom.

Indeed. We started with two sections of first graders, 1A and 1B. When we came back the following year, it was 2A, 2B, and 2C.

Crusader and Rags

"We had big classes. It was the baby boom."

I started school in 1957 in kindergarten at a Catholic school with 3 sections and each section had at least 35 kids in it.

[quote]I loved Crusader Rabbit and another show called Brother Buzz about a bee. This was in SF, I think BB was on NPR (KQED CH 9).

I'd forgotten all about Brother Buzz! I think the Lutherans or someone were behind it, but there really wasn't much of a religious message. It was first seen on KPIX, Ch. 5; then moved to KTVU (2); and finally KGO (7). I think only Howdy Doody ran longer than BB did.

I remember Ding Dong School. I even had an official Miss Frances Ding Dong School bell.

Southern California kid here, born 1960. Anyone remember the TV shows with Hobo Kelly and Sheriff John?

"Put another candle on your birthday cake...."

I was born in 1950. I desperately wanted a Davey Crockett beaver tail hat. My mom wouldn't let me have one. from the time I was five, we rode our bikes all over the place. I think we rode in about a five-mile radius. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. There was empty land everywhere in those days.

I was born in 1959...oh yes! I remember when people ate normally, no complaining from vegetarians and glutton free people.

[quote]I was born in 1950. I desperately wanted a Davey Crockett beaver tail hat.

You're either an impostor or you have dementia. It was a COONSKIN hat!

Born '51? Hell, I as in 10th grade then, singing in the talent show "A You're Adorable ..."

You're adorable yourself, R114.

Born in 1953, and actually lived down the street from the WGN studios where Bozo the Clown originated. Actually was on the show several times. Remember trolley buses, and even rode on one of the last streetcars in Chicago. Remember television closing down at night about midnight or one, and sneaking listening to my transistor radio to Franklyn McCormack and the Meister Brau Showcase on WGN till the wee hours of the morning. Remember riding the Twentieth Century Limited with my grandmother, and flying back on a TWA Constellation, my first flight. Remember Schwinn bikes, really well, as my aunt worked there and got to tour the factory. Miss a lot of this old stuff.

R111 Yep, I remember Hobo Kelly and Sheriff John (Sheriff John's Lunch Brigade).

I also remember, during certain times of the year, the fragrance of orange blossoms everywhere you went in LA county. The Lotus Eaters indeed.

Seeing other comments in this thread - the language of homosexuals in decades before "gay liberation" - language that largely told gay kids something was profoundly wrong with them, and caused them to want to hide from peers.

It'd be interesting to see what words had power in your geography as you grew up. In downtown LA in the 50s and early 60s these were the words that weighed on me:

Queer, fruit, fruit loop. I never heard faggot or fag until much much later.

[quote]Hell, I as in 10th grade then, singing in the talent show "A You're Adorable ..."

I've been thinking that someone needs to rework that song into "D-You're Deplorable".

This thread triggered a memory. It was probably 1955 when I was five when my mother and her best friend trained us four kids (two from each family) to sing a ridiculous song in a talent show. Literally they had those fringed gold lame curtains on the stage.

We were accompanied by a pianist as we each sang a stanza of the long song. When it came to my turn I sang very slowly and the slower I sang the slower the accompanist played. I was horrid.

I still remember some of the lyrics:

My gal's a corker

She's a New Yorker

I do everything to keep her in style

She's got a head of hair

Just like a grizzly bear

Hey boys, that's where my money goes-oes-oes

And on and on:

She's got a pair of eyes, just like two custard pies

She's got a pair of lips, just like potato chips

She's got a pair of shoulders, just like to big boulders

She's got a pair of hips, just like two battle ships

She's got a pair of legs, just like to whiskey kegs

She's got a pair of feet, just like a navy fleet

Born in 1948. The first President I remember was Eisenhower. I knew he was a World War II general and supreme allied commander. "The War" was still fresh in everyone's minds so I was often hearing about it from first hand accounts. The very early 1950s were a lot more like the 1940s. It was the mid '50s when the decade really came into it's own. We never had a television set in my home until 1955 when I was 7. The first show everybody wanted to watch was I Love Lucy. It was a nationwide cultural phenomenon at that time. Very big! I recall the Republicans at that time were much more like what we would now call moderates or centrists and almost all of them worked with the Democrats to reach compromises to get things done. Ike was a good President, as far as I was concerned. Nobody I knew liked Nixon, however. Too shifty. I feel like the 1950s was the best time to grow up as a kid in the United States because we kids had freedom to be independent and make mistakes and run around on our own and learn how to be resourceful and resilient and learn that there are bad things as well as good things in life and we had better be prepared for that. There was in society (to a large extent) a sense of order that began to erode in the late 1960s and is virtually all gone now. Most younger people bash the '50s for all of the perceived bad things about it, like the Cold War and the atomic bomb threat and the conformity and the fact that Civil Rights didn't yet exist (...as a kid I never could understand why so many white people didn't like or respect "colored people" just because they were 'colored'. I rebelled against that way of thinking.) It's true, some things were negative about the '50s but I never felt worried or scared or bad about anything that was going on. I never even worried about the atomic bomb. We joked about it. Maybe because I was a kid I lived in that kid's cocoon that envelops you when you are still young and fairly innocent. But with me and every kid I knew, we all loved growing up in the 1950s. It was a fun, exciting, happy time for most of us. Of course anyone can make the argument about all the bad, negative things back then but the good and positive things ruled for the most part. I feel it's too bad kids of today will never have or know or experience that sense of freedom and self sufficiency we had.

Since when was being born in 1951 an indication of relative old age? If you were born after January, then that makes me older than you!

And I hadda walk 20 miles, uphill, through the snow, into the wind, and back home again, every day.

I was born two months after January 1951, R121.

R122 With a hardboiled egg to keep my hands warm until I could peel and eat it when I got to school.

I was born in 1962:

I remember knowing every single person who lived on our block.

I remember my mom sitting on the porch with my next door neighbor's mom, drinking iced tea on a hot summer evening.

I remember playing "Kick the Can" in the middle of the street with all the neighbor kids.

I remember my brother and me getting a dollar from my mom every Tuesday in the summertime so we could ride our bikes to the Putt Putt miniature golf course with my friends and play all day, because Tuesday was Dollar Day. My mom was glad to do it, because it got us out of the house all day so she could clean.

I remember walking to and from kindergarten all by myself.

Did any of you kids of the 50s watch What’s My Line as it first aired? (I think it was on 10 PM on Sunday nights, so maybe not) Did you read Miss Dorothy Kilgallen’s Voice of Broadway column in one of the Hearst papers? I’ve been watching old episodes in chronological order. It’s very entertaining and a real time capsule of the 50s.

r126, I was born in '51, and I did watch What's My Line, but it was more in the '60s, as it came on at 10:30 in NYC. I don't remember if I read Dottie K's Voice of Broadway. We only took the Journal-American on Sundays. I insisted upon it because I liked their comics more than the ones in the Herald-Tribune or the Daily News. I was never much of a Broadway queen, though.

From r120 on down we’re really getting to the meat of this thread.

Good stories and memories, fellas.

In the present, when I think of 1950s TV, the first thing that comes to mind is the sound of the European police siren. They talked about the Nazis on US news programs a bit those days. I found the noise terrifying, I think even before I knew what "Knotzys" were.

I can remember walking to elementary school a mile and a half very day, even in the rain and snow. Our suburban town had no school busses, we were just expected to get to school, no matter what. Then we'd walk back home for lunch, eat, and then walk back to school, and then walk home again. (If the weather was really, really bad, then maybe one of the neighbors would volunteer to drive the kids on our block).

Lunches didn't come till we got to junior high school, and they were, well, bad. Unidentifiable casseroles and stews, spaghetti and meat balls, large hunks of white bread, things called "Lucille's Surprise Dessert," and of course, on Fridays, fish. By high school, they started giving us the option of yoghurt, which was considered very weird and only the hip girls ate it, and even salad now and then, although again, only the hip girls ate that too.

But still, despite the bad food, and maybe because of all the walking, I don't remember any overweight kids in our class. And there was never any mention of food allergies, ever. No peanut, lactose, or any other. I've always wondered why as the country supposedly got richer and healthier, more and more kids got heavier and more allergic.

r120 is so old that paragraphs hadn't been invented when he went to grade school.

I was born in '51 and, like R127, remember watching first-run episodes of "What's My Line" but not until the '60s, because it came on late Sunday and I had school the next day.

I do remember watching first-run episodes of "The Honeymooners" on Saturday nights. I was, and still am, a big fan of the show, although not so much the '60s musical episodes with Sheila McRae. To me, Audrey Meadows was the one true Alice, even though she didn't originate the role. I assume that the episodes I remember watching in the '50s were during the 1956-57 season, the final season of Jackie Gleason's CBS variety show until he returned in the '60s. It was only in the previous season, 1955-56, when "The Honeymooners" was filmed as a separate half-hour sitcom, after which it continued as a sketch on the variety show.

Surely I'm not the only child of the '50s who remembers "The Pinky Lee Show."

Pinky seems a little, well, you know. Actually, he seems like an early version of Pee-wee Herman.

"From you to me, Pinkie Lee!"

I truly didn’t know Pinky Lee was a guy, having only heard the name.

Holy shit!

[quote]I truly didn’t know Pinky Lee was a guy, having only heard the name.

His real name was Pincus Leff.

Like Pincus and McCarthy?

Pinky Lee was the comical sidekick (called Pinky) in the last couple of quickie westerns Roy Rogers and Dale Evans made for Republic before they made the move to television. (Pat Brady would fill the comical sidekick role on TV.)

Pinky wore a hat in these movies that made him look really quite gay. I'm surprised Roy didn't shoot him. I vaguely recall Roy and Dale voicing support for Anita Bryant during her anti-gay crusade in the '70s, which severely disappointed me, because I used to enjoy watching Roy and Dale's TV show on Saturday mornings as a kid.

Actually, R122, I was born in 1951. Even in central Wisconsin, we walked to school, home (up a big hill) for lunch and back home after school every day. It was 6-7 city blocks one way.

We had a ball field across the street from my house that was flooded every winter for ice skating. It was lighted after dark and we could go out, because there was little worry about weirdos. We went trick-or-treating door-to-door and could take apples and cookies (wrapped) without worrying about poison or razor blades. I rode my bike all over my neighborhood as well. The town had a bus service and by age 8 or 9 I could ride it myself downtown to the public library. Our drugstore had a soda fountain and I could stop there for a cherry phosphate before catching the bus. The downtown also had a Woolworth's that was fun to browse through. Sometimes I would catch the bus going the other direction so I could ride up the east hill and see what was going on in an unfamiliar part of town.

I remember Crusader Rabbit, Burns and Allen and Perry Como. There was Twilight Zone and Perry Mason, too.

[quote] The rate of deterioration socially began (in my opinion ) in the early 80s . Until that point people still acted like they cared what others thought .

Agree, but our quality of life has been especially damaged by this attitude since 2000 or so.

[quote] I was born in 1951

Is it true that, like, the earth was still cooling?

[quote]Pinky seems a little, well, you know. Actually, he seems like an early version of Pee-wee Herman.

I'm pretty sure Pee-Wee Herman based his character and schtick on Pinky Lee and his peers.

R133 I watched the Pinky Lee show on TV in the '50s. It was mildly amusing but then of course kids back then were much easier to please. I feel like Pinky Lee was possibly the inspiration for Gene Saks, as the TV star Chuckles the Chipmunk in A Thousand Clowns.

R111. 1955 here. I had a Davy Crockett cookskin hat.

The National Museum of American History:

A cartoon called CLUTCH CARGO that had real people's mouths inserted into cartoon characters' faces? I was in love with Clutch.

>>Pablo (Dick Kilbride) and his wife (Pauline) became friends of mine.

R97, you mean Pablo wasn't Mexican? I don't remember hearing him speak, just the serape and the sombrero.

The oldest on DL? Are you kidding? You’re not even 70 yet!

[quote]I had a Davy Crockett cookskin hat.

You weren’t supposed to cook it! That’s probably why you “had” one instead of “have” one.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Born in 1951. I never missed the original "Mickey Mouse Club." In 1957, one of my Christmas presents was this "Mickey Mouse Club" newsreel projector. I still have it, in its original box, although the box is pretty battered after more than 60 years.

Born in 1951. I had a Hudson Hornet pedal car; light green, real chrome, and a red vinyl seat.

And every View Master slide ever made, it seemed. My parents must have loved their View Master.

I was born in 58 in Canada. I don't understand liberalism or why people gave up their 1950s values so easy.

After WW2 my parents bought their first home in Levittown on Long Island. I had many happy memories living there. When I was 8 they moved us to Plainview LI because mother was too good for Levittown...not as happy there

Do any elder homos remember having to swim naked at the Y or in Junior high school and high school. Tell us your stories.

My father wouldn't let me go to St. Patrick's HIgh School because swimming naked was mandatory and he didn't trust the Irisher priests.

I can't understand why swimming naked would be mandatory. What was the thinking behind that?

I have no idea. That was over 50 years ago.

Yes, R153 Catholic high school, 1960's... allegedly it was a relic of some high-minded Grecian ideal of the body as a temple but in reality we now know it was for the priests to ogle the boys.

Strangely or not, nude swimming was not unheard-of then. The public pools in Brookline (a Boston suburb) were usually sex-segregated and the males, anyway, were naked in the 1950's and early 60's. Likewise for a city-sanctioned but fenced off public beach in South Boston (MA) called the L Street Bath House - sex-segregated male nude swimming and sunning. Both were all very hetero at least on the surface.

R150 That's interesting that you had a Hudson Hornet pedal car because my father had a 1952 Hudson Hornet. I didn't know they made pedal cars of the Hudson. I would have loved to have had that in the 1950s when I was a kid. Our '52 Hudson was a great car. He kept it until the 1970s and eventually sold it to a collector. Those cars are very valuable now.

R153 We didn't swim naked but when I was a Freshman in High School in 1962, age 14, all of us boys in our Physical Education (gym) class were required to take a shower naked after class before we were allowed to leave. I was naive sexually at 14 so that's when I first saw the physical differences between boys of the same age. Some late bloomers who hadn't yet entered puberty still had small penises and no pubic hair and other boys were completely well developed and big. Wandering eyes were not uncommon among the locker room boys, checking out the other guys. But of course it was all very regimented and no-nonsense among the PE staff so looking was all that ever happened. Surprisingly I never saw an erection. I hated PE class because there were a lot of big, hulking jocks and bullies who liked to pick on the smaller, weaker boys. It was a very large High School of over 4000 students.

In December 1975 my parents bought a 1975 Hornet Sportabout. It was a gas guzzler even for the late 1970's. It only averaged 15 mpg in mixed driving which was terrible for a small car even in ca. 1977. My mother would be making a left turn on to a busy road and the car would stall. Dangerous.

Well....

[quote] I hated PE class because there were a lot of big, hulking jocks and bullies who liked to pick on the smaller, weaker boys. It was a very large High School of over 4000 students.

I had the same experience, R159. I was a freshman in 1965 in a school of about 2,000 students. The fact that I was not, shall we say, athletically inclined, made it even more of a nightmare. Every year we had to take a physical fitness test that was always humiliating. I got through most of it, but the part that terrified me was when we had to demonstrate how far we could throw a softball overhand. I dreaded it for weeks beforehand.

I’m sorry, r162.

Thank you, R163. I'm 68 now, so I'm pretty much over it. And it didn't ruin my life nearly as much as I thought it would. But it was pretty traumatic at the time. And my memory must be fading, because after I posted that, I remembered that the physical fitness test was in grades 5-8, not high school. I blame JFK and his emphasis on physical fitness, although I still felt terrible when I was in the seventh grade and heard he had been assassinated.