Eldergays, what were the 1950s like?

An endless stream of diapers and bottles to the best of my recollection 🤔

Big honking TVs with teeny, tiny screens. Unfunny comedians like Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante and George Gobel. Fathers you never saw because they were working, sleeping or playing golf. Holiday dinners that were a fucking disaster because of no microwave, food processor, convection oven and takeout. Psychotic teachers and pedos. Doctors making house calls. Milkmen. Daily newspapers. Eisenhower playiing golf. Cartoons from the 30s and 40s like Betty Boop. Tuberculosis. Polio. Cancelled stuff like Amos and Andy, and "Song of the South." Segregated schools, neighborhoods and drinking fountains. Westerns.

Roy Rogers fringed leather jackets for kids. Davy Crockett coonskin caps. Prop jets. Flight attendants handing out gum to prevent ear popping and giving kids honorary pilot wings. Washing machines that were supposed to last a lifetime. Places that repaired toasters and radios. Long-distance calls that required operators to place the call and were incredibly costly. Idlewild airport. Forty-eight states. An abundance of natural fibers and hand-knit items even in cheap stores. Elvis getting drafted. The Ed Sullivan Show. Manual typewriters. Candy bars for a nickel. A quarter for kiddie movie matinees.

r3 and r4 do you actually remember that shit or are you just listing things from the 50s?

My favorite

R5 people 65+ would remember all that. People from those days learned to count. Obviously, you haven't.

This is all from memory.

Also: Older people talking constantly about WWII and the Great Depression. Howard Johnson's fried clams and saltwater taffy. My mother and other women wearing belted shirtwaist dresses pr pedal pushers. TV shows with the name of the sponsor--Alcoa Playhouse. TV commercials for home permanents. The Howdy Doody Show, which I got to see in person. Mostly black-and-white movies. Black-and-white TV. The Ed Sullivan Show. Concrete playgrounds. The term "juvenile delinquent."

This is it, I promise. Really odd, disgusting penny candy. Candy dots on a piece of paper like a register receipt. Something call Lik-em-aid, which was a granular fruit-flavored powder. Wax bottles and cylinders filled with a putrid, sweet liquid. Clouds of tobacco everywhere.

Bullshit r7. I was born the 90s but that doesn't mean I watched Bill Clinton play the sax on some tv show. Someone born in 1952 doesn't necessarily remember Elvis getting drafted for fucking Korea. In order to be an adult/teen/tween who actually experienced the things listed the posters would have to be pretty goddamn old. Not calling them liars but I think I have a right to ask.

@r7, it would be pretty remarkable for any three year old to recall all that, so speaking of counting, perhaps you need a refresher course

Elvis getting drafted was a major event. He went to Germany, not Korea. I didn't say I liked or understood his music but everyone knew who he was. He was called "Elvis the Pelvis" and kids imitated him.

A lot of what I've referenced are food memories and things like going to the movies or flying on a plane alone to visit relatives in another city and gettng kiddie wings from the stewardess. I've described what TVs looked like. Milkmen and doctors making housecalls were a regular occurrence. I had uncles who talked about WWII, a mother who talked about the Great Depression, and a father who worked constantly, which was the norm for men to be disengaged parents. People smoked everywhere. Things got repaired.

I remember the shirtwaist dress because that was what my mother wore when she told me she had cancer. I was five. I remember the segregated water fountain I saw in a Virginia gas station on a trip to historical landmarks. I had to ask my parents what that was.

There was less children's programming, no videos, no internet. Very old cartoons and serials like "Flash Gordon" were recycled on TV stations. Kids read and played games and that was it. We learned to read fairly early, too.

I remember old ladies dressed like old ladies, think Eleanor Roosevelt or Aunt Bee. Long dresses, really big chunky shoes with thick heels, and these dollie like things on their shoulders.

You don't see ladies like that today.

At the time, there was nothing I could compare it to. It was the only decade during which I'd been alive.

I didn't care much for the music I heard. My mother forbade listening to Elvis, but I found him so physically unattractive I could not have cared less.

Either all TV was black & white, or no one I knew had a color set. That's what we called it, our TV set. I liked Felix the Cat and other cartoons, esp. Crusader Rabbit and Rags, and a sitcom with a talking Basset Hound.

I watched all things Disney, and I was particularly interested in a young man named Tim Considine, who was in Spin & Marty and The Hardy Boys. Later he was in The Swamp Fox, but Disney had his character flogged and then shot in one episode and I didn't feel like watching it anymore. I didn't know people did things like that to each other.

I mostly read books and collected soap and cereal boxes and pretended I owned a grocery store. Toys weren't that interesting to me.

Kids had stamp abd baseball card collections. Families bought encyclopedias, sometimes from grocery stores, which we cut up for school reports. Some lucky g=Girls got Betsy Wetsy dolls--you poured water down the hole in her lips and it came out from down there.

All i knew about Eisenhower was that he was always on the golf course. All the unfunny comedians like Bob Hope made jokes about it..

Superman domic books and comic strips in newspapers were a thing. You would spread the comic section on the rug and read it.

The first color movie I remember seeing was "South Pacific" in Todd AO color. Most of it sailed over my head. I didn't know how John Kerr could fall in love with Frances Nuyen at first sight. I didn't understand why Mitzi Gaynor would reject Rosanno Brazzi on the basis of his Asian children. I didn't understand why some of the sailers dressed like women to sing "Bloody Mary is the girl I love," Or why Mitzi felt the need to sing "I'm gonna wash that man out of my here."

Kids are sponges but that doesn't mean they grasp what they see.

Homonym alert. I meant "wash that man out of my hair."

I grew up in the rural south in the 50s and certainly remember toilets in public spaces labeled White Men/White Women/Colored Men/Colored Women.

^ Although that would have been a little unusual because usually whites had their public spaces and blacks had theirs.

I too grew up in the rural South and remember Blacks getting their food at the door of the restaurant and taking it out and not being allowed to sit down inside and eat.

[quote]R5 people 65+ would remember all that.

R7 - I'm not R5, but I'm 65 and I don't remember anything from the 1950s.

All of my memories begin from the early '60s.

I have one memory of being injured at age 3 and taken to the ER room, and a couple at age 4. The rest of my memories start at age five. I was nine by the end of the decade.

Parents were big on education. My brother and I learned to read at ages three and four, respectively. Maybe early reading develops the memory.

Florida with girdles.

Paint-by-numbers was also a thing.

Board games, riding bikes, the loser of an outdoor game had to go through "the hot oven".

It was fun, but then I went from being a newborn to nine years old in the 50's. No responsibilities.

[quote]the loser of an outdoor game had to go through "the hot oven".

What is this? Where did it take place? When?

I didn't experience the 50s myself, but I loved those home of the future videos.

Mamie Eisenhower bangs, Mamie Eisenhower fudge, Mamie Eisenhower pink

Adlai Stevenson nominated for President (1952 & 1956)

Campaign pins for VP Dick Nixon reading "You can't lick our Dick!"

"Good" living room holding Mom's best furniture--never used except when the preacher came to call

Hats with veils, women in gloves

Farfel the wonder dog, a puppet, doing Nestle's Quick commercials.

N-E-S-T-L-E-S

Nestles makes the very best

CHAAAAWK..

...LET (Farfel's lower jaw snaps shut)

WHEW....I was born in 1962, guess I'm not elder gay yet!!