How long ago are the 50's?

[hedgehog]

I made a reference to the 50's on another thread today and realized that most of you weren't even born then. When you refer to "after the war", which war are you referring to, WWII or Viet Nam? Or do you even say, "after the war"? Do you know anyone who heard Roosevelt on the radio? Did you actually see Kennedy, Johnson or Nixon on TV? I'm just curious how much of my past is ancient history to other people here.

[SharonRB]

1. I was a child in the 50s

Born in August of '49. I don't think I ever say "after the war" without being specific. There's WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, the current war...to0 many not to be specific.

I remember Kennedy, Johnson & Nixon. I was 14 when Kennedy was killed.

[hedgehog]

2. When I talk to my folks, "after the war" is always

after the big one- World War II. I'm also very much aware of the shadow of the Depression because my parents grew up then. It's hard for me to think of those times as history.

[SharonRB]

3. I would say the same for my parents

After the war would always be WWII. My dad was stationed in Japan. My dad was born in 1924, so was very young during the Depression. My mom was born in 1930.

[hedgehog]

4. The weird part for me is realizing that 1950 is more than half a

century ago. I look at the way things were when I entered high school and the way they are now and the change is unbelievable.

[SharonRB]

15. I hear ya

I can't believe I've been alive over half a century.

[qnr]

43. I know. Kind of strange to be more than 1/5 as old as the whole country

:hi:

[Orsino]

63. Always after the last *declared* war.

Not the fake ones since then.

[GalleryGod]

20. And Sharon and I both recall when these guys "Invaded"

God how I miss them....and those days.:loveya:

[SharonRB]

44. We were so much younger then...

and the world was a much more innocent place. I remember going to see them at the State Fair grounds via satellite or something. I never saw them live and in person. A friend of my dad's, a photographer, took pictures of them somewhere and signed fake autographs for me. I still have the photo.

[greatauntoftriplets]

25. Also August of 1949....

And my memories of the 1950s sound much like yours.

:hi:

Too damn many wars.

:evilfrown:

[SharonRB]

45. There certainly have been.

This is the worst one of all, though -- so pointless and based on lies. Well, maybe it hasn't gotten as bad as Vietnam yet, but we shouldn't have gotten into either of them.

[smitty]

5. I remember the 50s well

Grew up in the suburbs on Long Island. It's difficult to realize that the 50s were almost 50 years ago; when my family talked about the "war" it meant WWII (my two uncles fought in Europe). I actually saw John Kennedy in real life in the Fall of 1960 when his campaign caravan drove along Hempstead Turnpike.

[trof]

6. I remember when Roosevelt died.

I probably heard him on the radio, but I don't remember it.
I had two spinster great aunts, sisters, who were my babysitters.
I was at their apartment when the news came.
They were crying and I asked why.
"Our beloved president has died."
Never forget that.
I would have been around 4 or 5.

OK, just googled it.

I was 3 1/2.

[hedgehog]

7. Wow - that made quite an impression on you then

I didn't think kids that young were supposed to be able to remember things. But when you say back in the 50's or back in the 60's, does it occur to you how long ago that was?

[Left Is Write]

9. My earliest memory is from the spring of 1968 - I wasn't even two yet.

I can easily understand remembering something shocking, traumatic, or impressive at age 3½.

trof is around my dad's age. :)

[trof]

10. Oh yeah. 60s is recent history for me.

Like a couple of years ago.
I was born in 1941.
Elvis was older than me, but not much.
The Beatles were younger. A lot.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. I remember my mother announcing that Stalin had died

and at the time, I was still a couple of months short of my third birthday.

[Left Is Write]

8. When I say the "postwar era" I am referring to post WWII.

I, however, was not born until 1966. (I often make reference to the postwar era because I collect vintage items of a certain age.)

I'm pretty sure I DID see Johnson on television, but it's obviously nothing I would remember. I do remember watching President Nixon resign. I was eight years old.

My parents were born in 1939.

[AKPacker]

11. I was born in 58.

I guess I am more a child of the sixties and seventies. I do remember Kennedy on the TV and being really upset when he was killed. Johnson is still a conundrum to me! All I can ever remember from that era (60's) was the nightly news and the body counts. Even after all these years I can still see Cronkite on the evening news.

My Dad fought in the Korean war and I have listened to many of his stories...does that count?

[hedgehog]

13. Well, I'm not so much interested in what you remember as I am

in how we consider time. My yesterday is someone else's ancient history. Things that I considered trivial at the time (and still do) are a big deal to other people. I lived in Buffalo New York when Woodstock happened and had no idea it was happening until I heard that the Thruway was shut down. I still couldn't tell you what year that was, but I was in high school then.

[AKPacker]

22. Our memories

are how we consider "time". Think about the important events in your life and place them in a chronological order. What impacted you at the time? Now that you are older, what national/international events helped shape your view of the world? Christ, I still can remember coming home when I was in high school and watching the Watergate hearings. Ancient history? Trivial?

What impacted my early life is not that same as what impacted yours. Sorry about the Woodstock thing. It happened in 69. I lived in Wisconsin at the time and still remember it....God I still have the album.

The killing of Kennedy was trivial? The Viet Nam war was ancient history? I think not....

Our memories of our "time" shape us, and make us who we are.

[Left Is Write]

28. My mother and father had tickets for what was to have been...

Buddy Holly's next show. They were in college, and he was coming up to Fargo from Iowa. I asked my mom once if she had saved the tickets, but she hadn't. As she put it, "We had no idea that was going to turn out to be such a major historical event."

When my daughter learned about the "hostage crisis" in Iran in her history class, it felt strange to me. The day the story broke, it was my turn to give a current events report in Social Studies class. My "current events" are my children's "history class."

(Woodstock, BTW, was 1969. I was three.)

[hedgehog]

49. What's weird now is that Vietnam vets are old guys.

They have to be at least 52 or older which makes them older than some of the World War II Vets would have been back in 1965.

[smitty]

12. One of my fondest memories of the 50s is

the 1955 World Series when Brooklyn FINALLY beat the Yankees. My mother was a avid Dodger fan and to celebrate their victory she made a cake decorated as a baseball with a big "B" on it.

[Seabiscuit]

59. Jonny Podres, right?

I was and always will be a Mickey Mantle fan.

[Oeditpus Rex]

14. 'The war' will always be WWII to me

I was born almost 11 years after it ended and I'm a WWII buff, but I think even in modern vernacular the Vietnam conflict is "Vietnam" and the same for Korea.

I saw all three of those presidents on teevee. I remember Kennedy's funeral pretty clearly and I have a foggy memory of watching bits of the coverage of the 1960 elections. (I wanted Kennedy to win; I remember arguing with my sister on the way back from going with our folks to vote: "Kennedy!" "Nixon!" "Kennedy!" "Nixon!")

My folks certainly heard FDR on radio.

[hedgehog]

17. I think you're right about that.

It is "the war" and "Vietnam". The weird thing about Vietnam was it was there on the news every night for so long and then it just faded away until the evacuation of the Saigon embassy. Again, I was there and I couldn't begin to tell you what year that was. It must have been during the Ford administration, but that's the most I could tell you.

[smitty]

16. Back in November of 2003

I was talking with a co-worker of my age about the assassination of John Kennedy. He and I remembered it vividly (I was 17 years old) but nobody else is the office did! Most of my co-workers were either unborn or toddlers in 1963.

[hedgehog]

18. The oddest thing that ever happened to me

was going through some old project files at work and coming across some calculations dated November 22, 1963. I always wondered about what happened that day. How did that engineer come back to those sheets and pick up where he's left off?

[hedgehog]

19. We remember Kennedy vividly from then but for so many now

he's almost a joke because everything they know is filtered through a thousand scandalous stories. How can anyone from Generation X who's grown up with CLinton understand how we felt about Kennedy knowing only what we knew then and living in the world we lived in back then?

[trof]

24. A tarnished icon.

I kinda like the old days of the press sticking to the political/government happenings and not the personal.

[Left Is Write]

31. We can understand it because we know people who lived it...

who describe it for us.

When I was a kid (and still now, too), I loved hearing my mother's descriptions of life in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It was a different world, just as my childhood in the 70s is a completely different world from that of my own children.

[sarge43]

21. Born in 1943

I remember the mock election we had in the fourth grade - Eisenhower won. Still can hear the boardcast beeps of Sputnik. Don't remember Roosevelt, but definitely Truman.

[smitty]

27. My old neighborhood on Long Island is still there

Houses that sold for $8,000 (I grew up in Levittown)in 1950 are now selling for $425,000+ plus! The New York real estate market is just nuts.

I just realized that I turn 60 in June.

[Seabiscuit]

56. I grew up in Roslyn, Long Island, and my neighborhood's still there.

Our house was probably about $4K in 1946. It's still there.

60's fine - passed that mark last May. :)

[Arkansas Granny]

36. Sputnik! On our local TV stations they would tell when Sputnik

was going to be passing overhead and we'd go out and look for something moving in the sky since it could be seen with the naked eye. Such entertainment we had in rural Missouri. There's so much traffic in the night sky now that you'd have a hard time picking out one small blinking dot.

[henslee]

23. I dig the pre transistor fifties.

[trof]

26. Vacuum tubes and testing them at the drug store.

Oh yeah.

[smitty]

29. Having to wait for the radio or TV to warm up before it could play.

[henslee]

30. Pop into ebay and see what some of those tube amplifiers are worth

these days.

[smitty]

34. Unfortunately all my 50s collectibles

baseball cards, comic books, 45rpm records, vacuum tube TV and radios, Brooklyn Dodger programs were all tossed out long before they became collectibles.

[Arkansas Granny]

32. I remember the 50's quite well.

Born in October, 1946, so I never heard Roosevelt on the radio, but I've seen Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc. on TV. Sometimes I realize just how old I really am (chronologically, not mentally) and it just blows me away.

[Benfea]

33. Vietnam ended before I learned how to talk. -NT

[Lydia Leftcoast]

35. I was around for almost all of the 1950s

My parents heard Roosevelt on the radio.

Of course I saw Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon on TV live, as well as Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and Winston Churchill (who was retired, but still alive).

Among the people who died during my childhood or youth: Joseph Stalin, Jack Benny, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Rogers and Hammerstein, Ralph Vaughan Williams, C.S. Lewis, Albert Camus, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Grandma Moses, the last living Civil War veteran (he'd been a Confederate drummer boy), Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Arturo Toscannini, and countless other people who are probably unknown or dim impressions to many younger DUers.

[Shine]

38. Yes, Time is relative for all of us, isn't it?

I was born in spring of '64. My mom was pregnant for me when Kennedy was shot. I remember the Vietnam war the most. I remember the body counts posted on the tv during the nightly news. I remember the Watergate hearings. I was 10 in Aug. of '74 when Nixon resigned. I would say that's probably my earliest "political memory". I grew up with an entire generation of people who distrust authority and who rightfully lack respect for our government.

As a parent of two kids now, ages 9 and 12, both genders, I'm fascinated to see how their lives unfold and what will be the turning points in history for THEM.

like I said earlier, it's all relative....

:hi: hedgehog1

[Withywindle]

39. I remember my parents celebrating because "the war is over"

I was too little to know what that meant.

Vietnam, in that case. When my parents talk about "the war" that's more often than not the one they mean. Unless it's in reference to my dad's parents -- my grandfather fought in Europe in WWII. I think he was away when my father was born, in 1944. My mother's country wasn't involved in the war, and she wasn't born until '48 anyway, so for her that's not really what "the war" means.

Also, I grew up in the South, where "the war" very often means one particular war that nobody's old enough to physically remember, yet it's still very present in people's minds.

The first news story I remember really mesmerizing me personally was Jonestown: that Time magazine cover with the bodies everywhere, and I was old enough to be freaked out by it and try to understand why all these people killed themselves. I was 7 or 8.

That all seems like fairly long ago to me, but the Reagan Administration - totally yesterday! It's still 1986 somewhere in my head.

[Left Is Write]

42. I was 12 when the mass suicide in Jonestown occurred...

It made a very strong impression on me also.

[hedgehog]

48. "It's still 1986 somewhere in my head"

I never knew until now how thankful I should be to have been born when I was!

[Withywindle]

53. Ha ha!

You should see what I still think my hair looks like. :D

[CatholicEdHead]

40. A while ago, I remember hearing the "olides" on the radio

in the mid to late 80's. Now, the 50's music is off most corporate radio because of demographics. The "oldies" are the 60's and 70's.

You can still find that music on satelite radio channels.

[Capn Sunshine]

57. Child of the 50's

Remember it all vividly. I have really specific memories of the time I spent before we all went off to school (kindergarten). It was the 50's so the only daycare was "go outside and play with your friends!" If something went wrong, the oldest kid in the group got in trouble for not being responsible.

[sarge43]

41. The whole communication thing blows my mind

Back in the day, a cross country long distance phone call was BFD; calling overseas was unthinkable. I remember listening to the serials on radio - Lone Ranger, Sergeant Peston, etc. B/W tv, two, maybe three channels. Magazines like Life, Look, Sat Even Post, newspapers delivered to your door.

Now I'm using the web, listening to the BBC Fourth Programme and writing to people who could be on the other side of world. Astounding, absolutely astounding.

[yvr girl]

46. The first war I remember is Viet Nam

And I remember Nixon's resignation.

I don't really say, "after the war" without a reference to a particular war.

[momophile]

47. I was born during Watergate and before Vietnam ended...

Carter is the first president I can remember. "After the war" means after Vietnam for me, but that's because that war had a huge impact on my personal life.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

50. My MOTHER was just being born in the fifties.

:P

[LeftyMom]

55. Same here

but I didn't want to make anybody feel old. :blush:

[ghostsofgiants]

58. My dad was born in '58 I think.

I'm a total young'n round these parts, haha.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

60. My mom entered the world in '55.

BEAT THAT. :P :P

[billyskank]

51. If you say "the war" to me, I understand you to mean WW2

but I'm British. We don't have so many wars. Except lately.

[DarienComp]

52. I was born in 1980.

Parents were born just after WW2 ended, 1946-47. They used to talk to me a lot about Nixon and what a bum he was. Ironically, they were both Republicans (Rockerfeller Republicans, the kind that no longer exist), but after hearing me rant for 2 years about Bush, they switched. We're all Democrats now.

[Seabiscuit]

54. Born the day the NYT carried the huge headline: "HITLER DIES!"

May 2, 1945. Hitler actually died 2 days earlier, but it took that long to get the story to press. (I actually located a hard copy of that day's paper in the U.C. Berkeley library many years later).

Too late to hear FDR's "fireside chats" live, but early enough to wear an Adlai Stephenson for President button on my shirt to school in 1952. :)

There seem to be only two phases to my life: the innocent, joyful youthful period before JFK's assassination, and the sober, somewhat frightful and complex period ever since. Fortunately, in my old age I identify much more now with the first period which somehow now seems to have lasted much longer than the second phase. I remember things from the 50's and 60's with much greater detail than from the 70's, 80's, or 90's.

[Burma Jones]

61. After the War = Nam

Remember seeing Johnson and Nixon on the TV

Earliest Memory was of Gemini Program....

[ScreamingMeemie]

62. I was born in 1970...I have vague memories of watching the fall of

Saigon with my dad...and Nixon leaving the White House. But, "after the War" to me means, and always will probably, WWII.