View Full Version : 1950's questions
In my point of view:
To me, what we achieved in less than a decade after World War 2 is probably the most impressive time period for our military and our country as a whole. With the adaption of the jet engine and reaching the sound barrier, the US had formed a Strategic Air Command using modern jet age aircraft capable of flying super sonic, piston powered fighters were becoming obsolete, new U2 spy planes were being built and all this happened less than 10 years after WW2. I love aircraft such as the B-58 Hustlers, B-47 Stratojet, B-66 Destroyers, F-100 Super Sabre, F-104 Starfighter, F-86 Sabre etc. To me, it just seemed that the US had the peddle to the metal during the 1950's. The Navy was developing new surface ships and nuclear powered submarines along with ballistic missile submarines. The Air force was rolling out new fighters and strategic bombers almost yearly. Developments of X planes along with creating NASA and using the Titan II vehicle to launch the Gemini program. Not just our military but our consumer goods were manufactured right here at home. Highway expansion plan was in full effect. The US made cars were built like tanks and were sexy to look at. Most Americans lived in a home that did not exceed 1,800 sq./ft. yet was comfortable to live in. Education was at its peak along with skill and trade.
For a man born in 1981 and looking back at history, the 1950's seem like a great decade to live in. Nuclear/Jet/Space Age, Rock and Roll, the greatest automobiles, standard of living for most Americans was above average.
What do you think?
I would agree with your premise concerning military progress. For the country as a whole things were more stagnant for the 5-10 years after the war. It took a while to retool for civvy production and for servicemen to finish schooling and establish a family.
I put 1955 as the big bang for civilian life. About then most every urban home had a television. And the programming became more sophisticated - less vaudville. Cars until 1949 were pretty much pre-war. In ‘55 they all began to really perform and look “modern.” Radios pre-transistor were big and clunky. You could take one to the beach, but no one routinely walked around listening to music. I don’t think it co-incidental that rock and roll and pocket radios emerged at the same time. For the first time kids had an independent way of spreading their culture.
It really was a great time to grow up in the middle class. One parent families were rare. Moms were mostly home. Kids ran free all summer. Discipline was expected and enforced in puplic. Of course since I started schooling in 1953 my viewpoint is predjudiced.
Hmmm.....
Nah. The 50s were pretty gay. The only people nostalgic for "The Fifties" are spoiled Boomers who got the world given to them as children.
The 50s were turbo gay. A lot of Post War propaganda designed to get people used to Socialism had Roosevelt lived long enough to be dictator. Military adventurism chasing the dragon of Domino Theory getting hemmed up in pointless actions. Sunset Towns (as in don't be black after sunset). People sold on the nascence of debt. Blacklisting. As for cars HAHAHAAAAAA MY DEAR BOY. HAAAAAAAAAAA.
You have obviously never seen a 50 Chevy with artifact rust, dealt with Vapor Lock, dealt with pitiful gas mileage and a need for high octane gas. Yep them fins certainly LOOK cool but the car sucks.
Prices were lower but so were wages.
People were nice all right provided you weren't black, Jewish, "Some kinda hispanic", Irish, Italian, and Asian.
You had a crossdressing closeted homo holding the highest LE position in the country keeping enemies list and trying to keep leverage on pols he disliked despite never having made a felony arrest or carried a gun in his sorry life.
People were put in electric chairs and gas chambers for "looking guilty".
Thalidomide flipper babies. Women in gilded cages taking Stelazine and Valium like it was cool. Literal cuckoldry. A bullshit draft system. Secret government experiments on unwitting citizens to see how long Syphilis will take to kill them if allowed to run its course. Radon in houses. Asbestos everywhere. Lead in drinking water and everything else,
Go read some Vonnegut or talk to an older person. They may want to be young again but the 50s sucked.
Planning for A bomb fights and three semi peer/near peer great powers that hated us
Not my idea of fun but YMMV
For the most part what he said ^
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Hmmm.....
Nah. The 50s were pretty gay. The only people nostalgic for "The Fifties" are spoiled Boomers who got the world given to them as children.
The 50s were turbo gay. A lot of Post War propaganda designed to get people used to Socialism had Roosevelt lived long enough to be dictator. Military adventurism chasing the dragon of Domino Theory getting hemmed up in pointless actions. Sunset Towns (as in don't be black after sunset). People sold on the nascence of debt. Blacklisting. As for cars HAHAHAAAAAA MY DEAR BOY. HAAAAAAAAAAA.
You have obviously never seen a 50 Chevy with artifact rust, dealt with Vapor Lock, dealt with pitiful gas mileage and a need for high octane gas. Yep them fins certainly LOOK cool but the car sucks.
Prices were lower but so were wages.
People were nice all right provided you weren't black, Jewish, "Some kinda hispanic", Irish, Italian, and Asian.
You had a crossdressing closeted homo holding the highest LE position in the country keeping enemies list and trying to keep leverage on pols he disliked despite never having made a felony arrest or carried a gun in his sorry life.
People were put in electric chairs and gas chambers for "looking guilty".
Thalidomide flipper babies. Women in gilded cages taking Stelazine and Valium like it was cool. Literal cuckoldry. A bullshit draft system. Secret government experiments on unwitting citizens to see how long Syphilis will take to kill them if allowed to run its course. Radon in houses. Asbestos everywhere. Lead in drinking water and everything else,
Go read some Vonnegut or talk to an older person. They may want to be young again but the 50s sucked.
Planning for A bomb fights and three semi peer/near peer great powers that hated us
Not my idea of fun but YMMV
From a technological standpoint, it was probably the biggest 10-year leap of all time. From a monetary- and economic-growth standpoint, it was probably one of the biggest 10-year leaps of all time. From a foreign affairs standpoint, it was one of the most influential times of all time*.
From a social perspective, it was a very tough time, and speaks to your points. Things weren't always rosy here.
*excepting the Korean war
SomeOtherGuy
01-24-18, 09:00
Planning for A bomb fights and three semi peer/near peer great powers that hated us
You're quite a buzzkill, ya know?
Anyway, what are the THREE near peer powers? USSR, China (which wasn't anywhere near a peer back then), and ?? France ??
$0.02: a lot is rosy in hindsight. My father was born in 1949 and the family rode the economic wave from getting-by to moderately well off. He mentions the total lack of OSHA or other safety rules, and wonders literally how he survived several industrial jobs he took as a teen, dodging flying train axles at the railroad repair depot (yes, literally, some kind of compressed air jack/thrower thing) and mowing steep slopes on a farm tractor with no rollover bar; auto death rate, smoking, heart disease, and new cars lasting about 2 years before needing replacement. There's lots more, but that's the surface.
All these things, you wish you could pick and choose the good parts, without taking the shipload of @#$ that went with it.
If you look at good and bad decades in the most recent century, oil prices and supply have a strong correlation with the hindsight view of how good/bad things were.
I did reference the country as a whole and the middle class. While minorities did not equally enjoy the bounty, but it was the decade that brought civil rights disparities out in the open and convinced a majority that discrimination and segrgation were evils.
You can recite a litany of bad things about every era. Currently the two parent family structure has collapsed for about half the children raised here. Dependency on government has replaced self reliance for the same percentage. Universities are indoctrination factories hostile to rational argument. The Constituion is no check on our overlords. Was the fifties worse? In some ways yes, but I would argue that it was a time of positive evolving. Quite the opposite of today’s march toward collectivism and/or Islamist dictatorship.
The 50's saw the beginnings of the modern suburbs and the first big housing boom.
Those cars that Firefly talked about had less life in them than today's cars, but, on the other hand, a lot of folks were able to do their own wrenching on them. 55 through 57 Chevy's were the dream cars of the late 60's through 80's. They remain generally cool today.
Kids mowed lawns as soon as they were old enough. Neighbors had backyard cookouts with each other. The kids played while the adults played cards and talked.
It was not a bad time for a middle class white kid to grow up.
I did reference the country as a whole and the middle class. While minorities did not equally enjoy the bounty, but it was the decade that brought civil rights disparities out in the open and convinced a majority that discrimination and segrgation were evils.
You can recite a litany of bad things about every era. Currently the two parent family structure has collapsed for about half the children raised here. Dependency on government has replaced self reliance for the same percentage. Universities are indoctrination factories hostile to rational argument. The Constituion is no check on our overlords. Was the fifties worse? In some ways yes, but I would argue that it was a time of positive evolving. Quite the opposite of today’s march toward collectivism and/or Islamist dictatorship.
Wisdom in these words
I wasn't talking about social issues, just observing how far the US had gone in a short amount of time.
I wasn't talking about social issues, just observing how far the US had gone in a short amount of time.
To that I saw we shanghai'd the better Germans post-war than the Russians did.
Per 3 Great Powers, the Chinese almost forced the US into the sea in Korea and its kind of a cheat, but I consider the Warsaw Pact its own entity despite being a Soviet puppet. Tanks is Tanks and Troops is Troops.
You cant talk about 1950s America. It was rascist and terrible and thats all youll ever need to know lol
Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk
You cant talk about 1950s America. It was rascist and terrible and thats all youll ever need to know lol
Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk
Well it wasnt perfect but FWIW, we came out a LOT better than everyone else post war. The attitude, I think, is what people miss. The whole "Hey, no more wars. Let's go build some houses and gadgets" mentality.
My biggest regret, I reckon, is losing Cuba.
That was in the running for statehood.
If we still had Cuba, I proffer that a lot would be different per Central America.
All for lack of synchronizing watches....
Diamondback
01-24-18, 16:58
Well it wasnt perfect but FWIW, we came out a LOT better than everyone else post war. The attitude, I think, is what people miss. The whole "Hey, no more wars. Let's go build some houses and gadgets" mentality.
My biggest regret, I reckon, is losing Cuba.
That was in the running for statehood.
If we still had Cuba, I proffer that a lot would be different per Central America.
All for lack of synchronizing watches....
Or somebody to give the Bearded Bastard a beanball while he was still running around the diamonds.
No Castro, a lot of dominoes don't get pushed over in Latin America, particularly the Chavez-Maduro Reign of Terror in Venezuela. More nice Caribbean vacation spots, better rocket launch site than Canaveral... (Closer you launch to the equator, the more Earth's rotation helps you) Hell, no Fidel and no 9-11, I might be on a plane to Havana to do my own research on-site at El Morro Castle for a client.
Hmmm.....
Nah. The 50s were pretty gay. The only people nostalgic for "The Fifties" are spoiled Boomers who got the world given to them as children.
The 50s were turbo gay. A lot of Post War propaganda designed to get people used to Socialism had Roosevelt lived long enough to be dictator. Military adventurism chasing the dragon of Domino Theory getting hemmed up in pointless actions. Sunset Towns (as in don't be black after sunset). People sold on the nascence of debt. Blacklisting. As for cars HAHAHAAAAAA MY DEAR BOY. HAAAAAAAAAAA.
You have obviously never seen a 50 Chevy with artifact rust, dealt with Vapor Lock, dealt with pitiful gas mileage and a need for high octane gas. Yep them fins certainly LOOK cool but the car sucks.
Prices were lower but so were wages.
People were nice all right provided you weren't black, Jewish, "Some kinda hispanic", Irish, Italian, and Asian.
You had a crossdressing closeted homo holding the highest LE position in the country keeping enemies list and trying to keep leverage on pols he disliked despite never having made a felony arrest or carried a gun in his sorry life.
People were put in electric chairs and gas chambers for "looking guilty".
Thalidomide flipper babies. Women in gilded cages taking Stelazine and Valium like it was cool. Literal cuckoldry. A bullshit draft system. Secret government experiments on unwitting citizens to see how long Syphilis will take to kill them if allowed to run its course. Radon in houses. Asbestos everywhere. Lead in drinking water and everything else,
Go read some Vonnegut or talk to an older person. They may want to be young again but the 50s sucked.
Planning for A bomb fights and three semi peer/near peer great powers that hated us
Not my idea of fun but YMMV
Yeah...but Bettie Page.
Seriously no decade is perfect and no decade is the end of the world. I could make do in the 50s if I had the knowledge I have today, but I could also get by in the 30s and 60s. And as always, variables apply. Am I rich, well connected, living in the right zip code?
Diamondback
01-24-18, 17:16
If the Fifties is your bag, check out the Fedora Lounge forum--but beware, lots of neo-leftist cliquey douches over there.
I dunno that I'd do well making a *life* of it in the Fifties, but given some time to round up some books if I were replacing Marty McFly in a real-life "Back to the Future" with a return home after a week to a month I think I could do very well indeed for myself and anyone who sent a shopping-list back with me. :)
If the Fifties is your bag, check out the Fedora Lounge forum--but beware, lots of neo-leftist cliquey douches over there.
I dunno that I'd do well making a *life* of it in the Fifties, but given some time to round up some books if I were replacing Marty McFly in a real-life "Back to the Future" with a return home after a week to a month I think I could do very well indeed for myself and anyone who sent a shopping-list back with me. :)
Yup, back then, you could buy firearms thru the mail, Want a new surplus '03 A3? Just send off about $25 or so and in about a week the mailman drops a big box off at your door, and nobody cared. Like that new N frame Smith&Wesson? Well, just plop about $50 on the counter and walk out the door with it, and you know what? Nobody cared.. Yeah, I'd like to go back to about 1954, with about $200,000, I could live like a king for quite awhile..
First off....I will never patronize a site with "fedora" anything in the title.
Second, You got me at Bettie Page.
If I were rich, I'd get my beatnik on, living with Bettie holed up in the Keys with crates of Garands, N Frames, and Pythons living off wine and lust.
Yup, back then, you could buy firearms thru the mail, Want a new surplus '03 A3? Just send off about $25 or so and in about a week the mailman drops a big box off at your door, and nobody cared. Like that new N frame Smith&Wesson? Well, just plop about $50 on the counter and walk out the door with it, and you know what? Nobody cared.. Yeah, I'd like to go back to about 1954, with about $200,000, I could live like a king for quite awhile..
A week?! Did you ever order something before the internet or before everyone had a credit card....4 to 6 weeks lol by the time you get it you nearly forgot you ordered it.
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Haven't done the research, but I have a feeling that school and workplace shootings weren't very common in the 1950's. Not as many gun control freaks back then, either.
Diamondback
01-25-18, 09:19
Haven't done the research, but I have a feeling that school and workplace shootings weren't very common in the 1950's. Not as many gun control freaks back then, either.
Not as much legal carry, either. :(
My parents grew up in the 50's and early 60's. I'll take a hard pass. Folks should consider that the Us was dominant primary because we had just finished bombing most of the developed world. We had a bit of a head start...
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