I’m reading a book about the 1920s, and all the changes that that period wrought in American life. In particular, it was a decade in which electricity, motorcars, farm tractors, and indoor plumbing became much more widespread.
And THAT got me thinking about another great period of change – the 1950s.
Right around here, rural electrification finally became complete by the early ‘fifties. At last, just about everybody in our area had power. The kerosene lamps went into barns sheds, and cellars, but they’d still be hauled out from time to time as needed.
With electricity came TV, but service was still very sparse and sketchy in our area. But you could take in movies at drive-ins, and at downtown walk-in theaters.
Quite a few folk were still using outhouses in the ’50s, and even into the ’60s, but the number would shrink each year.
A fair number of folks still didn’t have telephones. Those who did were often on party lines, with maybe four or six numbers served by a single circuit. The pattern of rings (two short, one long, for instance) told you whether the phone was for you. If somebody else was on the line, you couldn’t get a call in or out. (On the other hand, if you picked up the headset carefully and quietly, you could eavesdrop undetected on your neighbor’s conversations.)
You had to turn a dial, of course, for each numeral of the number you were calling. You might have needed the operator’s intervention if you wanted to call outside your exchange. Long distance calls were expensive and rare, requiring multiple operators and sometimes a couple of hours to put through.
Many women, and many older people, did not drive. Quite a few families still didn’t have cars, and families that DID almost always had only one. During the day it was probably at work with Dad, so Mom did her shopping on foot, buying only what she could lug home herself, often with a kid or two in tow. Malls did it exist. Shopping centers were just starting to appear, along with large supermarkets.
The Baby Boom brought in a school-construction boom. The remaining one-room schools nearly all closed their doors (in part because of a state mandate to install flush toilets). Large new districts opened large bright modern schools for 20th-century children in the dawning Age of Space. Corning Community College opened its doors. So did Watson Homestead and the Corning Museum of Glass.
The only thing in Steuben County that could pass for a modern library was the one in Hornell, gifted by Andrew Carnegie half a century earlier.
It was the last full decade of widespread agriculture, with 300 dairies in the Town of Bath alone.
The tuberculosis sanitarium shut down, and so did the Davenport orphanage for girls. A polio vaccine thrilled the world.
More women were working than had worked in World War II, though they were working different kinds of jobs, and often part-time while the kids were in school.
Industrial jobs, unskilled at the entry level, dominated the workplace thanks to Corning Glass, Ingersoll Rand, Mercury Aircraft, Babcock Ladder, Erie Railroad. With many industrial workers on the job, unions were strong.
Before the 1950s we had never heard of Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, Supergirl. McDonald’s, Elvis Presley, or Annette Funicello. Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and Rocky the Flying Squirrel came to life in fifties, and so did Frosty the Snowman, Tom Swift Junior, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.
So did the Bic pen. Which was good because you couldn’t use a keyboard or a voice recorder to take down your messages. And you didn’t have a calculator, or even an adding machine. American life ran on pen-and-paper, and mostly through the post office!
The 1950s Were a Time of Change
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