The 1950's
It Was A Great Time To Be Alive In The USA!
The Fifties; A Great Time To Grow Up! See "The Best Of Times"
The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. This was the sixth decade of the 20th century. By its end, the world had largely recovered from World War II and the Cold War developed from its modest beginning in the late 1940s to a hot competition between the United States and the Soviet Union by the beginning of the 1960s.
Clashes between communism and capitalism dominated the decade, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. The conflicts included the Korean War in the beginnings of the decade and the beginning of the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik I.
Along with increased testing of nuclear weapons (such as RDS-37 and Upshot-Knothole), this created a politically conservative climate. In the United States, the Red Scare (fear of communism) caused public Congressional hearings by both houses in Congress and anti-communism was the prevailing sentiment in the United States throughout the decade. The beginning of decolonization in Africa and Asia occurred in this decade and accelerated in the following decade, the 1960s.
We Still Do The 1950s!
Us at the Santa Ana Elks Sock Hop 1/29/2022!
We are ready to Rock And Roll!
The 1950s In The United States
Eddie, Beaver, Wally... Do you feel old now???
The Fifties in the United States and much of Western Europe are generally considered conservative in contrast to the social revolution of the next decade. Mass suburban developments and nuclear family ideals serve as symbols of the era from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the inauguration of United States President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Education grew explosively because of a very strong demand for high school and college education. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States played out through the entire decade.
The fifties also revolutionized entertainment with the mainstream introduction of television, rapid growth of the recording industry and new genres of music, and movies targeted at teenage audiences.
The Memories Are Vivid!
Some funny memories: Elementary School (1949-1955), Junior High School (1956-1958) , High School (1959-1962)
We Had Our Own Language
We recently (May 2019) got an email from Ms. Allison Harmon who is homeschooling some young people and they apparently enjoyed this website.
They were doing research on life in the 1950's. We almost flipped our wigwhen we read the email! We cast an eyeball at our website, kicked off our Earth pads, thought about the Mickey Mouse things we did in the 1950's, and decided to take your cool suggestion, which was peachy keen, and it was no sweat! We got on the stick and made some changes to our website.
Hailey, one of her students and a 1950's paper shaker, ran across a website that listed some of our 1950's slang. Thank you Hailey for your hard work and showing us how to soup up our website. Please enjoy the results of Hailey's research.
If you get a change, have Ms. Harmon give you a lesson in swing dancing...old fashioned rock and roll. You actually touch each other! Mary, my bride, and I dance three nights a week to Bill Hayley and the Comets and other from the 1950's.
Word From The Bird
BTW (By The Way) kids, the 1950's were indeed amazing. I am 77 now and a chrome dome and could give you some word from the bird about:
- Making a long distance phone calls
- Always carrying a dime for a phone call!
- Seeing Color TV for the first time
- Sitting with my parents listening to the radio (before TV)
- Playing "Kick The Can"
- Going to the monster movies of the 1950's
- Going to the Sock Hops
Costs.... Amazing By Todays Standards
| Ford car: $1339-$2262 | Average income: $3,216 |
| House: $14,500 | Philco model 1403 TV: $199 |
| Admiral “home entertainment” TV system: $549.50 | 12″ records: $4.85 |
| Milk: $.82 | 10″ records: $2.85 |
| Bread $.14 | Gas: $.20 |
| Postage stamp: $.03 | Pumpkins : $.02 cents a pound |
| Sirloin steak: $.77 lb | Campbell’s Pork & Beans – (2) 1 lb. cans: $.25 |
It Was A Great Time
Yes, singers and dancers looked nice!
After World War II, America was about to enter into the best time of her life. A happy time of innocents. The Two greatest decades of the 20th century. America will never see happiness like this again. All we have left of this wonderful time are the pictures and sounds that we have collected.
Don't let anything happen to these treasured memories! It's times like now with the gangs, drugs and violence that make many of us wish we could travel back into time and appreciate the good times that we had. Our children and grand children should be able to see the fun that we had, and maybe, just maybe, they may instill our values on their kids.
1950's Had Great Cars
It was a mover! More iron in this car than 10 2008 models!
Classic cars of the 1950s could be anything from opulent to odd.
The most-remembered classic cars of the 1950s, such as the 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, symbolized America's boisterous optimism as it emerged victorious from World War II and raced into a new age of consumerism and international influence.
Others, like the 1955 DeSoto Fireflite Coronado, brought glitz and horsepower to the masses. And some, like the 1958 Edsel Ranger, came to symbolize 1950s styling gone wrong.
Post WWII
Superman.. What a man!
The 1950's decade refers to the period between January 1, 1950 to December 1, 1959.
The Fifties have come to been known as a conservative era dominated by suburban family ideals. Education grew explosively because of a very strong demand for high school and college education.
The Cold War between the United States and the USSR played out through the entire decade. The fifties also revolutionized entertainment with the mainstream introduction of television, popularization and new genres of music, and movies targeted at teenage audiences.
Due to the conservative norms of the era and the suppression of social movements, the seeds of rebellion soon began to grow with the introduction of rock n' roll, movies that emphasized on rebellious nature, and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
Where Were We?
I was in Junior/High School completing high school in 1962. I was there in the front row! Mary was born in in 1952 and missed the early years but has memories of the late 50's.
Annette
I Admit, I really thought she was great! Me and ten million other boys at that time were in love with her! Million dollar smile and a regular person... Nothing phony there! To me she was a star and will always be bright and shining.
Annette Joanne Funicello was born in Utica, New York, to Italian-Americans Joseph and Virginia Funicello. Her family moved to Southern California when she was four years old. Funicello took dancing and music lessons as a child to overcome shyness. In 1955, the 12-year-old was discovered by Walt Disney when she performed as the Swan Queen in Swan Lake at a dance recital in Burbank, California.
Disney cast her as one of the original "Mouseketeers". She was the last to be selected, and the only one personally picked by Walt Disney himself. She proved to be very popular and by the end of the first season of Mickey Mouse Club, she was receiving 6,000 letters a month, according to her Disney Legends biography.
Watch A Quick Overview....
It Was Quite A Decade!
Clockwise, from left: United Nations soldiers during the Korean War, which was the first UN authorized conflict;
Two atomic explosions from the RDS-37 and Upshot-Knothole (Soviet and American, respectively) nuclear weapons, symbolizing the escalation of Cold War tensions between the two nations in the 1950s.
The RDS-37 was the Soviet Union's first two-stage hydrogen bomb, first tested on 22 November 1955. The weapon had a nominal yield of approximately 3 megatons.
Operation Upshot–Knothole was a series of eleven nuclear test shots conducted in 1953 at the Nevada Test Site ;
Israeli troops prepare to fight the Egyptians during the Suez Crisis of 1956;
A replica of Sputnik I, the world's first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957;
Fidel Castro leads the Cuban Revolution in 1959;
Center - North Sea flood of 1953
The One PERCENT
1% Age Group...really interesting!!!
This special group was born between 1930 & 1946 = 16 years.
In 2024, the age range is between 78 & 94. Are you, or do you know, someone "still here?"
INTERESTING FACTS FOR YOU . . . ._
You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900's
You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.
You saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into tin cans.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" on the porch.
You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you "imagined" what you heard on the radio.
With no TV until the 1950s, you spent your childhood "playing outside." There was no Little League.
There was no city playground for kids.
The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.
Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines), and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).
Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked.
Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon
'INTERNET' and 'GOOGLE' were words that did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility.
The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.
Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into working hard to make a living for their families.
You weren't neglected, but you weren't today's all-consuming family focus.
They were glad you played by yourselves.
They were busy discovering the post-war world.
You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed ourselves and felt secure in your future although the depression and poverty was deeply remembered.
Polio was still a crippler.
You came of age in the '50s and '60s.
You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
The second world war was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.
Only your generation can remember both a time of great war and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.
You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better.
You are "The Last Ones."
More than 99% of you are either retired, and you feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times!"
Amen!