1950s version of an E-Mail

I have no idea who put this together, but it is wonderful!!

Long ago and far away, in a land that time forgot,
Before the days of Dylan, or the dawn of Camelot.
There lived a race of innocents, and they were you and me,

For Ike was in the White House in that land where we were born,
Where navels were for oranges, and Peyton Place was porn.

We learned to gut a muffler, we washed our hair at dawn,
We spread our crinolines to dry in circles on the lawn..

We longed for love and romance, and waited for our Prince,
And Eddie Fisher married Liz , and no one's seen him since.

We danced to 'Little Darlin,' and sang to 'Stagger Lee'
And cried for Buddy Holly in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Only girls wore earrings then, and 3 was one too many,
And only boys wore flat-top cuts, except for Jean McKinney.

And only in our wildest dreams did we expect to see
A boy named George with Lipstick, in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We fell for Frankie Avalon, Annette was oh, so nice,
And when they made a movie, they never made it twice..

We didn't have a Star Trek Five, or Psycho Two and Three,
Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold, and Chester had a limp,
And Reagan was a Democrat whose co-star was a [bleep].

We had a Mr. Wizard, but not a Mr. T,
And Oprah couldn't talk yet, in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We had our share of heroes, we never thought they'd go,
At least not Bobby Darin, or Marilyn Monroe.

For youth was still eternal, and life was yet to be,
And Elvis was forever in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We'd never seen the rock band that was Grateful to be Dead,
And Airplanes weren't named Jefferson , and Zeppelins were not Led.

And Beatles lived in gardens then, and Monkees lived in trees,
Madonna was Mary in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We'd never heard of microwaves, or telephones in cars,
And babies might be bottle-fed, but they were not grown in jars.

And pumping iron got wrinkles out, and 'gay' meant fancy-free,
And dorms were never co-ed in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We hadn't seen enough of jets to talk about the lag,
And microchips were what was left at the bottom of the bag.

And hardware was a box of nails, and bytes came from a flea,
And rocket ships were fiction in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Buicks came with portholes, and side shows came with freaks,
And bathing suits came big enough to cover both your cheeks.

And Coke came just in bottles, and skirts below the knee,
And Castro came to power near the Land That Made Me, Me.

We had no Crest with fluoride, we had no Hill Street Blues,
We had no pat terned pantyhose or Lipton herbal tea
Or prime-time ads for those dysfunctions in the Land That Made Me, Me.

There were no golden arches, no Perrier to chill,
And fish were not called Wanda, and cats were not called Bill..

And middle-aged was 35 and old was fifty-three,
And ancient were our parents in the Land That Made Me, Me.

But all things have a season, or so we've heard them say,
And now instead of Maybelline we swear by Retin-A.
They send us invitations to join AARP,
We've come a long way, baby, from the Land That Made Me, Me.

So now we face a brave new world in slightly larger jeans,
And wonder why they're using smaller print in magazines..
And we tell our children's children of the way it used to be,
Long ago and far away in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Darn, must have got some sand in my eyes!

I remember those days well. Never realized that I was living in the "good old days" at the time.

Myron

About 1972 I was making $2.50 per hour. My rent HOUSE was $75. My Utilities were about $14. I was 23 yrs. old. One week pay covered all that. The rest was mine. That was pretty much the way it was for everybody.

I liked it, even though I wasn't born till 1961.

But the author was clearly a nutcase because he or she added this line: "We had no Crest with fluoride ..."

Yep, and things have gone steadily downhill in a BIG WAY since then.

and your mother stayed home to raise the children properly and one income was enough to live comfortably. Something I wish we could go back to. Maybe the children of today would be better off if they were raised by their parents and not a daycare facility with some cute name.

"We spread our crinolines to dry in circles on the lawn."


WTF is that?

Exactly. I enjoyed the tail end of that, as my mom stayed home and made it a home. Like you say, few can now afford what was the norm back then. Real wages, measured in real purchasing power, for most jobs are way down since those days.

One need look no further than this post to understand why Oklahoma city, Columbine and the Aurora CO. incidents happened.
We could still live on one paycheck if we didn't buy into the bullshit that we and our children have to have more, bigger and better crap than we had growing up.

They were a stiff petticoat that girls wore under their Poodle skirts to make them stand out.

They worked like chastity belts.

you just described my childhood

Kind of makes me feel old...and wonder where my Bike and BB gun ended up. Still have my radio. I couldn't pick up but one station with that AM piece of junk.

In those days, three or four boys could ride miles with .22 rifles balanced across their handlebars and nobody would look twice or think twice about it. Nobody - even the boys - could imagine them doing anything unsafe with them, let alone doing anything evil.

First=class stamps were a nickel and the USPS was profitable. You could buy five gallons of gas for a dollar, and filling stations were profitable, too. Coke came in six-ounce bottles for a nickel, and getting one was a genuine once-a-week treat. A brand new idea in eateries called McDonalds served a hamburger, a bag of fries and a drink for eighty-eight cents.

I can remember being sent down to the neighborhood tavern with a tin quart bucket, and the bartender would send me home with the beer for my parents' supper. No questions, no problems. I was perhaps eight at the time.

Was it a time when the sun always shone golden, the flowers always bloomed, and the living was easy? No. Men worked hard and dangerous jobs for long hours, and then worked their fields or gardens afterwards. Children died of scarlet fever, polio, or smallpox - lots of children. The threat of Russian nuclear attack was palpable, and real. There were as yet no interstate highways and travel on two-lane roads was hard and tiresome.

As Dickens wrote of an even more distant era: "They were the best of times, they were the worst of times..." Fortunately, the hard times seem to dissolve in our memories. The image that we allow to remain is pleasant, probably in self-defense.

And all the changes for the worse can be traced directly to government intervention.

Yep, I grew up in that era and I said the same thing!

WTF is that?

Hawkeye, allow me to ask a genuine question: Is there a single moment in the day or any event in your life that does NOT cause you to to think of some vast banking conspiracy or government plot? Because there's no evidence of them in anything you post.

I awoke to the click and hum of the tubes beginning to glow in my very own clock radio!
The same one I could set the timer and listen to at night as I dozed off.

I said something about government intervention above. Is that what you're referring to? That was a pretty plain Jane conservative response. Not understanding your defensive reaction to it. Do you believe that most of our problems are not related to government intervention? I believe most, if not all, are, at root.

The Vietman War would have never happened without the MIC and WS conspiring. That war and the elite behind it sent this country on the path to ruin.

I was asking about TRH in general, not only in regard this thread. Sorry I derailed the thread. Forget I asked.

I agree with not hijacking this thread. If you'd like me to expound on my worldview, I'd be happy to do so on a thread dedicated to same.

When we boys were that age, it didn't take much to make "them" stand out.

The petticoat part? Dood!

No...that's OK.

I remember the 1st McD's in Boise. We went to get a .19 hamburger that tasted like cardboard. The sign said 100,000 sold.

My 1st real job came after college in '70. I got a salary of $7500/yr which wasn't bad then. I bought a brand new Chevy Nova in '71 for $2200 and rented a 2 bedroom duplex for $100.

No surprise, there.

I never forgot my first bus ride to nursery school. I remember almost every detail of it. Particularly, I remember the driver taking us past a McDonalds under construction, with the golden arches newly put in place. He told us all to look at it, and to remember that we saw the first one going up on Long Island, and that we would soon see them all over the place.

Thanks for posting that. Pretty cute.

Yeah, at 68, I look back fondly at the 50's.

Gotta go along with TRH on this. Government has made a stinking hash of this.

I'm 34. My mom didn't work. We always had plenty of money, and our neighborhoods were safe.

And quite frankly, nothing has changed for my kids.


Travis

Well, everything is just fine and dandy, then.

I'm not implying that. I'm just saying my childhood was great. Partly because my parents didn't/don't spend money like [bleep] morons.

You're not supposed to be in your late 20's or early 30's with a $300,000 home, boat, and 2012 SUV. That is why all these moms work. Not because dad doesn't make enough.

Travis

Good point, Travis. I was just joking around.

I happened to See "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon " on tv last night.It was amde in 1949.I was 6 then and remember my father taking us 4 kids and mom to one of the two movie theaters into town to see it. I think kids cost 10 cents and adults a quarter.Even at that, it was a push for my dad to come up with that money.

I saw the original showing of "The Ten Commandments" when Heston really was that age.

Sorry. I tend to be a very serious person.


Travis

Yeah, that really comes across.

In 4th grade (I was born in 1954) I would wear a hunting knife and camp hacket on a belt sheath. No one thought much of it. Could go fishing and swimming in the lake and parents were glad we were occupied.

love this post,after school we would ride our bikes miles from the house(didn't matter as long as we were home for supper),sometimes the outdoor movies to watch a John Wayne movie on the weekends and there was a little diner that served rootbeer floats...good memories!!!

I remember the 1956 Ford Crown Victoria my aunt and uncle bought. It was the first new car I ever rode in. That year Ford advertised the entire line with a safety campaign and their Lifeguard design. Aunties' Ford had the optional safety package including a padded dash and seat belts. WOW, I got to ride in the front and wear the seat belt! Ford's sales dropped because the safety campaign led people to believe there was something wrong with a car that needed all that stuff. But to an 11 year old, it was as good as it gets.

That car was one of the few I remember that had a working radio, as my late father's last three cars were a 1936 Pontiac, replaced by a 1949 Kaiser, and finally a 1950 Chevrolet. None of radios worked, if they even had a radio. Unfortunately, my aunt turned the radio off thinking my mother and I wanted to hear her prattle rather than Elvis singing Blue Suede Shoes. Family, gotta love them anyway.

And they kept putting clocks in cars even though none of them worked.

Those were the days. I remember going to the feed mill with my dad about once a week, getting a soda pop and using my BB gun at the mill to control sparrows. In the spring there were plenty of snakes to chase in the swamp while getting the cows up to the barn for milking, and I really didn't mind it when school started up in the fall as I didn't have to clean out the manure in the barn in the morning. After school getting the cows up and throwing down silage in the was a lot easier, but then wood needed splitting and stacked for the furnace.
As mom was the oldest in her family, two of my aunts stayed with us a couple of summers working in the local area earning money for winter college expenses, and both ended marrying men they met in the local area.
How carefree and fun those days were!

How true. My grandmother's brand-new 1953 Olds had a clock that never worked from day one.