What do you think of when someone mentions the 1950s? Elvis? Dick Clark? Poodle skirts?
Life back then was a lot more than the famous personalities and latest fads. In my book, In the thrill of the night, I recall some of the common experiences of children and families that didn’t always make the history books. Experiences such as
• going out to play without an adult hovering in the background,
• playing sports without a coach demonstrating the proper way to kick a field goal,
• and best of all, inventing your own games.
I know it’s hard to believe for some, but there really were a lot of things to do before video games and the internet.
What do you remember about the 1950s? What do you cherish about those days? What do you wish you could forget?
Write me and share some of your adventures and memories. The best will be posted so others can read them.
Dig?
I grew up in post-war government housing in Glasgow, Scotland – big
blocks of flats. I turned 8 in 1960.
The coal man delivered coal by horse and cart, lugged coal up the
stairs to dump it in the coal bunker – a sort of closet outside the
front door. (My brother was a coal licker – it was something known
then, people thought it was maybe some dietary deficiency that made
kids do it. Mum would go to get a scuttle of coal, and he’d be in the
coal bunker, licking coal.)
The ragman also made his rounds with a horse and cart, and we kids
would run and ask our mothers for rags for the ragman, because he’d
give you a balloon in return.
The piano teacher came to our house and so did “the Insurance Man.” We
had to feed the meter to keep electricity flowing. There was a coal
fire in the living room – the only heating in the house. Ice formed on
the insides of the windows, and we still kept the small window open
for fresh air. Babies were put outside in prams for their naps to get
fresh air, even in cold weather.
We were free to go out and play, and played in different apartments
and outside nearby. We’d play in the big weedy court formed by the
three sides of the apartment block. It was for drying clothes mostly.
The fourth side of the court was the midden – an area where all the
bins (trash cans) were stored in covered concrete bunkers. We’d play
jumping the middens. You had to be brave to jump from the midden roof
to the dividing wall, then easy jump over to the next midden roof.
We’d play pole tag between the washing lines in the court, and with
dandelions we’d play “Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped
OFF!” – flipping the dandelion flower head off with a thumb. Also of
course we’d tell the time by blowing the seed- head clock. We had lots
of games that kids don’t’ play now, too, Glasgow street games. Girls’
circle games. Doublers with two rubber balls up against the wall, with
a lot of rhymes. (I recently got a pair of rubber balls to show my
daughter – but so far I haven’t found a smooth concrete wall to bounce
them off.)
At primary school we learned the basics, got free milk, vaccinations,
various check-ups. We did “Music and Movement” via a radio program
provided by the BBC. We had singing and art and science – and French
in fifth grade. Also religion which was a mandatory part of school
curriculum in the UK, at that time anyway, Britain being an officially
Christian country. I liked the bible stories and the visiting minister
was young and cheerful. We were all white, a monoculture. (I remember
in secondary school there was one Jewish girl whose parents opted out
and she left when we had our religious instruction period.)
Boys and girls played in separate asphalt playgrounds. Girls learned
knitting and sewing from the age of around 7. Boys got “handicrafts.”
I’m not sure what they did exactly. I hated knitting and sewing with a
vengeance.
At home, I turned the wringer (mangle) for my mother who would wash
clothes and sheets in the sink. In summer, Mum kept milk cool by
draping bottles with a dishtowel and standing them in a pan of water
in the cupboard. We had to go to the neighbor to make a phone call, or
watch a TV show.
I remember the arrival of fridge, washing machine and TV, and the
changes as the decade turned over into the “you never had it so good”
sixties. For me, they really were pretty good, thanks to our
government housing and education. I passed the qualifying exam at 11
with good enough marks to go to a senior secondary (in England they
were called grammar schools). I don’t know what my education would
have been like had I been sent to the secondary modern, where kids
spent three years before leaving at 15 to work in unskilled jobs. But
the school I went to was rigorous and very academic. Scotland always
has had a reputation for excellence in education. I was the first in
my family to go to college – so when people here talk about how awful
government is – I think back to my own experiences in the U.K. and
have a very, very different feeling about all that. But – times
change, the post-war flush of benefits I think has waned now, and I
guess it wasn’t sustainable. Too bad.