Remember When?

I love to receive those nostalgic emails about life in the Fifties. All the Teabury Gum, and nickel Cokes, and wax lips, presented in a Rock n' Roll wonderland where all the guys acted like Fonzie and high school was exactly like "Grease." Ah yes, the innocent Fifties, where virginal Bobby-Soxers abounded and life was "On the Beach" and survival was in a fallout shelter. I guess it's in my nature to remember adolescence a bit differently, so I present to you a different view of that Dick Clark decade, and wonder, do you...

Remember When
the first time your parents told you, "everybody dies?"

Remember When
Your pajamas with the built-in feet were recalled for lack of flame retardant?

Remember When
Every other commercial on television or ad in a magazine was for cigarettes, and they told you they were good for you? Now, 50 years later, and you can still recite tobacco slogans like, "LSMFT," "Winston Tastes Good Like A Cigarette Should," and "Call For Phillip Morris." You've come a long way, baby.

Remember When
You were taught in school to hide under your desk in case of a nuclear attack, and you figured out by age 7 that your ass was as good as fried and the human race could be obliterated at any moment, so what the hell?

Remember When
The air-raid sirens on top of public buildings went off every Saturday at noon, and you were never sure if it was a test or if the Russians figured out the best time to attack was noon, Saturday?

Remember When
Ike's government electrocuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for show, setting off a wave of anti-Semitism and orphaning two children, when the "atomic secrets" they passed to the Russians were the same "secrets" that the Soviet's Nazi scientists were only a few months behind our Nazi scientists in discovering in the first place; and no one said a thing about it.

Remember When
You were taught to believe that dropping two atomic weapons on a civilian population was justified, and saved lives?

Remember When
All your grade school and high school teachers were borderline senile Christian fanatics and they were allowed to beat you?


Remember When
You were taught that the police were your friends, until personal interaction proved they were liars, thugs, and racists?






Remember When
Hitching a ride was considered to be safe until that guy grabbed your inner thigh and you had to fight him to get out of the car?




Remember When
That first time you found your Dad's dirty books?

Remember When
If you dropped the phone, you could break your foot?

Remember When
Every family on your street had a maid that worked for wages so low, that if your parents tried to pay that today, they would be arrested. And since there were no retirement plans or Social Security, the maids worked until they died?

Remember When
The racist system threw Chuck Berry in prison because he drove across the state line with an underage girl in the car?

Remember When
The government drafted Elvis into the Army, when no one famous ever got drafted, effectively ending the rebellious age of Rock n' Roll and killing Gladys Presley in the process, and The Colonel let them do it and insisted that Elvis go along and be a grunt?

Remember When
Your city government started to tear down 100 year old palatial homes and historic buildings to make room for fast food restaurants, until every major city has turned into the exact same aesthetically offensive strip mall.


Remember When
Most of the public school Art and Music teachers were gay, but nobody made a big deal about it?




Remember When
Your Dad used to curse at the "women drivers?"



Remember When
You had to re-learn the silly, sing-song "Pledge of Allegiance" because the politicians voted to put the words "Under God" in there, and you couldn't understand why you were swearing personal loyalty to a piece of cloth in the first place? And finally.......

Remember When
You grew your hair long, and your parents kicked you out? Oops sorry, that was the 60s.

The Fifties; that grand decade right after the Forties.