by Mary Wakefield Buxton –
URBANNA — If the 40s in America were innocent times as the nation recovered from the war, the 50s hit us like a bombshell. Ike was president and we liked Ike. We weren’t so politically polarized then as we are now. Our leaders did not insult the opposite party as is done today or use certain words or expressions to fan hatred of others in their supporters into a froth of passion and zeal. Seeing political leaders today “heat up” their fan base reminds me of a zookeeper throwing red meat to the lions.
The horrible memories of the Great Depression and World War II were fading in the 50s and the nation was experiencing an economic boom. It hit Americans we were the most powerful nation in the world. Times were good. The civil rights movement that would put an end to the Democrat-imposed “Jim Crow laws” in the south was just getting started as was an awareness that women wanted equal opportunities too.
My sister, Georgia, was born in 1950 as television was getting a hold on American lives. She was raised on a new program just for children — “Captain Kangaroo.” I can still hear Clarabelle the clown honking her horn.
By 1954 music changed almost overnight from Frank Sinatra’s “Young at Heart” to Bill Haley and the Comets blasting our generation with “Shake, Rattle and Roll!” We were immediately wild for rock and roll. Elvis Presley hit the top 10 and we were crazed with joy at the new sound and beat in music. All we wanted to do was dance, dance, dance.
One Saturday morning, my friends and I boarded the New York Central train that stopped in Vermilion, Ohio, each day to ride to Cleveland to see the King for one of his early appearances. Our seats were so high up in the Cleveland Arena we could barely see the gyrating singer as he belted out his early hits, “You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog,” and “Heartbreak Hotel.”
We couldn’t hear much music because the girls that had packed the arena were screaming at the top of their lungs. Not me. I was too sophisticated to holler at a mere man at age 14 and quite disgusted that girls behaved in such a ridiculous way.
That year we also attended “American Bandstand” with Dick Clark, which had started up in Cleveland. We danced like fools in front of a TV camera that depicted the new jitterbug dance back home to our parents who were watching on black and white TV. I am sure however, when the cameraman rolled up close to us we did not giggle like silly teeny boppers or wave and say “Hi Mom” into the camera.
I hit high school in 1955 and much to my parents despair, I lit up my first cigarette and practiced smoking in the front of the living room mirror. I liked the way I looked when I smoked, rather like a popular actress in the movies. I held my cigarette just so, delicately taking a puff and ever so demurely, blowing the smoke into the mirror with a come hither look in my eye, with utmost grace and perfection.
Mother had a fit. She and Father had just themselves managed to quit the nasty habit they had started in the Roaring 20s, thinking they too were looking sophisticated and to see their daughter begin to smoke was heartbreaking. Fortunately, I quit the day I was married after Chip, (we were married seven years later) plucked a cigarette out of my mouth at my wedding reception saying most pompously, “No wife of mine will ever smoke!” I was furious but in retrospect, it was the greatest gift he could have given me on my wedding day.
My friends and I were “prep,” which meant that everything we bought had to come from LL Bean or we would die of shame. Not everything, of course, we wore plaid wool skirts and Shetland sweaters with crew necks and knee socks with penny loafers — and, the “piece de resistance” — a circle pin.
I began dating boys at age 14, but wasn’t interested in what they wanted. It was my good fortune that I had enough sense in high school to know I wasn’t ready for a serious relationship with a boy. Nobody told me, I just knew it, as if I had been born with the protective hesitation in my developing brain that would save me from a lot of emotional problems. Times have changed but I hope that young girls today will consider the power of the word, “No.”
I liked the nerdy types who quoted poets or spent hours in the school lab conducting scientific experiments. It was safe to date nerds but I stayed far away from the “cool cats” that raced “hot rods” with bad mufflers, or brand new cars sporting “fins” and enough chrome to blind an oncoming car in the sun.
They “cruised” the streets at night looking for “action,” “peeled off” at every stoplight, laying rubber proudly on the street, radios booming “Sh-boom, Sh-boom, yada yada yada” or “Tweedle dee dee, Tweedle dee dum,” “Wake up Little Susie” or “Rock Around the Clock” throughout the town. They wore their hair long and slicked back, collars turned up and the “cat’s meow” — black leather jackets.
We sisters all attended public school, (Georgia later transferred to St. Margaret’s School in Tappahannock for her high school years since I was married by then and living in Williamsburg) and everyone got along in school. There were zero fights at school or after school games and no stealing in the locker rooms.
There were only three ethnic groups in the area at that time, descendants of English, German and Irish immigrants. We had each learned from our parents our sordid history from the “old country” and there were some residual ethnic feelings due to the many bitter past wars in Europe. Each attended our “own churches,” English: Congregational, German: E and R (Evangelical and Reformed) and Irish: Catholic.
In the evening the family would gather around the television. “I Love Lucy,” the Ed Sullivan, Arthur Godfrey, Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton shows were hits. Laughing at the silly comedy of Clem Kladittle Hopper, The Poor Soul, Joe the Bartender, Ralph and Alice in the Honeymooners, or Reggie Van Gleason, was mild compared to today’s daily fare of soap opera drama, sarcasm, put-down humor and violent crime and horror programs that fill the air today.
Teens drank Coke or light beer (no longer available) and after a date we would usually eat pizza or a cheeseburger and shake at a Manners Big Boy drive-in restaurant. There were no drugs, which meant I grew up without even seeing an illegal drug like fentanyl, cocaine, heroin or marijuana. Hard to believe in today’s drug-infested world.
The worst I could do was sneak into Father’s hunting closet and take a long gulp of bourbon. I felt the fiery syrup go down my throat a few times but somehow the taste did not tempt me to begin to drink alcohol.
But how wonderful to do something wicked! After all, who wanted to be what was known then as a “goody two shoes?” Not me!
There was relative peace in the world at that time before the Vietnam war heated up in the 60s and drugs like LSD produced a new teen “hippie” culture. I didn’t know of racial, gender, ethnic or age prejudice, road rage, mass school killings, attacks on police and military, drive-by murders, the red/blue polarization, drug overdoses, teen suicide deaths, and homeless misery in the cities that we see today.
Immigrants came into America legally in controlled numbers and learned English before they became citizens. They came to us from all over the world, loved America, worked hard in whatever challenge they decided to take on and became successful.
The innocent 50s, when I was a teenager growing up in small town, Ohio, was truly what could only be called — the calm before the storm.
(To be continued.)
© 2022
