Childhood 1950's VS today

In My Humble Opinion
1

One of the things that I remember from my childhood is that rainy days sucked. There wasn’t much to do indoors . Soap operas on the two TV channels that we could get, a bratty younger brother and a lot of boredom. We spent almost all of our free time out doors. riding bicycles, exploring the woods, and getting into whatever mischief that we could. I could wander a long way from home, and as long as I was home by dinner time my parents didn’t worry about me. Snackfood was potato chips or pretzels.

Today we rarely see kids outside playing. There are lots of diversions, cable TV, video games, the internet etc. Self serve junk snacks are heavily marketed to the pre-teen set. We have amber alerts and kids carrying cell phones and pagers so that their parents can keep track of them.

How do you remember your childhood? How much freedom (of movement) do you remeber having?

2

I did not yet exist in the 1950s, but I was a kid when The Brady Bunch came around. :smiley:

Growing up in San Diego, there were not a lot of rainy days. My time was spent on my skateboard or bicycle, or building model airplanes. I had a book similar to Jane’s cataloguing WWII aircraft. With its small print and many pages, my mom thought it was too advanced for me; but I could tell her anything about any airplane in it. I discovered Poe when I was eight, and I read books from The Scholastic Press. I watched some TV, but we only got NBC, CBS, ABC and whatever channel 39 was in San Diego because our antenna didn’t work. My friends and I built forts, threw dirt clods at each other, and set up army men to knock over in battles.

Summers I would go up to the Mojave Desert (Daggett) to be with dad. I’d ride minibikes and, later, motorcycles. We’d go up to the granparents’ place in Oregon for a week or so. Dad had a Moss Paracamper on he Toyota truck. Damn, I wish I could get one of those now!

I see footage from the 1950s. Mostly old films or newsreel stuff. I think about the times. America’s economy was booming. Sure there was the Soviet threat; but things seemed simple in Suburbia then. I remember when I came along in the '60s, the chrome and the transistor radios. My sister, much older than I, was a big Beatles fan. I can still smell big cars on dusty roads on hot summer days. I remember being outside because there was “nothing to do” in the house. I remember the “halcyon days of my youth” as a happy time. No worries about employment or money, no school all summer long, cool, airy houses of hippies, splashing in the pool at NAS Miramar (with a hot dog and a cream soda for lunch).

3

Growing up in the Fifties was great. I rode my bike everywhere, never had to lock it. My Dad never locked his car. In first grade, 1953-54, I walked 4 blocks by myself, got on a public transit bus, put in 8 cents, and rode to school - Pikesville elementary school in Pikesville, Maryland. I played little league baseball on the fields behind the school. I went fishing, played baseball, stepball, kickball, other sports, did lots of things outdoors, my parents never had to worry. On rainy days I read books and comic books, played board games. Ah, the Fifties… :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

4

I was only around for the last two years of the '50s, but my childhood in the '60s was (mostly) a carefree time. We lived in a little town (pop. 2000). I could go anywhere, do anything. We were within walking distance of a forest, so there was lots of exploring and climbing trees. We rode our bikes all over town, every day, all summer. We knew the owner, so we could go to the dairy and watch them bottle milk and make ice cream. The man would always give us some chocolate milk. There was an abandoned grain mill right downtown. We could go in and jump off the top of the ladder in the silos down into the grain and sink up to our waists. Two railway lines converged in our town, so there were always trains parked nearby. We’d go and play in the boxcars. There was a pond about a block from my house, so we were continually having tadpoles and frogs and turtles as pets. Nobody ever locked their doors, because they had no reason to. We didn’t have constant parental supervision because we didn’t need it. Kids weren’t hoodlums then, we were just junior people who had to find something to do. It never occurred to us to steal things or destroy property. We got six television channels, all black and white. Our babysitter would bring over the first three Beatles albums on Saturday nights while the parents went to the legion hall to dance, all dressed up. Yep, it sure was a different time.

5

I’m figuring on childhood being, what, up to about age 11 or 12?

For me that would run 1973 to around 1985. I remember having a good deal of freedom of movement - this was in a small city in the Southeast. We didn’t live in the best part of town, but neither did we live in a bad area.

My mother did prefer that we tell her where we were going if it was going to be out of yelling range, but beyond that we pretty much had our run of the neighborhood. There were about four kids in the neighborhood who were pretty close in age (me, my two older brothers and our next door neighbor, also a boy), so we were pretty much together if we were going off anywhere, like the drugstore down the road.

6

From age 3 to age 11, my family lived in small towns in Michigan. I can confirm that most folk had no need to lock their doors, and kids spent a great deal of time outdoors playing. When I started kindergarten in the fall of 1957, there were -50- children in my afternoon session! By the next year, the school was so crowded that some classes were meeting in the basement Sunday school classrooms of nearby churches. We moved in February of that year to another town in Michigan, and I went from the church classroom (with no desk) to a regular classroom with my own desk. However, at my old school I was told to put all my books underneath my chair, and I tried to continue to do that. It took the teacher a while to get me to put them in my desk! It definitely was the Babyboom! Our summer vacations were spent outdoors, either exploring our neighborhood, following the local high school band around as they practiced, or spending all day at the beach on Lake Michigan. I don’t recall any beach ever being closed for high levels of coliform bacteria, either.

We had a wonderful mailman–his name was Karl (I wish I knew how Karl was doing, if he is still alive; I’m sure he’s retired by now). Karl had figured out early on how to deal with all the dogs along his route–he carried dog bisquits and gave them generously to the dogs, to the point that they all followed him around.

We lived only two blocks from the school, so we always returned home for lunch–this is something that you just don’t see happening now, I guess mostly because both parents work.

All I can remember for now … thanks for stirring the memories! :slight_smile:

7

I was born in 1951. We didn’t even have a TV until I was 4 or 5. I had plenty to do though, books, games, puzzles, models. People were less worried. I went to the NY Worlds Fair with friends, no adults, at 13.

But don’t let the nostalgic fool you into thinking things were perfect. Some wannabe child molestor told me he was my father in first grade - I just thought he was nuts, In the early '60s, and probably before, we all talked about juvenile delinquents, and kids who had a jd card. Today their seen as the good guys, the James Deans, the Fonzies, but then the adults considered them a menace.

And of course we practiced for being blown up by the bomb.

8

My uncle grew up in a poor area of South Minneapolis in the 1950s. Gangs were rampant. One of his classmates went to prison for murder at a young age. Another raped a twelve year old girl at 15. Drugs were in common use. Getting beat up after school was a common enough occurance.

I grew up in the 1970s in the 'burbs. Mine was a suburban childhood of not having to worry about much.

But my kids today play outside a lot - most of the summer in fact. With the neighbor kids who are outside on their bikes and running through the woods. We lock up our house, but when we forget, no one breaks into it. I don’t lock my car when I’m at the grocery store - and while I’ve had my cars stolen when I lived on the edge of a “rougher” neighborhood, my car has never had as much as the change emptied out of the ashtray.

Anyway, I think location has as much to do with this as the time period. Certainly my kids have more tv and video games than I ever did - and that is probably an American universal (although most households I talk to don’t have a video game console - because they don’t want to have video game zombies - and limit tv time for the same reason). But if you live in a small town in Iowa, you probably don’t have to lock your doors (unless one of the kids has “problems” - then everyone does - and everyone did - even in the 1950s). Certainly we know more about child abductions and murder - because Laci Peterson or Elizabeth Smart wouldn’t have been national news even twenty years ago - but I don’t think its more common.

9

I was born in 1966. Like tarragon, I lived in a small town in Michigan. We didn’t lock up our bikes. The house was only locked when we went away on vacation. Cars were never locked. When we moved to an Indianapolis suburb in '77 we started locking things.

Also like tarragon, (did you grow up in my old hometown? I was in Holland MI), the school was only a block from home so a lot of us went home for lunch.

We were outside on just about every day there wasn’t rain. Our rule was “home when the street lights came on.” We had those lights that came on gradually, so I remember running like the devil to get home as soon as they got that dull glow. We could use the nearby schoolyard playgrounds at any time, so sometimes we’d go there. However, most of the kids in our neighborhood had pretty big yards, so mostly we’d play there. We played a lot of hide and seek and red rover. We also had lots of imagine a situation type games (like we’d pretend we were on a ship, a desert island, in a battle).

Winter was the best time. We’d build huge forts and tunnels through the snow drifts. Snow days when school was canceled were great. We’d have the whole neighborhood out there playing king of the mountain on the larger drifts. These days, I hate being cold, but I loved winter as a kid. We were running around so much we’d get really hot in all our winter clothing. I remember taking off scarfs, mittens (hard when mom had them attached via a long string to each other), hats, and eventually coats because we’d get so hot. Then there was the mad scramble to find all your cast off clothing and get dressed again so mom wouldn’t scold us for being outside without proper winter wear!

Rainy days and sick days were book days. I liked reading, so it was okay to have the occassional rainy day. But if we had a multi day rain storm, both the kids and the moms (who were sick of having overactive hellions running around the house causing mischeif) were praying for some sun.

We did watch TV, but we only had NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS. I remember the funny circular attena to get the UHF channels, though I only watched PBS for Sesame Street and Electric Company. Saturday morning was the only time we really got into TV viewing. I remember waking up at the crack of dawn to avoid missing any cartoons. It sucked when we’d wake up too early and all that was on were the farm reports. We did watch some prime time TV during the week if the shows we liked were on before bedtime. But that was only when it was already dark out and we were trapped inside.

I remember getting a TV remote in '75 (I think it was then). It seemed amazing. The remote would advance the channel knob and you’d hear this clicking sound as it went through the channels. Mom still calls them “clickers” to this day.

However, even with Saturday morning being our only dedicated TV time, mom would still worry about how we were in front of the TV and not outside.

10

I feel sorry for the kids growing up today. Few will know the joys of having unstructured free time. Once the schoolday was over, we were on our own ‘til suppertime. Weekends seemed years’ long. The adults knew we were outside[not so much for me as for others], and that was enough info for them. A slower pace, lots of imagination and freedom to do everything or nothing. No soccer games to be driven to, it was the rare child who had music lessons and if you got hurt playing you weren’t rushed to an ER. Comic books provided hours of rapt absorption[how I miss those ten and twelve cent ones] Cartoons were scrambling our brains, but we all got our fill. Playing in the street was a given. Anybody even remember, or even hear of, Dead Man, stickball,hopscotch, etc.? Were we a kinder, gentler nation then? That’s a good argument. We felt safe, at least most of the time because “bad things” weren’t shouted from the mountaintops the way they are today. Ignorance=bliss? In some cases it does. A baby boomer like me knows the best childhood that could ever be, because it was MY childhood. I see what passes for childhood today, and how the kids seemingly enjoy it. They’ll never know any other, or suspect that it used to be quite different. Most of them are much more sophisticated[read: more curious, less disciplined and unwilling to take no for an answer] than I was at their age What will it be like for their kids and grandchildren. “Backward, turn backward O time in your flight.”

11

The first TV I remember was a colour one, with a round-ish picture tube.

Dadism: “Backward, turn backward O time in thy flight, I thought of a come-back I needed last night!”

I had a “kids today!” moment on Thursday. I was delivering a proposal to a potential customer, and looking for his address. I drove up a road in Blaine, a small town that abuts the Canadian border, and there were two teenaged boys walking up it. They were carelessly walking in the middle of the road, which was not too surprising because there was no sidewalk. Having failed to find the address (apparently, people aren’t too big on visible addresses up here), I turned around. I approached a likely house at the same time the kids were approaching it. It became apparent that they were intentionally trying to obstruct traffic. They didn’t obstruct me though, because I was turning into a driveway opposite. But a minivan behind me had to stop. The boys laughed at the driver as they walked past, and the driver backed up and gave them a piece of her mind. I saw what they were up to before I had to turn, and I was disappointed in my luck. Had they obstructed me, I would have stopped and started laughing at them. You know, pointing at them and mocking them. That would have taken the micky out of them. But I was in a hurry and couldn’t be bothered. But I did find it highly amusing that they thought they were being so cool by getting in people’s way and laughing at them. They were right bloody 'tards, I tells ya!

It’s interesting to read about growing up in the '50s. When I was growing up in Suburbia, everything was avocado green and modern. Seeing the '50s on film with its old-fashoined appliances and weird clothing, cops that were helpful instead of autocratic, and people who wore hats is “quaint” to me. But then, I look back on the late-'60s through the '70s when I was growing up and remember that nobody had computers. Pong was wicked-cool. My motorcycles were “modern” because they used oil injection instead of pre-mix. I went to drive-in movies. I wonder, if I ever have kids, if they will look on my youth the same way? Will they say, “Oingo boingo? Wall of Voodoo? X? How could you have listened to that?”

12

MaddyStrut, my family lived in Morenci, Comstock Park, and Manistee before heading (back) to the east coast. The memories I posted are from our time in Manistee - I’ve never been to Holland, but am familiar with it; it’s certainly a beautiful city, especially during the tulip festival. :slight_smile: While we lived in Comstock Park, we spent some time with friends at Crystal Lake and rode the dunebuggies there–my memories of that are kinda vague, though, since I was 5-6 when that happened!

One summer, we rode the carferry across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin, then went down to Chicago. I was probably 7 then; my only memory of Chicago is the Lincoln Park Zoo! Another time, we went down to Detroit and crossed into Canada, going up to Niagara Falls, then coming down through NY state on our way to the annual vacation visit to relatives on the East coast. The return trip, we went south into the Smokies, visited the Biltmore mansion, then came up through Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana back to Michigan; I’m glad that my family had such a chance to travel when I was a kid. I can’t imagine the hell it was on my parents to make such drives, though!

On the visit to Crystal Lake, I “pal-ed” around with the other couples son, who was the same age as I (5 I think). We got into a challenge thing…we were out in the dunes, and came across what looked to be a “dead” campfire. He walked across the coals and then dared me to do the same. Which I did, but guess I wasn’t nearly as lucky as him, because my feet came into contact with several not quite dead coals! I ended up spending the remainder of that visit swinging in the hammock of the back yard because my tender feet got singed by the coals–not a fun way to spend your vacation. My feet have remained quite tender–to the point that I cannot really go barefoot outside during the summer, particularly on pavement or sand!

13

Well, for one thing, I never wore a seatbelt until I started taking Driver Ed (at age 14), and when my aunt would pick me and my cousins up from the neighborhood pool, we rode home on the hood of her car, because she didn’t want a bunch of wet kids on her upholstery.

I was born in 1970, though, by which time people had started poisoning Halloween candy, so there were some restrictions: For example, my parents drove me trick-or-treating, and only to the homes of relatives, and I wasn’t allowed to ride my bike in the street or perform certain acrobatics on the playground equipment at school.

When I was with my grandparents, though, I got to swim in their pool unsupervised (I wasn’t even allowed inside to use the bathroom unless it was #2–otherwise, my Nana would say, “Just pee in the pool!” and shut the door again), ride my bike all over creation (as someone else said, no worries as long as I showed up for dinner), and play around in newly-built, unoccupied houses.

And sunscreen? Fuh-geddaboutit! A good spritz of Off! was all I needed to get me through a summer day!

14

As a kid in the 60s I remember the weather seeming different. It was hot but not nearly as humid as it is now. Plus you could see so much further back then as the skies were much more haze free. I remember almost always having a horney toad as a pet or at least seeing them around the house. Now I’ve not seen one for at least 30 years.

I remember turning on the TV and having to wait about 30 seconds before the picture came on. When you’d turn it off a vertical column would shrink to a dot that would ever so slowely disappear. Rabbit ears would have to be adjusted when you changed channels to one of the three stations and when the neighbor down the street got a color TV it was a huge deal.

We never wore seat belts back then and I can remember mom holding me in her lap in the front seat as we drove. Ironically that was deemed safer, more protected. We’d often go to drive in movies and I can remember Dad speaking into the electronic box attached to the window and the movie narrator answering his question.

We’d walk to the schoolbus stop by ourselves and hand the lunch lady a red ticket for our meal. We’d even fly by ourselves to visit grandparents, the stewardess making sure we got off the plane at the right time. Back then everybody dressed up to fly and we boarded planes by walking across the tarmack and up that mobile staircase that had been pushed against the plane.

Seems like a lot more people smoked back then, diners and waffle houses we more prevalent and every gas station had a mechanic.

15

The first color tv program I ever saw was The Mikado with Groucho Marx. One of my friends had a color TV, and all the kids in our first grade class piled into her house to see it for a school assignment.

Remember test patterns? Remember stations signing off at about midnight, or starting at about m6 am with the Star Spangled Banner and film of jet fighters? Right after that was Modern Farmer, and then cartoons.

How many of you ever got treated by a doctor at home on a house call? I’m not sure little black doctor bags exist anymore.

16

I was born in 1949, so I was a little kid through the 50s. Most of our play was outside. We’d dash around with cap guns, playing cops-and-robbers or war. Sometimes, there were pickup games of baseball, basketball, or football. I had “boundaries” to my mobility. It was 6 or 8 blocks in three directions, but a busy street was a block away in the fourth direction, and I wasn’t allowed to cross that. That boundary expanded when I was old enough for school, because the school was over there. Most of us had bicycles, and we walked to school. There were 6th graders with long bamboo safety flags to get us across the busy streets. They wore white web belts with badges, and they had to keep their grades up to remain on the Safety Patrol.

When I was, oh, maybe 7, I went down to the very edge of my allowed area to the east. There was a paint store, and out behind the store was a big stack of nearly empty paint cans. My best friend and I spend most of the afternoon mixing new colors from the dregs in those cans. When we got home, we were in big trouble. Mom spent a long time wiping me down with turpentine. (Back then, it was all oil based paint.) It’s funny how things like that didn’t seem really dumb until afterward.

Indoor play was mostly make-believe stuff with toy cars and cities made of wooden blocks. We had a big upright piano that Mom would occasionally play.

Our house had a big upper story room that my brother and I shared. Dad had another bathroom installed up there, with a sink, toilet, and a steel shower stall. One boring day, my best friend and I stopped up the drain and the gaps in the sides of the shower stall so we could play toy boat games in the “lake.” It was great fun, but after a while, Dad ran upstairs and yelled at us. We didn’t realize how much water was overflowing. Dad had heard a whump when the ceiling fell into the bed in the master bedroom.

My brother and I built some models. He built mostly planes and ships, and I built cars. He did a lot of detailed painting, down to the white tips on propellers. I was limited to decals after I knocked over a bottle of Testor’s black paint on the dining table. Did I mention my brother was two years older?

My earliest memory was when I had my tonsils taken out. I was three, and I don’t remember anything else until I was nearly five. I had a hospital bed that had crib-rail sides on it. I remember a sneaky doctor who tricked me into breathing in through a mask. He showed me how, and then, with some sleight of hand, he handed me a mask that smelled horrible. (Ether, I suppose.) When I woke up, my throat hurt, and they wouldn’t let me eat until a day after I got home.

17

cite?

18

I grew up in the Midwest during the 50’s. We did not have air-conditioned homes or cars, and only one bathroom for our family of five. I walked to and from school every day and we all went home for lunch except for those few whose mothers worked outside the home (we felt sorry for them and slightly superior). The school playground had all sorts of wonderful, dangerous equipment. Does anyone remember the giant-stride?

From the age of eight I rode my bicycle all over town, took the bus to ballet class or the public library by myself, and no one thought anything about sending me to the local grocery store several blocks away for milk or bread after dark.

During the summer we swam (for free) at a City owned and staffed neighbor hood pool, or just ran wild, up and down the alleys. Saturday mornings we all went to the local movie theater for the kids’ show (admission was 14 cents, popcorn a dime) and then spent the afternoon acting out the movie we had seen that morning.

We always left the back door unlocked so the meter reader could get in. Our mail was delivered to the front door twice daily and of course the milkman came by everyday at the crack of dawn. My mother and I always dressed up to go shopping downtown and the department stores delivered our purchases.

We had our share of bad luck. My younger brother got polio; we knew about child molesters and our paperboy died during an asthma attack. My aunt shocked the family by getting divorced! In high school, girls occasionally left to “help a sick relative” for a few months. We practiced “duck and cover” in school and I was terrified of atomic bombs and the Russians.

19

Anyone remember screen doors with wooden frames, and a spring to close them? Remember that sound?

20

I was a '60’s child, but in many ways my eperiences were similar to those others here. I was raised in small-town Michigan. I was one of 5 children (5 in 6 years). We never locked our doors. We spent all our time after school outdoors, riding bikes, riding ponies (I wasn’t lucky enough to have my own pony, but I had classmates who had them), playing kickball and tag. I had cats and dogs. My siblings and I went to Catholic school and the family went to Mass together every Sunday. After Mass my father would make a big breakfast for the family and after breakfast my brother would clean the kitchen and scrub the floor.

On the downside, my family moved into the town from elsewhere and never seemed to fit in. I was a tiny child (I wore a child’s size four school uniforn up to 7th grade) and I was bullied by a much larger girl classmate and several boys in my class.

All in all it was a pretty idyllic childhood. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

StG