Forget the Roman Empire: surviving in the world of 50 yrs ago

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve seen a couple of threads pop up asking what one could do upon finding oneself suddenly transported back to (say) the Roman Empire or medieval times. “I’d be lauded as a wizard!” “I’d be burned as a witch!” “I’d invent modern medicine and retire to a villa on the Tiber!” “I’d be immediately enslaved!”

But what about something not quite as dramatic: you suddenly find yourself transported back 50 years. How would you survive? One moment you’re here, the next you are standing on a streetcorner in your city in the year 1957. You’ve got no money, or any currency you do have looks laughably fake–who would make Jackson’s head look so big on the 20?

Say that just before you are thrown back, you are warned that anything you do to change the future–including predicting future events in a convincing way or introducing some new technology before its time–would result in you or your loved ones not being born.

I was thinking about throwing in a provision about not playing the stock market, but what the heck–I don’t know if I would even know how to open a brokerage account back then, and I certainly wouldn’t have any money to do so at first.

Now, I might be able to do some interesting things back in 1957 in my current location of Taiwan. But if I were back in Austin, I’m not sure how I could get by–a nearly 40 year old anonymous guy with no connections to the community and weird clothes. (Actually, that’s kind of like my life story now.)

My current fallback career of desktop publishing certainly wouldn’t fly–I don’t know how to work a linotype machine.

2

That part wouldn’t bother me; they’d all still be fine in 2007 in the timeline I came from, and I’d be creating a separate timeline. Also, my parents and two of my siblings would already be around, as well as my girlfriend (though we’d now have a serious age gap). So I’d go ahead and predict stuff right and left.

Atlanta in 1957 . . . good thing I’m white. The booming electronics industry is already using technology beyond my knowledge; doubt if I’d be able to introduce anything new beyond a description of what it does. Were optic fibers invented yet? If not, I don’t know how. I’d probably do better by finding some way to make a living, and investing as much as I could in some key stocks.

So, how to make a living? Well, I can type, obviously. Probably not many 46-year-old males in the office typing pool. Damn it, I forgot to have a career of some kind. Have to think about this.

3

Well, like most women of the time, I’d have four choices: marry, nursing, teaching or secretarial work. I’m not sure at that point how insistent hospitals were on certification and licensure of nurses, and I probably now enough to fake it for a week or two until I’m caught up to speed with the technology of the time. That’s probably the route I’d take. Maybe claim that all my diplomas were lost in a fire or something - this was before electronic record keeping, right?

While I type just fine for today (rather quickly, in fact), I suspect I use the <delete> key far more often than I realize, which would make my typing with 1957 technology rather poor indeed.

While I don’t know jack about investing, I would peruse the lists of stocks and buy stuff that sounded familiar. IBM? Sure…but I’m not sure when to sell it. Sometime in the 80’s, I’d guess. And I’d jump on that Microsoft thing for sure!

Oh, and I’m SO going to Woodstock!

4

Hmmm. I may do secretarial work as part of my job, but I probably type 20 wpm on a typewriter, so that would suck work wise. The good part would be if I found myself at work when this happened. First of all, I would love to see it - the city has changed a LOT since then. But also I work at an art school that has always been a bit more socially liberal than the average place. We’ve got girls wearing vintage from a long time ago and nobody bats an eye, so I’d like to believe they wouldn’t bat an eye at my clothes.

5

I survived just fine 50 years ago, and assume I could do so again.

6

For the US, going back to 1900 would be a lot easier than going back to 1950.

In 1900, people were still anonymous. You didn’t have “papers.” A stranger could show up and find low-skill casual work to afford to eat & get a flophouse. From there you could work up. And there were a lot of legitimate low-skill, low-wage jobs & a lot of laborers to match. No questions asked & paid weekly in cash was normal then.

In 1950, you could probably get a SSN for the asking from the local office & then you’d be able to get a driver’s license & suddenly you’d be a liegit member of the society. Until that time you’d be hard pressed to find the casual no-questions-asked work that you’d need to eat. Organized public charity was pretty rare, and government programs nonexistent, so the need for work within the first couple of days would be vital. Once you’d slept outside a couple days and hadn’t shaved and looked like a bum, well you were a bum.
Fast forward to now. Imagine things go more or less smoothly for the next 50 years and in 2057 somebody on then SDMB-equivalent wants to know about surviving after teleporting waay back in 2007. The Horror!!

Somebody showing up today with weird social ideas, a strange accent, funky slang, & no papers wouldn’t get too far. Certainly there are plenty of illegal aliens in casual or black-market jobs today, but a generic white-guy/gal american would be hard pressed to get into those circles. My brother for example, is in construction and often hires day laborers. He’s learned to never hire the white guys, always hire the Hispanics. Why? The white guy is there because he’s a loser; the Hispanic is there because he’s a hustler.

Just a few years from now it is quite likely we’ll have even more intrusive paperwork checks for all jobs and without papers you’d be completely unemployable. And getting valid papers from nothing will get very difficult.

7

I’ll assume we arrive in 1957 with a valid identity and no legal obstacles to getting a job - as LSLGuy mentioned, will I have a social security card?

Sounds like we arrive essentially penniless. I’d head to the day labor hangout and work maybe a couple days, so I’d have some meal money and enough for a room at the Y or something; sponging off the Salvation Army for the first couple of nights. I’d be picking up the paper to see if there’s a decent job in the want ads. My first choices would be working as a cable splicer for the telephone company or as an assembler programmer for somebody running an IBM 360-architecture mainframe, but there’s other stuff I could do. Go back to day labor till I get a real job.

Buy a house in the country and get me a Plymouth with big fins and a pushbutton transmission.

8

No, you just appear mysteriously. OK, think of it as a lab accident: you’re visiting your mad scientist friend who has invented a device that allows for very limited observation of past events, but it is very important, nay, critical, not to interact too much with the past. Then BOOM, whatever plot device happens, and you’re suddenly back in 1957, with no papers, no identity, nothin’.

9

If I were to find myself in 1957 without anything but the clothes on my back, I suppose the first thing I would do is find a charity, probably a church, and ask for help. I guess I would make up a story about escaping an abusive spouse or family to explain why I was in the city without anything. I don’t know if the Sisters would think that “running away” from family was so laudable, however.

I’ve read enough that the world of 1957 wouldn’t be completely alien, although using stockings and a garter belt–oh, wait, I’ve done that. I bet getting myself into a girdle would be more difficult!

Once the Sisters of Perpetual Punishment fed, clothed and sheltered me, I’d look for work as a secretary.

I actually use a typewriter occasionally in my current job (as a secretary) so that wouldn’t be too much of a hurdle. But damn, I’d miss the onscreen editing and the backspace key. The shorthand I took was many, many moons ago and never used, so I’d buy a book and learn it on my own.

I know how to use a telephone with a dial, too.

I don’t know how I’d get by without the urge to have children, which I don’t have, and would have been harder to explain in 1957.

I would enjoy, I think, the opportunity to dress a little more formally. At least, for a little while! These days, most people dress and act so casually, that would be one of hardest things to fake. No more leaving the house in shorts and a tee-shirt to grocery shop. I’d have to get myself some gloves, heels and a hat, and a matching handbag, of course.

I would be waiting very anxiously for 1991, when I finally got on the Internet.

I would go back to my pre-web entertainment options, and be a voracious reader and listen to the radio. I’d probably still write–I started doing that on a typewriter, too.

My mother actually spent 1957 in the same city I live in now. I guess I’d live my mother’s life in a lot of ways, but at a much older age than she was in 1957.

“The sixties” won’t really start until 1964 or so, so if I could get by until then, I could relax a little bit. It would be very interesting to live through that time with my future perspective.

I’d buy a lot of records and keep them in pristine condition–I know which ones are going to be worth it years later!

10

Alrighty, then. After I get some pocket money doing day labor, I pick a name, say, Homer Simpson or something. I get a social security card (naw, I tell’em, I got no birth certificate, I was born near Houston MO around 1905). Then, I proceed as decribed above.

Jeez, I hope this isn’t like Terminator…I mean, I at least have my clothes, don’t I?

11

That was my thought to, until I realized (somewhat dishearteningly) that I’m already one of those over 30 that can’t be trusted. I’d be the creepy old broad who was trying to score with the young studs. Ouch.

12

Day labor/charity/secretarial work it is then. Where do you think you’ll be after a year?

A white guy being fluent in Chinese would have been pretty rare, I think. After a year, perhaps I would have attached myself to a university in some capacity, teaching Chinese.

For a cover story,I could go on the story that I was born in China to missionaries and lived there doing the Lord’s work until the late 30s, when I attached myself as some kind of hanger-on to the Flying Tigers. I could make up stories of my adventures in Chungking, until I had to flee with Chiang to Taiwan and eventually make it back to my homeland that I had never seen up to then.

I’d need to be careful, though, not to make my story too traceable, and not make it look like I was a Red spy or something. Would people have been suspicious of me?

13

It wouldn’t be a great life, but I’d have no problem surviving. This is farm country. I’d go find work at a farm, and live in one of the camps they have set up for migrant workers. If there was no way to get the proper papers for better employment, I’d just migrate around the country with the other workers. If it is possible to get papers, I’d probably go into factory work. My degree would have been useless back then, plus there’d be quite a bit of racism to overcome, so I’d probably just lay low.

Would it be okay to find family and latch on as a distant relative new to the States and ask for help getting set up?

I’ll see you there. I want to try and catch as many historical events as possible, which probably won’t be a lot.

14

I’m old enough to know how to use a typewriter, record player, and even fountain pen. Ive already got the wardrobe, the haircut, and a solid grasp of the culture. I’d fake a past of some kind (WW2 veteran most likely, to aid in employment prospects), buy a Chevy Bel Air on time, eat fatty multiple-martini lunches, pinch secretaries, behinds, and likely die of complications of diabetes by 1975.

15

Oh, man. Well, I can use a typewriter. Of course, pre-Quiet Revolution and official bilingualism there was less call for translators than there is now. This is a poser, isn’t it?

Although damn, it would be cool to see Expo 67, the first day of the metro, etc.

16

Not in 1957! :smiley:
(How are you with 1401 Autocoder?)

17

“C-can I have a Pepsi Free?”
“You want a Pepsi, kid, you’re gonna pay for it!”
“Okay…uh…just give me a Tab.”
“Tab?! I can’t give you a tab till you order something.”

Ahem.

I’d probably get a rep as the town pump for wearing something like this sans bra/girdle/etc.

18

“Mommy, why is that lady wearing men’s underwear?!” :eek:

:smiley:

19

Hmm. Well, I’m an English professor – a job that not only existed in the 1950s, but was probably easier to break into than it is now. I guess my first step would be to get a secretarial job that would give me some quick cash and access to a typewriter, go to the university library on weekends and familiarize myself with the current state of Shakespeare scholarship, then knock out a few articles filled with “my” groundbreaking insights and send them off to journals. With luck, I get published, forge some letters of recommendation, and apply for any jobs I can find where they seem to be willing to take the existence of my graduate transcripts on faith. And then come off as a total weirdo because I think Aemilia Lanyer and Elizabeth Cary are major authors :slight_smile:

The alternative, I guess, would be getting married as quickly as possible and letting my husband support me. This would have a few advantages, in that I would be less of an oddity and no one would ask me to produce a social security number, but would be far less interesting, and besides, I would be a horrible housekeeper by 1950s standards.

20

I was afraid of that, but I didn’t check the dates. Nope, don’t know Autocoder. I’ll have to work as a cable splicer till I learn it.