I think the fact that I live in a rural area could make this both simple and complicated. (We’ll ignore the whole diabetes thing.)
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A strange young woman showing up on the doorstep of the family farmhouse and looking like a family member is going to raise some eyebrows. And it’s not like I could just give the family the slip – any one of the neighbors would say, “Gee, you look just like that girl the neighbor boy’s gonna marry. Any relation?” Yes, she’s my grandmother.
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If I was male, then I could get work as a hired man. You didn’t need to do much more than look trustworthy and be willing to work. I know with my sewing skills, I could get work as a seamstress, but where? There’s also the canning factory (since closed), but that’s seasonal. Must find family with more children than they know what to do with.
The part that would make it easy, I think, is that things haven’t changed so much around here since the 1950s. The roads are better now and there’s no longer a party line for the phone system, but other than that, time rolls on as ever. There are a few things that would take some getting used to, but I think for the most part, they’d be things that are rare today, but not strange. Chivalry/patriarchy would be the biggest one, but it would also be hard to be a stranger in a familiar land. It will take . . . adjusting.
Though nothing on earth can get me to pluck out my eyebrows entirely and draw them back on.
On preview: Ha! Fretful Porpentine’s post made me think about my English BA. I somehow don’t think my emphasis on pop culture, fairy/folk tales, and sexuality in Herman Melville is going to get me very far. ("Why is this young woman – I don’t think I can say young lady – so obsessed with, with phalluses?") I could probably handle a high school English class, but beating Bruno Betelheim to the punch is very tempting indeed. Of course, the world probably isn’t ready in the 1950s for that, so I’d be laughed out of academia without really starting.
I think the difficulty in finding work would lie in adjusting to the attitudes prevalent back then. Remember, it was possible to advertise a job specifically for a man or a woman, and get away with it. Remember also that those were the days of job security for life. You started at the bottom, and worked your way up, over 40 years. Quitting your job to move laterally to another company was rare. Appearing out of nowhere and planning on starting with a company somewhere other than the mailroom (in an office) or starting as anything other than a line grunt (in a factory) would be damn near impossible.
So it would seem to me that no matter what any of us office-types were doing in 2007, we’d probably have a hard time finding work. Unless we were willing to be flexible, since I imagine that certain jobs wouldn’t be hard to find. A lot of these would be lower on the status scale than we might like, but would probably be easy to get with few or no questions asked, and little paperwork. Waitress, for example: “Ever waited tables before?” “Yes, at a place called Olive Garden, back in Denver.” “Denver, eh? Colorado girl? Okay, be here Monday at six a.m.” Similarly, such jobs as general laborer, cab driver, file clerk, warehouse worker, and so on might not be so hard to get.
Once the job hurdle is conquered, one would just have to go with the flow. Again, with adjusted attitudes: you don’t care about global warming or pollution or the environment; you typically want a huge American car, with a giant V-8, because the bigger and more powerful your car is, the more successful you are. Cadillac is the ultimate American car, though English sports cars are fine for young bachelors. Even if they are available, German and Japanese cars are out of the question, since “we beat those bastards in WWII, and my taxes went to the Marshall Plan and I’ll be damned if I’ll support their economy on my own.”
A 2007 person would have to learn to shut up a lot, I think. Kids play outside a lot without their mothers worrying about pedophiles. When the kids ride their bikes, they don’t wear helmets. Nobody drives kids to school; the children are expected to walk or bike. Everybody smokes, everywhere; the only place one is likely to encounter a non-smoking area is around a gas pump. Ability to “hold one’s liquor” is the sign of a successful businessman, and not a borderline alcoholic. Conformity would matter; you’d have to go with the flow, hold your tongue a lot, and try not to stand out in order to get along, I think.
Just some thoughts, anyway.
I know that getting a social security card back then was a matter of going to the office, filling out the form and getting one on the spot. Cite.
I learned how to type on a manuel typewriter, so I guess I could get a job doing that.
Savannah back in the 1950’s there was no help for an abused wife. Ann Landers herself admitted that when she started writting her column, she thought a wife should stick with her husband “come hell or high water” until she got letters describing what hell was like and how high the waters could rise. Ask anyone for help and they would respond “You have to go home and learn how to be a good wife to your husband.”
I would:
- Bet on the Colts in '58,
- Bet on the Eagles in '60
- Bet on the Browns in '64
- Bet on the Jets in '68
- Bet on the Mets in '69
- Bet on the Chiefs in '70.
After that, work shouldn’t be an issue. 
Oh, I forgot, I would also buy the first pressings of every Elvis, Beatles, and Rolling Stones record I could get my hands on, along with about 50 copies of Fantastic Four #1.
That sounds rather optimistic to me. What university was teaching Chinese in 1957? I think your odds would be better joining the U.S. government as a translater, but explaining your background to them would be even harder.
One might have to learn chivalry, which is the art of knowing when to help people in need and when not to. A man would be expected to help a woman or child in trouble - but if the source of the trouble was the woman’s husband or the child’s parent(s), he had to let whatever might happen, happen. The existing social order was much more important than the rights of any individual.
First I would need a job. I could go back to being an electrician or working in HVAC. I could probably pick up some construction work if pressed. A little tough as an out of shape 41 year old Programmer to go back to physical labor, but it won’t kill me and many of those jobs I could do paid well enough.
I would live cheaply and stake myself for some lucrative sports bets to improve my situation. Some point in 1961 especially there would be a great chance to not only bet the Yanks to win the WS, but Maris’ breaking the HR record and just a steady betting of the Yankees on every game. They won far more than they lost. In 1960 the Yanks losing the WS must have paid well. etc.
I wonder how I could capitalize on the music scene of the sixties, TV and books. There must be someway to make money knowing what will succeed.
It sounds like my biggest worry is that I won’t have any chance of making it back to my family. Without modern medicine, I probably won’t make it past 1977. Maybe I could leave some sort of trust fund to transfer to my wife and kids the day after I disappear and a letter explaining what happened. I guess I will have some time to figure this out.
Interesting, I would have the chance as a 50 year old to join the original crew of the Clearwater. I would seriously consider doing that. I think I would spend the intervening years learning a lot more about diesel engines.
Jim
Wasn’t betting on sports illegal in the 1950’s?
I was 12 in 1957. I’d find that kid and tell him a whole bunch of things about his life and future, hoping he’ll have the sense not to repeat my mistakes.
I remember enough of my pre-desktop-publishing skills to get a job as a commercial artist, then art director, then creative director of an ad agency.
Or:
Learn whatever skills I’d need to manage a band. Then move to Liverpool. Heck, I could even write their songs . . . as many as I could remember.
Maybe, but it has never been heavily enforced. Besides I would not be gambling, I would be relieving criminals of ill-gotten gains in a peaceful manner. As crimes go, this seems pretty tame.
Additionally, when did gambling become legal in Las Vegas. It was well before 1957. I think Bugsy opened his place shortly after WWII. Of course my knowledge on early Las Vegas is mainly via the Godfather. Bugsy was pretty much Moe Green in the movie.
Jim
That would suck pretty bad for me, as a woman over forty. Very few good career opportunities and very little chance of hooking a rich husband. The skills I use in my current job might still get me a good government job, though, and in that case my life would be pretty similar to how it is now, except that my workplace would be full of cigarette smoke.
I’d fly to the midwest and check in on my teenaged parents from time to time. That would be a hoot. Actually, fifty years ago would be right around the time they were hot and heavy, and that would be really illuminating to see. I could watch my sister’s birth!
1957 - firstly, I’d find the four year old me and give her some really good advice.
I’d survive in an office. I can still use a manual typewriter and I can remember shorthand, while rusty and slow, would pick up speed with use. I don’t think I’d last long in my current employment (as a nurse) because I’d be forever going outside my scope of practice and I wouldn’t be deferential enough to the doctors.
My biggest problem would probably be forgetting to stock up on groceries on Saturday morning.
This is a really interesting idea and I keep thinking about it.
The lack of money would be a serious and immediate problem. Plus, people would probably think I’m a mental case because of the clothes I’m wearing and the way my hair is not styled.
I think I’d take Savannah’s advice and head to a church for some food and clothing, then find myself a military recruitment office and see if they’ll let a woman claiming to be in her mid-thirties but with no paperwork enlist. Military service is a fine way to save up a nest egg for investing.
I’d like to head out west and see what California was like back then, before it was overrun by the vast hordes. Ideally I’d buy a decent place to live and watch it appreciate like gangbusters.
But it sure would be hard not to hang around and watch my parents start out in life, and to get to know my grandparents, one of whom I never met and the rest of whom I rarely saw. Also my aunts and uncles as young people…it would be really hard to tear myself away from that soap opera, except to live there I’d have to take some kind of job I don’t want, like waitressing or being a secretary.
For most of us, getting along would not be hard. The only really hard part is getting past the the first few days & then first few weeks. Screw that up & you’d be sleeping in railroad cars or dead or in a state mental institution or …
Being in an edge suburb or a moderately rural area during other than the dead of winter would help. Being black in rural Georgia would not.
Hmm… 1957?
The first thing I’d do, is something I’ve wanted to do for ages, go meet my grandfather, my father’s father, and pop him one in the nose. And tell him that as a fucking lawyer he’s an idiot not to have a will made up. Especially when he’s got adult onset diabetes, and has, IIRC, already lost both legs because of it by this time.
He’ll be awfully confused by the whole episode, I’m sure, but I’ll feel better for it. 
After that? Hmm… for work, I’d be rather fucked. Most of my marketable skills are such that the tools I’m used to haven’t been invented (“Okay, now where’s the chromatograph? Why are you handing me a slide?”) or are very different from what I’m used to.
I’d probably have to find some kind of office work - I can type, even if my skills are a bit rusty. I also think that I might be best served trying to write “future history” as fiction to sell to the pulps. AIUI it was much easier in those days to make a living writing short fiction than it is, now.
What I’d like to do would be to see if I could convince Rickover and the Navy to institute Sub Safe systems without having to lose the USS Thresher, first. But, like any other Cassandra, it would be hard to get anyone to listen to me. Somehow, I don’t think, “I’m from the future, you have to listen to me!” would get me anywhere.
I’d still be able to draw social security, wouldn’t I?
I’d be blacklisted as a communist the minute I opened my mouth!
But not before I told Buddy Holly to pack an extra set of long underwear if he ever went on a winter tour and NOT to go messing about in small planes.
mm
I’m 55 now, but if I shave off my beard I could probably pass for a bit younger, since that’s where all the gray is. Unfortunately, I don’t have much in the way skills that would be marketable in 1957, but I could probably manage to get myself a job somewhere. I like OtakuLoki’s idea of trying my hand at writing. I might have to refresh my memory a bit as to what SF has already been written, but I could probably do a fair job of coming up with “original” ideas.
Sports betting wouldn’t do me any good, but I’d keep my eye out for a few lucrative investments over the next twenty years. I’m not sure I’d live long enough to jump on the dotcom bandwagon, though.