How about women as primary breadwinners in families? Stay at home dads? Moms working to support husbands pursuing graduate degrees?
If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain
Lady Gaga.
I’ll tell you what just shocked me…that in the 50s, you could own a house outright for less than two years’ wages.
So perhaps 50s Traveller would be shocked by the hyperinflation of house prices, and the fact that most young couples will never be able to buy their own home. I am 27, and the only homeowners I know are in my parents’ generation or older. Mortgages these days last for 30 or 40 years and are incredibly expensive.
Maybe they would also be surprised by our nomadic lives: my peers move from rental to rental frequently, moving around the country or maybe even abroad, and are depressed by the idea of being stuck in one place for the rest of their lives. I think my grandparents’ generation were much more interested in making a comfortable home for the family that they could grow old in.
Where do you live? My youngest is 28 and both he and his wife dropped out of college and they just moved into their 2nd home after selling their first at a profit.
It’s called a “starter house”. You buy a cheap little cape cod (mortgage rates are only like 4% right now) build up equity and sell it, move up to a bigger place and so on and so on.
WTH?
1950’s my butt. My old man died in the 1990’s and if he came back today I think he’d be stunned by gay marriage, and cellphones in everyones pocket. I really do think someone from the 1950’s would be completely overwhelmed by the social and technological changes.
Mortgage rates these days, in the USA, are lower than they have been for decades. Home prices have fallen 50% or more in the last 7 years. Hard to see where you get your information.
Young couples, just starting in life, aren’t likely to buy a home right away, but rent for a while, save a little, then as their income rises, consider buying a house. That’s a typical scenario.
Some do. But many that do buy way too much than they can afford down the road instead of a cheaper starter house. Then the minute their financial state hits a speed bump they’re in big trouble.
“That’s not a notebook, it’s a notebook.”
Sometimes I’ll be watching an old black-and-white movie and I’ll see what I initially take to be a notebook computer, so to speak, but it turns out to be the original kind with sheets of paper that you write things down in. It goes without saying that I know it isn’t a computer, but when a character picks it up I’m half expecting them hold it horizontally the way we do with computers, rather than vertically like you do with a writing pad.
I don’t know guys. I’m still thinking SSM is going to the most difficult. All that other stuff, as weird as it might seem, can’t be anywhere as incomprehensible as SSM. I’m not even sure someone from the 1970s would be able to grok it at first. It would be like explaining to us that Pedophilia was legal, and guys were marrying their 6 year old nephews.
The gays.
It was predicted and illustrated in the 1972 documentary Future Shock, narrated by Orson Welles, so '70s kids who saw this film at school were partially ready for it:
The flip side of that – in the 50’s, people on the street talking to themselves would likely be institutionalized. Now there’s a drug for everything and it’s difficult to get someone committed (and rightly so, in most cases).
For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of that 50’s tranquilizer, the housewife’s best friend.
I would have doubted the likelihood of a black President, but I would also have been surprised at the open lack of respect for political figures. Comedy skits with people impersonating the President of the United States? Vaughn Meader wasn’t too far off, but still . . .
I would have been shocked at the demise of labor unions and good-paying factory jobs, and “made in Japan” as anything but a joke.
The US owes money to China? China???
Much of the technology wouldn’t surprise me. We saw radios go from big wooden pieces of furniture to transistors the size of a deck of cards. We saw advances in cameras, telephones (crank to rotary to push button), TV (black & white to color, floor models to portables), calculators (adding machines that weighed 20 pounds to pocket size).
One thing you wouldn’t have to explain is the dollar menu at most fast food places is what food use to cost in the late 50’s.
Are you referring to Miltown?
Yes! Thank you. 
I think the next popular tranquilizer was Valium, or maybe Darvon, but Darvon was more for pain, IIRC.
That’s another big change – OTC medicines and drugstores. Drugstores used to be almost like general stores – magazines, cosmetics, a soda fountain, gift shop – with a small prescription service in the back. OTC you could get cough syrup, Pepto, aspirin, but not much more than that. Now the stores are all drugs and vitamins and Depends.
Um, no. These guys had lived through World War II. Violence like that would be totally understandable. The fact that no nukes have been used since Hiroshima and Yokohama would probably amaze them.
Hot sexy upper class courtesans who are celebrities are one of the oldest phenomena in Western culture. The only modern difference is that their activities are televised rather than simply gossiped about.
I mean, everyone KNEW what Marilyn Monroe did to achieve star status in Hollywood. She just never made a sex tape.
Sure. Then explain what pink slime is to them.
And the front end was how they made their money.
A while back, I met a retired woman pharmacist who got her degree in the late 1950s, and she told about her first job out of school. She said the owner paid himself more than he paid her, but she didn’t mind because in addition to him being the owner, he did things she didn’t do. The example she gave me was this: The back end of the store was the pharmacy, and the front end was his wife’s business; she sold pet care supplies, and as she put it, “he would come in at 3am to unload bird cages off the truck.”
Darvon was indeed for pain, and it was pulled off the market worldwide a couple years ago. I’m not sure why either.
I recently read the new biography of Charles Manson - the one whose cover is bright yellow and features a photo of a smiling teenage boy. When the LAPD searched the Tate/Polanski residence, they found a sex tape that the couple had made. :eek: Plus ca change…
What about everyday use of swear words? Damn & Hell use to be nasty, now Fuck & Shit are used in casual conversation.
And the converse side, words that were fine in the 1950’s that are totally taboo today. Not only the “n-word,” but just let the 1950’s traveller call a full grown female a “girl,” or a “colored guy” a “boy” and see the reaction.