In this thread,I’m asking all of you to tell us about any memories you may have of famous people or events from *the 1950s or earlier. * Any memories will do,so long as the subject is fairly well-known.I also would like to hear from you if a relative of yours has an early memory.Thanks for reading.
I do remember Alaska becoming a state in 1958 (I was six). My mother told me, "Alaska is now a state,"and I said, “What was it before?”
Since the OP is asking about personal experiences, this is better suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I remember taking a train ride from Ypsilanti to Ann Arbor as my parents drove from one location to another. This was to give me the experience of riding one of the last passenger coal fired steam engines. I also rode the last of the trolleys in Detroit before the buses took over.
I got my first TV in the 50’s too, a Zenith. Transistors were fairly new. I made my first radio beyond the old crystal sets.
I learned to drive in the 50’s in old Dodges and Plymouths. For some reason I also saw several traffic deaths with people lying on the pavement. Being thrown from vehicles was common.
I remember seeing J. Fred Muggs on thevToday Show. I remember watching The Honeymooners on TV with my parents, and even today the theme song reminds me so much of them I have to catch my breath.
I also remember Alaska and Hawaii becoming states, and Kennedy running for president. My mother thought he was so good-looking. What we didn’t know about him then!!
I remember meeting and shaking hands with Duncan Renaldo when he visited my home town around 1950. Naturally, we didn’t call him Duncan Renaldo back then because he was known as the Cisco Kid. Probably two names most of you do not recognize.
I talked with a grandparent about the great depression several years ago. They (grandparents) were in their late 20’s with a family when it hit.
In large part, it was like listening to the Grapes of Wrath being told by those who were there.
They had a small farm in the dustbowl region, and were unable to survive on its output. They also had a old, beatup Ford Model-A. Like the characters in Steinbeck’s novel, they loaded up what they could carry, along with as much food as could be lashed to the back and running boards, and headed for California. They found day-work in fields, and sold off some of their excess vegetables to pay for gas for the trip. According to Grandpa, they slept mostly in, or alongside the car. Fortunately for them, they had little or no debt, and didn’t lose their farmland while they were gone (they were able to pay the taxes during their absence). It took roughly a week to get to CA, and they went northward to work in the grape orchards because it was less backbreaking than other crops (Gramps said you didn’t have to bend over as far to pick them).
The work there was seasonal (I think) so they came back home with their earnings during the off season to care for their house and land. In total, they made 3 journeys to California to work; Always in the same area (near Modesto, I think). I believe the last two trips were made by Grandpa alone (one of my uncles was born on the first journey, and it was easier to care for a baby back home, I guess). Grandpa left the car for grandma on the last trips, and found rides with other hopefuls, mainly since he could help pay for gas. He said on his third trip, the other man’s car was in such sorry shape that he wouldn’t buy him more than a couple of gallons of gas at each stop. He feared a breakdown with too much of his money being left in the gas tank.
There’s a lot more to the story, and I’ll try to get back to it, but I’ve got to leave for work.
Dereknocue67,you met Duncan Renaldo?That’s pretty impressive.Good story too.
Pullin,yours was also a great story.If you have the time,please do continue with it sometime.
Continuing the depression-era story…
I visited with my grandparents some about this, but a lot of the following is collated from my other relatives (and my folks). It’s not all firsthand.
Grandpa was not educated beyond high school, but was a pretty good self-taught mechanic. At some point during this period he took an acetylene torch and welding kit and turned the model A into a pickup truck. Unfortunately no pictures exist of this. I know there were 3 journeys total, but I’m unclear how many he took alone. Each was financed with the work-along-the-route and sell from the truck garden method. Grandma told me during the early part of the journey, they had to climb in and out the car windows, due to the running boards being piled high with vegetables and fruit. At one point in the trip, long after the food had been traded away, she got into an argument with Gramps and he got into such high dudgeon that he climbed in and out of the car most of the day, forgetting he could just open the door. She was so mad at him she decided not to tell him, letting him be a spectacle for the townsfolk wherever they stopped.
According to them, there were a few highway rest stops even back in the 30’s. They had stopped at one, eaten a quick lunch, and zoomed away to continue their trip. After several miles, Grandma discovered she’d left her purse on the picnic table. Grandpa griped and grumbled all the way back to the stop, lecturing her on the value of keeping up with one’s things. When they stopped to get the purse (which was still there) he said “Mabel, get my hat too, while you’re over there.” 
Either they didn’t trust banks then, or didn’t have easy money transfer, because grandma said they had to carry all the cash they’d earned back home in their pockets after each half-year trip to the west coast. She said robbery was one of their biggest worries, and they she sewed a lot of their money into various clothing items to ensure highwaymen couldn’t get all of it, should they be held up. Fortunately it never happened. On the trip he took alone, he said he distributed his money between various pockets and his shoes. He was a little worried about his traveling companions during the trip.
My grandpa occasionally made strange purchases, and one of these was a mechanical typewriter during this time. You have to remember, money was dear back then, and it seemed a waste to everyone else. After he died, we discovered he’d been using the typewriter to keep a lengthy journal of their years during that time. It’s pretty neat to read it. Not just the day to day data of crops, breakdowns, earnings etc. He put a lot of his worries and fears into it as well. No one knew about (even Grandma) until he died. He never told anyone.
I’ll add more as I think of it…
That post was even better than your last,I believe.I especially liked the part about the journal.That’s pretty amazing.If I may ask,who owns the journal now?Is it you?
pullin, fascinating story! Frankly I’ve given up trying to think of anything my relatives might have told me, and am tuning in to hear more about your grandparents.
Oh, Cisco.
Oh, Pancho.
I can still hear it!
So can I! I also remember that during his promotional visit, he handed out these small loaves of bread from his local sponsor, the Nolde’s Bread Co. It was about 1/5th the size of a normal loaf and I took it home and treasured it because after all, it had been touched by Cisco himself! It sat on my dresser for months and seemed to grow larger and larger inside its cellophane wrapper until my mother finally threw it out because she thought it was some sort of school science project designed to grow mold. I was crushed.
One day, it must have been in the early 40s, my father took me to a rodeo and afterwards we waited by the stage and said hello to Gene Autrey. I was shy and hid behind my father.
I well recall the 1944 since my elementary school was used as polling place. And the 1948 election when, to everyone’s astonishment, Truman won. And the election, I think it was 1949, when the Republican machine in Philadelphia was turfed out after 67 years. Oh, and I remember the day Roosevelt died and they got the mayor on radio who announced, “we wuz all very sorry to hear it.” In HS, I knew someone who was to become fairly well known: James DePriest, the head of the Oregon Symphony. Doubtless the most prominent member of my HS class.
You knew James DePreist in high school?I bet there are a lot of people out there who’d love to be able to say that.
My parents have the journal now. It’s nothing formal, just a bunch of typewritten sheets stapled together. When I read it, I was surprised at how many times he would browbeat himself for things he’d done. At one point, he was having buyers remorse for an auto purchase (“I never should’ve got that fancy interior… it was a waste of money.”). This particular entry was long after the depression-era stuff. He seemed to second-guess himself a lot, although no one knew this as he seemed pretty confident in his decisions/path/etc. I guess when you’re out on the plains in a small farmhouse, this is what passed for therapy. There’s a summary of each year in it as well. Sort of like a christmas letter to himself (if that makes any sense). Stuff like: “Well, 1953 now, and [son] has finally finished high school. I don’t know if the old International (harvester) will make it another year, but we need to take care of [daughter’s] school clothes. Thankfully the new roof held up when the hailstorm took out [crop]”. I’m working from memory, but it was that kind of stuff – sort of stream-of-consciousness recall.
I’m running out of memories of their depression stories. The only thing significant that comes to mind is their opinion of that time, from being there. They actually told me it wasn’t that bad. All the newsreels focused on the worst parts of city breadlines, etc. In their experience it was a big hassle, but not the end of the world. One of them told me that the hardship and financial problems didn’t carry the stigma they do now. IOW, we would be really embarrassed today if our family had to ride to CA in the back of a pickup, and sleep beside the road so we could find work in a field. They weren’t ashamed of this sort of stuff back then (at least that’s how they remember it). In the 30’s, other than a roof, a house wasn’t that much more luxurious than camping. They never encountered any of the hatred or labor oppression that was in Steinbeck’s novel. Their experience was that the folks in California were friendly and glad to have the help in the fields. They weren’t mistreated or ripped off by their employers.
I’ll try to find out more by talking to my folks this week. Dad remembers it a lot better than anyone. He actually remembers much of the US passing him (in reverse) while he sat in the back of the pickup with his legs dangling off the tailgate. He said as a kid, it wasn’t that uncomfortable… and was much preferred to spending the day working in a field.
I love your stories too, pullin! I have a few not-as-detailed recollections of what my grandfather told me of the Depression era.
He and my grandmother were married in the mid-1930s, the height of the Depression and he was only about 17 or 18. They lived in New York state near Jamestown. I believe he dropped out of high school, though I think my grandmother finished. They had one daughter. He worked at a couple of factories and eventually he got work with the CCC and was shipped “out west” to labor camps where he and the other men sprayed the landscape for weeds or bugs, I can’t remember which. The most interesting story he told of this time was the money he made from the other laborers. He said they frequently gambled their money away (or on other pursuits, like booze or probably women, if there were any around; they were out in the boonies). So my grandfather was there to loan them money at a healthy rate of interest. I wonder how much more he got above his wages doing this!
The most striking thing I remember about his stories was him saying that the wage of $1 was considered standard good money. My grandmother remembers budgeting $5 to $7 a week for groceries, though I’m not sure if the time period matches up with the $1-a-day wage since you wouldn’t have much left over for anything else.
I have some ration books that he saved from the war. Most of them are empty but a couple have unused coupons for, I think, gasoline and flour, things like that. Most of their stories were centered around the theme “you just did what you had to do” and like pullin says, there wasn’t any shame attached to any of this — times were hard.
I do know that probably because of this experience at such a young age — having to provide for a family with very little scope for good employment — really marked my grandfather for life. He worked like a fiend his entire life, taking double and triple shifts at the factory long after times were hard. He really seemed to think little mattered other than work. He owned property, for example, small office buildings/retail space, but instead of paying a janitorial staff he and my grandmother spent Sunday evenings cleaning the offices. (This was later, in the 1970s, and I remember going with them.)
Both very interesting posts,and thanks for sharing your memories.
My parents grew up prior to the Depression era, and it affected them for the rest of their lives. My mother had hopes of going to college after high school, and her yearbook blurb talks about her aspirations. She graduated in the class of 1929. End of her hopes. My mother said that coffee was rationed during WWII, so she would get up at the crack of dawn and leave for work two hours early, stopping at every coffee shop she knew of, as they limited people to one cup. The woman was a serious coffee addict her entire life.
My father left for Alaska in 1935 to look for work, as the jobs in Oregon dried up along with everywhere else. He worked at the Alaska-Juneau gold mine among other jobs, and we all ended up there, with me and my siblings all born in the Territory. I remember statehood vividly, as I was 12 years old at the time. I remember Sputnik’s launch, and our nervousness about it; also Krushchev’s shoe-banging speech at the UN in 1960.
I’m sure you don’t want to go back that far, but I have a deposition written by my great grandmother about her life with her husband in 1880s Dakota Territory. It’s a fairly lengthy document and not appropriate for this venue. I also have a letter written by her husband in about 1862 after his capture at 2nd Bull Run.
Deposition? That doesn’t sound good.