I think a case can be made that things were better before we opened our markets to cheap junk from China. When we made stuff here, it was usually sturdier and longer lasting-I still have my 1962 coffee percolator -it has outlasted a dozen chinese-made coffee makers. American living standards started to decline as soon as these “open market” deals were cut. Now we import junk, and have no manufacturing jobs.
Initially Japan. I recall my father repairing a piece of electronic equipment, referring to “cheap *@# Japanese *@#”.
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This is the way to look at the 50s, not in the eyes of those who remember only that decade, but the perception of those who had lived through the 30s and 40s. In comparison it was an era of good feeling, optimism, and relief. Almost everyone in this country was better off in the 50s than they were previously. This also created a type of social blindness in many, not realizing that the rising tide had not lifted all ships to the same degree and not seeing the folly of the mistakes being made. The great cultural clash of the 60s came about as a result of those who remembered only the 50s coming of age with a distinctly different world view than the older generation.
No pedant here. It just can’t be helped, in a thread like this, that one poster’s comment will awaken in another long dormant memories- sometimes even good ones 
Prior to the 60s, all the auto manufacturers changed their body style yearly, unlike today where a particular model typically runs 5 to 7 years. Each September the dealers would compete to have the best new model presentation. Searchlights at night, food during the day, prizes and presents etc. The models were kept under wrap until release day. Beginning in the mid 60s cars began to carried over from year to year, basically unchanged. The original Mustang carried over unchanged through 1966. Cars were much less then. A new car could be had for $2300 +/- a few hundred, depending on whether you wanted to add a radio, heater, power steering etc. Everything was an option.
September was an exciting time for car nuts. The main street dealers, Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Olds, Ford, Mercury, Dodge, Plymouth all competed for your attention during the previews. I still have some of the toy model cars that the dealers gave to the kids accompanying their parents. In retrospect, the only import cars I can remember were VW, Porsche and MB. No Asian cars to be found in my town, although they (Toyota) had been in the US by then for several years.
ETA. I thought the 1959 Pontiac was about the prettiest car ever designed. I still think they are beautiful to this day. Much prettier than a Nissan Ultima etc.
times were simpler then.
you didn’t need to lock your house all day long. you didn’t need to lock your bike. you returned soda bottles even if there wasn’t a deposit.
life also wasn’t as colorful.
The 50’s also had polio scares and McCarthyism.
My MacBook Pro Retina was made in China and it’s the best computer I’ve ever owned. The opening of China greatly improved our standard of living.
But the Free Market is the best, most efficient, fairest system there is! If our living standards are falling, we need to get off of our lazy butts and work harder! We don’t need any stinking government regulations!
The Porsche 911 was basically unchanged (just refined) for 30 years. The MGB was basically the same throughout its 18-year run.
I was born in 1954 in northeast Baltimore. Most mothers in my neighborhood were at home during the day. When I went to kindergarten in 1959, I was given a ride to school in the morning and walked home alone, 6/10 of a mile. For elementary school, I attended the Catholic school 3 blocks from my house and walked home every day to eat lunch with my mother. On Saturdays, I did chores early and then went out to play. I was allowed to be away from the house for hours at a time with an itinerary no more specific than what street I would be on. For a white working class family, it was a pretty idyllic time in a lot of ways.
On the other hand, my neighborhood was all white and mostly blue collar. The only black people I saw were shoeshine boys, garbage collectors (helpers, never driving the truck) and Arabbers. Racist comments among my neighbors were commonplace. My parents had us lock the car doors when we drove through black neighborhoods. The local amusement park set aside one day per summer when blacks were allowed in. The first time my parents took me to one of the downtown movie theaters, I was eager to sit in the balcony, because that looked like a cool place to sit, but the balcony was for blacks only.
I went to school with several kids who wore leg braces due to polio. We had regular civil defense drills at school to cover what we should do in the event of a nuclear attack.
As somebody born in '75, I’d like to thank all of you for sharing your stories. I also STRONGLY urge you to record them. My Uncle Max was born in 1903. He was filled with fascinating stories. I once asked him what the first movie he ever saw was. He said “I don’t remember. But it cost a nickel.”. I gave him a small tape recorder and showed him how to use it. But, tragically, he never did get around to recording any of his stories. When he died, we lost a whole library.
Ahem…you ignore the fact that trade with China is NOT a two-way street. You are getting cheaply made goods at rock bottom prices.
That jives exactly with what David Halberstam writes in The Fifties. The guy who started the Holiday Inn chain of motels liked to take the family on long trips in the car in the summer. He noted that motels were often dirty, that they charged extra for children, and that you’d have to get in your car and drive to find a place to eat.
It’s an interesting book. I’m only about halfway through, but so far, he’s written about the bomb, McCarthyism, Korea, the advent of discount stores, fast food (McDonald’s), Levittown (buy a house with no money down), new car models every year with an emphasis on style rather than efficiency and safety, the Kinsey report, and birth control.
One odd thing I remember is that we didn’t have outdoor/picnic “stuff”. Might be because we were poor, but still. If we had a family picnic, we’d move chairs and tables outside, and the kids would sit on blankets on the ground. No paper plates, cups, or coolers either, but we did have thermos bottles. Watermelon was kept cool in a big metal tub full of ice.
As to knowing your neighbors: absolutely, at least where I grew up. I knew who lived in every house for blocks around. People were in bowling leagues and went to each others’ houses to play cards or for dinner parties. There’s a good book about the fracture of this sort of socializing; it’s called “Bowling Alone”, if you’re interested.
Kids walked to school all by themselves, and parents didn’t worry about them being abducted. Our doors were never locked. There was a corner grocery store/liquor store owned by a guy named Lew, who was a butcher. His brother Jack owned another grocery some blocks away.
Shockingly, we played outside and rode bikes for entertainment, weather permitting. Obese children were rarities, and it was assumed that they had some sort of “gland problem”. There were two or three black children in my entire school (graduating class of 525). Most blacks lived on the east side of town and were easily outnumbered in my school by the Alaska Native kids.
My parents were products of the Great Depression and WWII. Like most of that era, they didn’t coddle their kids or over-protect them, as you see now. They had known hardship, and they tried to make sure you were equipped to deal with the world.
Up until about 1966, The only fast food joint in my town was an A&W out on the east side. Burger joints made everything fresh, from the burgers to the fries, and the drive-in was the norm. Once McDonald’s got a toehold, the mom and pop places were doomed. Nearly all of them disappeared quickly, with a couple of notable exceptions.
I’m not trying to make it sound ideal. There were a lot of the same problems then as now. But it was a good time to grow up, IMO, without all the pressures that kids face today from parents and peers.
It was a decade of amazement. The most spectacular things were happening, one after the other. When I was a kid, we all went next door to see the neighbor’s brand-new color TV. Hell, we all went down the street when one of the neighbors got a fancy gaslight that went on automatically when it got dark.
In the middle of the decade my mother had a stapedectomy to restore part of her hearing. At the time, it was so novel her case was written up in a medical journal. The first successful use of a heart-lung machine was in the 1950s. And as I’ve noted in other threads, the development of polio vaccine was considered a literal miracle.
Of course, there was the pesky fear that the Soviets and the U.S. would destroy the world, but other than that, things were optimistic.
Back then we got cheap junk from Japan.
Simpler things do last longer, but in general the quality of our goods today is far higher than back then - especially cars. Look at TVs - every drugstore had a tube tester so you could test and repair the tubes in your TV. TVs are harder to fix now, but they last a lot longer. And cars are far better than they were - quality, not just safety.
I remember one of our neighbors bought a Tv set and half the neighborhood kids would be standing on their porch watching through the window while they seemed to be oblivious to us just going about their business.
Most every neighborhood had one or two girls on the easy list but for the most part you had to go with a girl for quite a while before she would put out and guys who talked about it or bragged were not respected by their peers.True, and our money leaves the country to be invested in China. No body in the USA had a job making coffee pots or Apple pads or phones.
Your dad didn’t have a clue, did he? “Repairing” something? End it, don’t mend it!
We tend to forget that polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox and whooping cough were all a normal part of childhood before vaccines made that obsolete.
Isn’t that exactly what we are doing now?
I have to go back a few decades more, but my mother’s family was all schoolchildren or schoolteachers. While they didn’t have much money, they had the entire summers together with no work or school, so they went camping for 3 months at national and state parks. Mom used to say they visited every state and national park within a 1.5 month driving radius from home, as they had to get back in time for the school year.
No Coleman stoves, lanterns or coolers. They made much of their own camping equipment, including a large wooden box they bolted on to the back of the station wagon. When they parked, they opened the box and it became a cooking platform and dining table. When they closed it up, it covered the food and pots and pans in the shelves. And blocked the rear view something fierce.
Although this style of camping was gone by the time I was born, I can still remember that big box, as they removed it from the car and mounted it on our basement wall. It served as a tool chest, parts cabinet and sturdy workbench all my childhood.
I came in to recommend that book, too, which I thought gave a great feel for the decade. In addition to what AuntiePam listed, I remember bits on Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, advertising, birth control, race relations…
Also check out the '50s sections in William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream, which is out of print in book form, but can be downloaded as an audiobook on Audible. Fascinating listening.