By Jon Stalnaker,
Been There, Done That
I was born in 1951. Take a look at my yellow Studebaker, it is 41 days older than me and was a futuristic-looking car for its day. Life was different back then and I am so glad I got to experience it.
When I was born, World War II had been over less than five years. They call me a baby boomer because there were so many of us born after the brave men that survived the war and got to come home to their wives and girlfriends. There was little birth control, abortions only happened in back alleys, and these men and women did plenty of making up for lost time and the anguish they suffered missing one another during wartime. Most of the families I grew up with had lots of kids. I was the fifth of five and had friends with even more siblings than me. Big families were the norm back then.
Automobiles were getting more sophisticated and when Eisenhower was president, our country started building the highway system we take for granted these days. Even television was in its infancy.
I was too young to remember sitting around a radio for entertainment but old enough to remember getting our first television set. My dad was frugal and refused to buy one of those new-fangled televisions. He was always off hunting or working and my mom was left at home taking care of five children ranging in ages spanning ten years. A TV was only a dream for my mom even though she knew we could afford it. I don’t remember how old I was, but I was pretty young. We got in the car and drove across town to buy our first television set.
I remember the store and picking out the TV but I was unaware of the clandestine nature of this shopping spree. My dad was gone for a few weeks on a hunting trip and wasn’t there to stop her. She figured if he took it back at least she would be able to use it for a while. He was not too excited to see it when he returned from the hunt, and was a bit miffed at my mother’s bold disobedience but oh well, there it was. It didn’t take him long before he was sitting in his chair, enjoying watching Western Movies and TV Shows. Slick move, mom…
Another frugal example was when he refused to buy a refrigerator. We had an ice box and it worked just fine. I can remember getting excited when the ice man would arrive and bring that huge block of ice inside the house with those giant tongs. Dad only agreed to buy a refrigerator when the ice company stopped delivering ice. I heard my mom fuss that we were the last customers in our town with an ice box. She may have been exaggerating a bit, but it could have been true. I never saw the ice truck again.
All those kids in the neighborhood made it easy to make friends. I remember the Scott family down the street had kids the same age as all my siblings. Fred was my age and he had two younger brothers. We stayed out playing until the street lights came on and it was time to go home.
The only television I remember watching was Saturday morning cartoons and the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night. As I got older, sitting in front of the TV became more commonplace, but you need to know that back then there were only three channels and it signed off at night. It was a big deal to stay up late enough to watch the close-out film. The film was known as High Flight and was based on a poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. I don’t remember the whole thing, but I googled it and will share most of it. It goes a little something like this:
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence … and while with silent lifting mind, I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face of God.”
