THE ROCKIN 50's Part 1

When the 50's decade opened I was a 11 year old kid riding a bike to school and listening to standards on the radio.  As the decade closed, I was married to my sweetheart, had a new baby, had served 3 years in the Army, and Rock and Roll was all over the radio.  Wow, a decade is a long time.

A lot of my 50's memories are about cars.  The cars all looked different from each other.  You could tell a Chevy from a Ford at a glance and foreign cars were rare.  There were a very few VW Bugs, Triumph TR 5's, and Fiats around and a MG or two.  The new cars all came out in early fall every year and you would see the car carriers on the highways with the new cars all covered with tarps so nobody could see them until the big roll-out date.  We once peeped under a tarp covering a new car at a filling station and the driver screamed at us like we were spying on state secrets.

  Cars with power steering were also rare and they had a big steering wheel to make turning easier.   Most cars had bench seats as bucket seats were rare but your sweetie could snuggle right up next to you on the bench seat and you could drive with your arm around her. She would have to handle the gear shifting or you would have to take your arm down at every stoplight.  A fully equipped car had a knob added to the steering wheel to make one-handed steering easier.  This knob was called a "Spinner" or sometimes a "Suicide knob".

While we are talking about cars we should mention "fender skirts".  Fender skirts covered the rear wheel opening and were painted to match the car and were removed with some spring arms that gripped the inside of the opening.  They were also a target for thieves.



White wall tires were more expensive and if you couldn't afford white walls you could buy "Portawalls".  They were a white rubber ring that you mounted to the tire by letting air out of the tube and pull the white ring around the tire and pump it back up.  (That was before tubeless tires were used.)  One small problem was that at highway speeds they would not stay tight to the tire and would sometimes flap.  When your tires wore out you could remove the portawalls and reuse them on your new tires.

Parallel parking was much more common then and every well-equipped car had a set of "Curb Feelers".  They mounted under the fender well and were made of spring wire that would scrape on the curb with a loud enough noise to tell when you were close enough to the curb.  I will have to admit that they were a help.

While we are talking about the 50's happenings nothing would be complete with talking about LIVE TV.  It was great fun.  If somebody said something that's what went out on the air with no delay to cut it out.  Dennis James was on a few ads at the same time that ranged from coffee to smoking.  On one of his cigarette commercials he took a long drag and settled back in his chair, smiled, and said "Man, that's good coffee."

Howdy Doody was an afternoon kids show that had Buffalo Bob and his puppet Howdy.  At the end of one program he told the kiddies goodbye for the day and thought that the camera was off....., no it wasn't.  He frowned and said "That should hold the little bastards for another day."

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
Thomas Sowell 

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