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The 1950s Lifestyle====================================================================== ====================================================================== ====================================================================== | ||
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 Activities & Trends Hobbies, attitudes, the stuff of everyday life |  Products & Technology Consumer products, cars, electronics and technology | |||
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 family valuesPearls and oven mitts? ...it must be a 1950s housewife!  The baby boom was in full swing....more people were getting married and having children than ever before. In the ideal family of the 1950s, dad brought home the paycheck, mom did the cooking and cleaning, and the kids were respectful and well-behaved. | ----- |  "Do you think Bob will like these new frozen dinners?"  On the other hand, maybe life in the 1950s wasn't quite as good as Ozzie & Harriet would lead you to believe... Traditional Family Values | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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For a long time, the average age at which young people
first got married hovered around 24 for men
and 21 for women. By the 1950s this figure had fallen to 22 for men and 20 for women. There were several reasons for this phenomenon. During the war years, couples who might normally have waited to get married were faced with a climate of uncertainty. They began to get married sooner, often on an impulse. After all, who knew what the future would bring? The optimism of the postwar years created a desire to "get back to normal," and what could be more normal than marrying and settling down? In addition, couples often postponed marriage and children during poor economic times, but now that the economy was good, they felt they were ready. Together, these factors sent couples down the aisle in increasing numbers, and at younger ages. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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|  trading stamps It was the duty of every "smart wife" to stretch the household budget, and trading stamps certainly helped. When you made a purchase at your local supermarket or gas station, you received whatever brand of stamps they gave out: King Korn, Top Value, Plaid and S&H Green Stamps were the most popular. You licked the back and stuck them in your saver's book, and when you had enough you could redeem them for cool stuff. S&H Green Stamps | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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teenagers In the past, there were no teenagers....if you weren't a child, you were an adult. Although educators began to view the teen years as a separate stage in life during the 1900s, it was during the 1950s that the concept really caught on. For the first time in history, young people between the ages of 12 and 20 had their own culture, and this trend was very disturbing to their parents. Growing Up A 1950s Teen  Teenagers, telephones and Coca-Cola....the perfect combination!  ---- |  In the old days, social events like dating and dancing had only one purpose...to find a spouse. For teenagers in the 1950s, dating didn't mean courting, and dancing was done for fun. teen trends *going steady *cruising *sock-hops *getting pinned *wearing your boyfriend's class ring *that crazy rock & roll music *hanging out at the malt shop *having a crush on the latest teen idol Want to win that special guy? Not sure how to act on a date? ...let one of these publications help! Boy Dates Girl: Dating Tips From 1955 Are You In The Know? Boomer's Teen Magazine Advice & Tips  Fifteen years old, with time on his hands and trouble on his mind! Young men who wore leather jackets, listened to rock & roll music and idolized actors like James Dean were portrayed as hoodlums by the media. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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faith Like many things in the 1950s, religion was still very traditional. We attended services every Sunday, married someone of the same faith in a big church wedding, and baptized or christened our babies. Priests and pastors were always men, and nuns were dressed in full habit. Church buildings were traditional clapboard structures with gleaming white steeples. Many states still had blue laws, which made it illegal for stores and other establishments to conduct business on Sundays. These laws were arbitrary and difficult to enforce, and officials were beginning to look the other way if a Sunday drive included a stop at the shopping center. Holy Hill The Little Brown Church In The Vale Blue Laws | 
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books, magazines, newspapers & funnies *Norman Rockwell illustrated the cover of the Saturday Evening Post from 1916 to the 1960s *The first issue of Playboy hit the newsstands in 1953, featuring nude photos of Marilyn Monroe 1950s Bestsellers Norman Rockwell Museum Of Vermont Norman Rockwell Gallery Playboy Logo, Facts & Collectibles | magazines Life Photoplay Reader's Digest Collier's Saturday Evening Post Playboy (1953) TV Guide (1953) Ideals comic books & funnies Peanuts (1950) Alley Oop Priscilla's Pop Bugs Bunny Dick Tracy Buck Rogers Freckles & His Friends Captain Easy books Profiles In Courage Guinness Book Of World Records (1955) On The Road Catcher In The Rye | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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the wild, wild west Cowboy life was definitely in style!  cowboy fashions square dancing rodeos dude ranches country & western music westerns on TV ======================================== ======================================== all the ice cream you can eat! It was believed that tonsils were nothing more than useless body parts that caused trouble and made you sick. In the 1950s having them removed was practically a rite of passage for kids.  This 1958 book followed the adventures of a boy who has his tonsils out. It was one of my favorites as a kid...I had it completely memorized even before I could read! Some Thought-Provoking Tonsil Quotes Tonsils: In Or Out? ======================================== ========================================  college life The number of Americans who graduated from college increased dramatically in the 1950s, from 14 percent of the population in 1950 to 22 percent in 1960. War veterans were taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, and the technical nature of many modern careers required more advanced learning than in the past. Popular fields of study for men included engineering and agricultural sciences, while women studied teaching, nursing, secretarial skills and home economics. The policy of in loco parentis gave colleges the authority to act "in place of the parents" when supervising student life. Skirts and dresses were required for women, dorm visits from members of the opposite sex were prohibited, and any young lady who went out for the evening had to sign out and be back by curfew. Women had to have written permission from their parents to take weekend trips off-campus, and any female student who got married was required to drop out. In Loco Parentis The 1950s were the golden years of fraternities and sororities on campus. Approximately 33 percent of undergraduates participated in Greek life, which included theme parties, formals, teas, exchange dinners, charity work and Greek Sing festivals. Hazing and binge-drinking were decades away...the focus here was still on comradeship and character-building. |
 Visit my In The News page to learn about duck-and-cover drills and Cold War paranoia!  most popular baby names of 1955
======================================== ========================================  at school In the 1950s the one-room schoolhouse became a thing of the past. Most communities were combining their rural and town schools into consolidated school districts, and were building large, modern schools in the suburbs. The small country schools were closed, and buses provided transportation for the country kids.  Half of the children in public school purchased their lunch from the National School Lunch Program, which began in 1946. Along with reading, writing, arithmetic, penmanship, citizenship, fire drills, duck-and-cover drills and fingernail inspections, this was a typical school day in the 1950s. Sample Dick & Jane Pages Dick & Jane Books & Readers Ginn & Company Readers  ----
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popular Christmas gifts in the 1950s (some typical prices, too!) *Howdy Doody toys & collectibles *Jackie Robinson doll *17-inch black & white TV ($229.95) *Red Ryder #960 Noisemaker BB Gun *slide projector ($43.95) *electric train sets *Buck Rogers toys *Donald Duck xylophone ($2.65) *Davy Crockett guns & coonskin caps *pipe & lighter set ($1.94) *pogo sticks *Silly Putty *hula-hoops *Betsy Wetsy doll *quilted bathrobe ($8.95)
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======================================== | ======================================== the central exchange office Each telephone subscriber was connected to the nearest central exchange office, which was named after the town or street where it was located. Your individual subscriber number could range from one to five digits. "Bedford 247, please" In a manual exchange, all local calls were connected by the operator. You signaled her by picking up the receiver and clicking the switchhook. Your phone didn't have a dial, because phone numbers were given to the operator verbally. When you made a call, you gave her the central office name, the subscriber number and any party line extensions. party lines If you couldn't afford your own phone, you shared a party line with your neighbors. Up to 12 parties shared a single subscriber number, which was followed by a party letter (J, R, M or W), a ring code (one long, two short, etc) or a combination of both. 75 percent of all phone lines in 1950 were party lines.  dial serviceIn an automatic exchange, subscribers could dial local numbers themselves. This was also known as dial service, and making the change to an automatic system was known as dial conversion. The manual switchboard was removed, party line subscribers were given their own individual numbers and everyone was given a phone with a dial. exchange names After dial conversion, automatic exchanges kept their central office names. For dialing purposes, the names were reduced to the first two letters, which were sometimes followed by a number. Callers dialed these lettered exchanges before dialing the subscriber numbers. They became known as exchange names. On the dial, each number was shared by three letters. Even though the exchange names were different, the actual numbers being dialed could be the same as another exchange. If the exchanges were close to each other, one of them adopted a new name. Unlike the original central office names, the new exchange names usually had nothing to do with their location. In my county, the towns of Woodstock, Cary and Crystal Lake chose the exchange names FEderal 8, MErcury 9 and GLencourt 9. When you made a call within your exchange, dialing the complete exchange name usually wasn't necessary. Out-of-town callers needed to use the full exchange name. typical phone numbers manual exchange: -------Bedford 247 -------phone 32 automatic exchange: -------KEnwood 237 -------HUdson 3-2700 -------DA3-1000 -------PEnnsylvania 6-5000 -------MU-1485 within an automatic exchange: -------8-2345 -------33-5678 -------29-238 -------S-4537 party line: -------Smallville 1601-R-2 -------Darien 10 F 12 -------Hebron 142-J -------Farmtown 234-3 -------Oakton 38-J1  telephonesother operator-assisted calls Phone numbers with Zenith or Enterprise as the exchange name were toll-free numbers. An operator connected you and then filled out a ticket reversing the charges. The operator also helped you make collect calls, ship-to-shore calls, station-to-station calls, person-to-person calls and calls to mobile phones, which were first introduced in 1946. long distance Before direct distance dialing came to your area, all out-of-town calls required operator assistance. A few nearby towns could be connected by your regular operator, but all other locations required calling the long distance operator. You gave her the city and state, the exchange or central office name and the subscriber number. You waited on the line while the connection was made, unless it was going to take a long time. In that case, the operator would call you back when your call was ready. 
direct distance dialing
(DDD)With DDD, subscribers could dial their own long-distance calls without operator assistance. The system was first used in Englewood, New Jersey in 1951. Installation in all parts of the country was completed in 1962. Because DDD required that all phone numbers have seven digits, any numbers still using old formats were changed to the standard seven-digit format that we use today. Area codes were also established under this plan. all-number calling All-number calling was also known as digit dialing, and was first used in Wichita Falls, Texas in 1958. With this system, the lettered exchange names were translated into three-digit prefixes, which gave everyone a seven-digit number. Many towns made the conversion to digit dialing shortly after the arrival of dial service, and only used their two-letter exchange names for a brief period. Some towns made both changes simultaneously and never used an exchange name at all. dial tone The dial tone was an electronic tone adopted by automatic exchanges in the 1950s to indicate that a line was free and ready to use. Basically, it replaced the familiar "number, please?" that you heard when making a call in a manual exchange. 
Lettered Prefixes The Telephone EXchange Name Project
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======================================== | ======================================== the Dutch connection There were quite a few references to Holland in the 1940s and 1950s.... for instance, we had...  ....the Dutch Cupboard restaurant....  ....the Dutch Pantry restaurant....  ....the Dutch Maid Motel....  ....Dutch doors........and most dairy-related products featured a Dutch girl....  ....this lovely lady appeared on the packaging for a milkman's paper hat....  ....and this little girl was on a Dairy Queen coloring book.
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