Q: If someone from the 1950's suddenly appeared today,

[Yorkie Mom]

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. Hey pal, are you putting me down cause I like looking at pictures of cats? WHY I OUGHTA!!! nt

[Journeyman]

2. One of the saddest commentaries on modern society (also very funny) . . .

[electric_blue68]

50. Considering how stressful life is for so many - looking at

adorable 🥰 kitties IS self-care! 😁

Don't discount all the people learning things on line!

I further my Art, and Craft making on line.
Love looking at cities, and the countrysides, of places I'll never be able to afford to visit!
Recipies!
Following NASA!
More contact with government (good and bad).

I rest my case. 👍

[DownriverDem]

85. Here's a good thing

Thanks to the internet, folks read more and that is a good thing.

[rsdsharp]

3. Oh I don't know. One of the most popular shows on television in the 50s

was professional wrestling. 🤼‍♀️

[wnylib]

21. And impossibly perfect families

in sit coms, where the mothers mopped floors wearing flouncy full skirt dresses and high heels and fathers had infinite wisdom and patience with children.

[csziggy]

28. Like this?

[wnylib]

33. Yes, but that was satire. Others,

like Leave it to Beaver, were serious about how women dressed and men interacted with children, even though they were comedy shows.

[csziggy]

35. Oh, I know - Mom hated those shows and seldom allowed them to be shown on our TV

In fact I almost never saw Leave it To Beaver until it went into syndication.

With four daughters, she raised us to be practical and not stylish. Sure some of us turned out with a good sense of style, but not me. My idea of dressing up is to wear my good jeans with a tee shirt that has a nice picture on it.

[yellowdogintexas]

65. my mom was the same: she hated Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best

and other similar shows. We never watched either show or pretty much any show depicting the woman all dressed up for church to do housework.

She also despised The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy (she hated Lucy because she was so scheming and manipulative)

[wnylib]

73. I hated the Honeymooners and Jackie Gleason.

He was so obnoxious.

[CTyankee]

75. He regularly threatened his wife with violence.

[wnylib]

78. That's why I hated him. Obnoxious bully.

[Upthevibe]

48. csziggy....

I LOVED that show:
Mary Hartman....Mary Hartman.....!

[csziggy]

59. I also loved Soap - and Benson when it was a spin off

I loved Benson's character most out of that show, I think.

[CTyankee]

72. And were white and often employed black women as their servants who were devoted to their white

children.

[wnylib]

74. Yes, they were always white families

in the 50s. But which shows showed Blacks as employees of the white families?

[CTyankee]

77. I thought there were several. I'm old and memory of those days is bad but I remember seeing

the shows. I think "Beaulah" was one of them.

[wnylib]

79. I never saw Beaulah. This is the first

I heard of it. There were movies that showed Black employees of white families, but I don't remember TV sitcoms from the 50s that did. In fact, those sitcoms were so white that you'd think there was noone in the country back then who wasn't white.

[Marcuse]

91. Eddie Anderson made a career of being Jack Benny's servant.

As a legacy of blackface minstrelsy, the pairing of Benny and Anderson was based on comedy routines of the White master and his slave Uncle Tom. But by modern standards, Benny's effeminate mannerisms and Rochester as man-servant, seems to be less about a boss-employee arrangement than a long -term relationship between a pair of closeted, middle-aged gay men. Not that anyone in the 1950s would have ever seen it that way.

He began his career in Radio and in 1937, Anderson made what was supposed to be a one-shot appearance on the The Jack Benny Program. The audience loved his droll humor and he became a regular member of the cast and the first black performer to acquire a regular part on radio. The show easily made the transition to early television and as "Rochester van Jones", known simply as "Rochester", Anderson constantly deflated Benny's pomposity with a high-pitched, incredulous, "What's that, boss?"

The high esteem in which the two actors held each other was evident upon Benny's death in 1974, in which a tearful Anderson, interviewed for television, spoke of Benny with admiration and respect.

By 1942, he was earning $100,000 a year and for a time was the highest-paid Black actor in Hollywood. Anderson invested his money wisely and became extremely wealthy.

[wnylib]

92. I remember Rochester and Jack Benny.

But I was talking about sitcoms, with a family setting and story line, not stand up comedy routines.

There's no question that, when Blacks WERE portrayed in films, it was usually not flattering.

The film, Casablanca, was made in the early 40s, but the relationship between Rick and the pianist, Sam, is a boss-employee one. If you've seen it, have you noticed that Ilse, Rick's former girlfriend, recognizes Sam at the piano when she enters the club, and to confirm it, she asks someone who the "boy" at the piano is?

There are many movies like that right up through the 50s, but the TV sitcoms of the 50s were lily white.

[Marcuse]

94. Intentionally so.

In his new book "Television in Black-and-White America: Race and National Identity" (University Press of Kansas; $29.95; 224 pages), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor Alan Nadel argues that the medium in the 1950s and '60s deepened racial divisions by offering an intentionally skewed version of reality.

It was, quite literally, a whitewash: "Television was the place where one found definitively normal families," Nadel writes, "and no black children were to be found in that excessively normal world."Nadel, 58, argues that the absence of blacks on television shaped Americans' view of their country and the rest of the world. The denial reached backward too: Would you know from your favorite TV western of yesteryear that up to a quarter of the cowboys were black?

As Nadel lays out in his book, the federal government's decision in the late 1930s to put nascent broadcast television on the VHF bandwidth, rather than the broader UHF, limited the number of frequencies available in a given market, thus constricting the variety of channels -- and choices.

Going with the UHF band, Nadel said, would have created more channels and "would have made diversity possible." Television was thus limited to the Big Four networks: CBS, NBC, ABC and Dumont, which disappeared after the 1954-55 season.

Another major change came in 1952, when a freeze on broadcast TV licenses was lifted; many of the new stations were located in the South, where it was perceived viewers might not be as accepting of minority faces on television. Nadel said that if Desi Arnaz of "I Love Lucy" had "not been a light-skinned Latin, [the show] was a non-starter."

Television did not become more diverse until the 1970s. Again, Nadel said, the reasons were economic. While TV in its infancy was a luxury item, by the 1970s the opposite was true. Had early television gone a different route and shown America a more diverse image of itself, the racial divide that still divides the nation might be narrower.

"There would have been more of a possibility that American people would have been more aware of one another, less scared of one another," Nadel said.[link:https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-12-28-0512270255-story.html|

[wnylib]

99. I remember in the early 1950s that VHS was

the only thing available on our TV. In our city, that meant NBC. There was sn ABC station, but reception of it was poor, with a lot of static and "snow" so we only watched NBC. Later, still in the 1950s, a CBS station was available on UHF but a TV antenna on the roof was necessary for reception. A few kids at school had it before we did.

There was a diversity, of sorts. Lots of Native Americans, called Indians then, on westerns, depicted as evil savages, out to kill the innocent, good white folks pouring into their lands. Except the Lone Ranger's sidekick, Tonto. It was only when I took some Spanish classes that I learned that, in Spanish, the word tonto means stupid, foolish. I don't know if it has any other meaning in any other language.

[11 Bravo]

89. Even the Cleavers had occasional problems.

"Ward, I think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night."

(Or perhaps I misinterpreted June's admonition to her hubby.

[wnylib]

93. Of course there were problems.

Without problems in a story, you don't have a plot.

But the behavior and clothing of the characters were not true to everyday life for most people. The problems were canned, and were always resolved by the end of the show, usually with references to what the children or parents had learned from the experience.

[Crunchy Frog]

95. I think that post was meant to be a joke. Try reading it again.

[ARPad95]

4. There are plenty of people around from the 1950s today. Is it supposed to be the 1850s?

[LakeArenal]

6. That's what I thought. Hmmm I remember some of the 50's

The sexist man’s world where women wore pearls to do housework.

I think they would be amazed at how spoiled we all are. Especially kids.

ie....Kids are on spring break. In Florida. No masks. Who is paying for that now and in 14 days?

[karynnj]

17. UHHMM I think only advertising showed women wearing pearls when doing housework

I was born in 1950 and know that my beautiful mother did not dress up to do housework.

[wnylib]

25. Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver,

Last edited Sun Mar 14, 2021, 08:48 PM - Edit history (1)

and the Ozzie and Harriet Show - Women wore dresses, pearls, and high heels when mopping floors, cooking, etc. Men usually wore suits, but occasionally just casual pants and dress shirts.

[karynnj]

63. On TV, but did anyone see that in their own homes?

I would bet that most women wearing pearls and heels had someone else to do the housework.

I do agree that people dressed up when they left home. Even a visit one town over to see my grandparents was done with all of us kids dressed up - the girls in dresses - and my mom in a dress or a pretty blouse and skirt and my dad in a suit.

[wnylib]

64. Of course it was just on TV

and not at home. That's why I was making fun of it.

But, it's also true as you say, that people dressed up more (just not when doing housework). I remember that, on a hot summer day, I was waiting in shorts for a date to pick me up for a movie in a downtown theater. My mother ordered me to put on a dress, or at least a skirt and blouse.

Family church attendance was more common then, too, and Chistmas and Easter meant a new outfit, followed by family picture taking in our "finery." In my teens, that meant a matched or color coordinated suit, heels, and purse, with a color coordinated coat, hat, and gloves. Gloves for the Easter spring suit, too, and the length of the gloves depended on the length of the suit sleeves.

We were not a well off family, but imitated the form because that's just how it was. We usually ate in the kitchen, but dinner for holidays was in the dining room, with a linen tablecloth and napkins, the "good set" of dishes and glasses, candles, etc. And nobody dared come to the table without being properly dressed for the occasion. My mother did the prep work in an old housedress and flat shoes, but changed before we sat down to eat.

I enjoy today's informality, but sometimes miss the way that special days were marked as special.

[northoftheborder]

86. I grew up in the fifties, and remember all of it! Those shows with women in dresses doing housework

were realistic! My mother wore dresses her whole life; she disliked slacks, although she had some. I have one photo of her in jeans - on a cookout picnic! She must have worn those one time!

[hedda_foil]

68. Um....Where the Boys Are!

Spring abreak in full bloom by 1960

[LakeArenal]

81. That is what started the craze and that is a fantasy

[mobeau69]

8. Think poster meant they died in the 50s and came back.

Time machine stuff.

[housecat]

14. Hey I'm from the 1950s and I looked at pictures of cats back then

[locks]

44. I was in college and

got married in 1951 and I'm still around.

[panader0]

57. Here's to you locks! I drink to your health. (born in '50)

[Ilsa]

5. If you are looking at Dojacat at the Grammys,

it's a different story.

Link to tweet

[Ilsa]

7. "I use it to surf porn." nt

[localroger]

9. The Ghost of Christmas Future comes to Alan Turing

"If you publish this paper Computable Numbers you will be known forever for your work leading to the creation of these devices, but this is what they will be ultimately used for..." Does Alan still publish the paper?

[whistler162]

24. If Hedy Lamarr knew in the 1940's

what we would do with her idea she would have forgotten it before writing it down.

[EarlG]

10. I was reading an article on a gaming site a while back

when I realized that the paragraph I was reading would have been completely indecipherable to anyone from ten years ago, let alone from the 1950s (and I realize that it will also be completely indecipherable to a lot of folks who read this post, but at least I understand what it means).

Here's the paragraph in question:

KomodoHype first got to be Pogchamp for a day last month as part of the intermittently disastrous Pogchamp-a-day promotion that brought us to this point, which Twitch decided to run after the original face of the popular emote, Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez encouraged further "civil unrest" following the insurrection at the Capitol Building. KomodoHype had two (of four) legs up on the competition: 1) It is a lizard, rather than a human, and 2) history.

What I love so much about this paragraph is not just the completely nonsensical use of language, but the way it off-handedly mentions "the insurrection at the Capitol Building" in the middle of it.

Imagine showing that to anyone -- even a gamer -- from ten years ago, and telling them that this is a paragraph from a mainstream gaming site from ten years in the future. It's completely baffling!

By the way, the article this paragraph comes from is titled, "Twitch Viewers Elect Meme Lizard As New Permanent Pogchamp"

[Towlie]

12. It's indecipherable to me right now!

 
←

[Irish_Dem]

34. Half the time, I cannot understand what the heck my daughter is talking about.

I have to ask her for a translation, especially when it come to technology or pop culture.

[Ferrets are Cool]

36. +1

[Towlie]

11. The technology is amazing! The rest? Not so much.

 
←

I use mine to Play Spider Solitaire.

[misanthrope]

97. The rest is pretty much the same

Humans now are what we've long been. We have better tools but most of us are simply used to them. We don't truly understand them.

The average person can use a light switch but could they build one from scratch or even explain the principles behind it? Not likely.

[lpbk2713]

13. A prince in Nigeria wants to make me rich.

[Donkees]

15. 'The World Lost Two-Thirds Of Its Wildlife In 50 Years. We Are to Blame'

''The world is entering a sixth mass extinction''



https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911500907/the-world-lost-two-thirds-of-its-wildlife-in-50-years-we-are-to-blame

[Harker]

16. I'd trade mine for some cool clothes. n/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. There would be a lot that would need explaining.

The kinds of things that show up on TV and in movies would be shocking and/or incomprehensible. Things like the relatively casual acceptance of the entire LGBTQ spectrum. Heck, the very large TV screens most people have anymore, plus that they are almost all flat, would be mind-boggling.

The ubiquitousness of fast food and chain restaurants. People wearing pajamas in public.

Other than Queen Elizabeth still being on the throne, not a single political figure from the 1950s is still around. Oh, and if this visitor from the 1950s is a Republican, they would be horrified at the current state of the Republican Party. If a Democrat, somewhat less so about the Democratic Party.

This is actually the kind of thing I think about a lot. I wish I were a better writer, because I'd love to write a time-travel story about someone from now going back to, say 1975 or maybe even 1985 and then spending the rest of the story going nuts because of no cell phones, no internet.

[Irish_Dem]

38. My grandparents were born during the horse and buggy era.

They lived to see automobiles and airplanes.

Yes for those living in the 1950's, sexuality, technology, clothing, fast food would all be amazing.
Women's rights, civil rights would all be new to them.

I was thinking about men who used to wear a suit and tie to go to a ball game.
And we all dressed up to get on an airplane.

My daughter and I like to talk about what life will be like when she is old and has grandchildren.
All the things she thinks are so new and modern now will then seem ancient. Gee grandma, people weren't going to Mars when you were young? God you must be so old grandma.

Ha, a few years ago I was waiting to get my hair done and a young boy was waiting for his mother to finish up with her hair cut. He started watching me play a game on my Iphone. We got to talking and I told him we didn't have these kind of phones when I was his age. He told me that one thing always confused him about the old days, why did people hang their phones on the wall and had cords so you could not walk around with them. I tried to explain things but it just did not make sense to him.

[locks]

52. Not really

I was in college and got married in 1951. Many women I knew were working hard for civil and women's rights, working out of the home and as they moved into the 60s and 70s spent more time teaching their children to be political and work for education and peace.

[Irish_Dem]

54. I think you were moving in different circles than my family.

[whistler162]

61. One of my great-grandfathers

was born before the auto and lived to see man land on the moon.

[Irish_Dem]

62. My grandfather did the same.

[yellowdogintexas]

67. as did my grandmother. She was born in 1902 and died in 2004

just a few days shy of her 102nd birthday. So much happened in her lifetime.

cars, airplane, her brothers went to WW1 and my dad to WW2.

Space travel, moon landing.

When she was born, women could not vote.

Running water in the home, electricity and gas or electric heat were only for the well off; fireplaces for heat and wood stoves for cookingwere normal; water came from the cistern or was carried in buckets from a well and if you had enough money you had a hand pump on the kitchen sink. My grandparents, great grandmother and a couple of aunts heated with fire places or coal burning stoves - even after other methods of heat became easily available, most folks had at least one room with a working fireplace for the really cold part of the year.

[nuxvomica]

19. The internet is a bastion of both corruption and innocence

What's remarkable as that the two are so cleanly separated, and exaggerated. What's more a depiction of innocence than a kitten at play, or of corruption than Qanon discussions? I think the extremism would be overwhelming to someone from the 1950s, when extremists were hidden or ignored.

[yellowdogintexas]

70. rapid spread of information in general.

24 hour news broadcasts

[JI7]

20. Same Sex Marriage , Black President , Woman Speaker

On the technological side they probably wouldn't be too surprised other than seeing we still don't have flying cars.

But they might be surprised by the social changes .

And maybe end of the cold war. Rap music . The way people dress . Especially how casual it is . Birth control and the changes that brought about . End of legal segregation. What most people in most large cities look like and how they are Americans and not foreigners visiting.

[Irish_Dem]

41. Right we thought there would be flying cars by now.

I would not have guessed that an authoritarian, anti-democratic wave would hit this country.
I guess I was hoping for a more Star Trek like future.

[homegirl]

22. Dick Tracy's

Radio Watch seemed an impossible achievement.
Because of my mother's poor vision we didn't get a TV until the late 1950's when 24" TV became available.
My brother in law had a mobile phone that was as big as a shoe box!
I moved to Europe, every time I came home for a visit I brought pantyhose for my mother and sister. Not available in the USA.

[electric_blue68]

29. Oh, yeah! I remember that now. Who'd have thunk?!

[Joinfortmill]

23. ROFL

[Mr.Bill]

26. Why did all the cars get so small

and how do they go so fast with such small engines?

[locks]

43. So that they would go in the garage

and you could park at the grocery

[Mr.Bill]

46. Actually they got small

so they would be lighter and be more aerodynamic to get better gas mileage, which was mandated and could be built with less raw materials. Huge change in materials, also, such as aluminum engines instead of cast iron. And yes, the parking was an added benefit. Even though they made parking spaces smaller, they can now park more cars in the same area.

[lame54]

27. You might want to get your hand off her ass

[monkeyman1]

30. back in the day , they broke your arm,s for less !

[wnylib]

31. Other things they might notice

No more USSR, but a Russia that's an even greater threat to national security and a Republican party that is complicit with that.

Telecommunications that let you see people as you talk with them.

Conversations online by anyone with anyone, anywhere in the world, including celebrities and public office holders.

Streaming movies and music on small electronic devices, but with a decline in the quality of musical sound from what vinyl records had.

Women holding credit cards in their own names.

Women as mayors, governors, Senators and House members, and a racially mixed woman as VP with a white second gentleman.

The amount of free speech and casual use of "forbidden words."

Self-driving cars no longer science fiction.

Legal abortions.

A former, two term Black president.

Profit-driven privatization of the military, prisons, and other public services.

Congressional members carrying guns into the Capitol.

The White House fenced in and the Capitol building fenced off and protected by National Guard troops.

Voice-driven home lighting, music, etc.

Girls wearing slacks and jeans to school (when it's open).

Everything powered by computers, from phones to banks, hospital records, and atomic power and the danger of being hacked.

[FakeNoose]

37. I like your list better

[Irish_Dem]

42. Right, the GOP selling us out to the Russians would be a big shock to those living in 1950.

Child centered parenting would be a surprise. I remember being told children are to be seen and not heard.
Of course that never stopped me from speaking out.

[electric_blue68]

47. The Russia stuff WOULD be a total shock!

[Irish_Dem]

49. An openly corrupt and criminal president, who encourage insurrection.

Who refused to abide by a legal election.

That would have shocked the people of 1950.

[electric_blue68]

51. Of course! That, too. 😥😠

[electric_blue68]

45. Good list!

[Deacon Blue]

84. Vinyl LPs?

Still around, resurgent even. Been collecting since the early 80s, focus on the pre-digital corruption of recorded sound.

[First Speaker]

32. Why is everybody 30 pounds heavier than in our day...?

[Irish_Dem]

55. Right, people were smaller back then.

[tavernier]

39. I would tell him to look up Farouk Bulsara

and tell him to wear condoms every time because Freddie Mercury should not die young. ❤️❤️❤️

[Kablooie]

40. The hardest thing to explain would be how they are suddenly in the year 2021.

[jmowreader]

53. Not at all

In the 1950s they had two presidents: a Democrat who forged an international military alliance, and a Republican who kept the top income tax rate at 92 percent to punish war profiteers.

The most difficult thing to explain to them about life today is how an adulterer became the standardbearer of the Republican Party.

[BarbD]

56. Born in 1937, I was a teenager in the 1950's.

We had one heavy, black Bell telephone in our house. My mother was always yelling at me to "Get off the phone".

In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine having my very own phone.

[dragonlady]

58. Was your phone on a party line?

Maybe that's why your mother was like that.

[hunter]

69. Our phone was a party line. That was in the 'sixties.

I don't know how many homes shared the line but if you picked up the phone intending to make a call and heard someone talking you'd hang the phone right back up again.

As children we simply weren't allowed to use the phone without permission from our parents, even as teenagers. Maybe especially as teenagers. The phone was on the wall in the kitchen. In our big family there was never any privacy.

At my great grandma's house all the neighboring ranches for miles around shared a single phone line. They used the old wooden phones with cranks. When you turned the crank the bells on every phone on the line would ring. You identified who the call was intended for by the pattern of rings, but anyone could pick up. To make longer distance calls you called the operator who had her own ring pattern and lived in a small town thirty miles down the line.

[yellowdogintexas]

71. we still had an operator in our little town who would connect you

like Ernestine on Laugh In with all those cords and stuff. She knew EVERYTHING first. She knew my mother was pregnant with my sister before my father did because of the call from the doctor's office.

I think I was maybe 5 when we got telephone lines and no longer had an operator; we were in the country and had party lines up until the 60s.

[dragonlady]

76. In those days a phone number in a small town was 4 digits, or less

Now we read that a local call will require the area code plus the 7-digit number. That will go into effect in October, according to the Milwaukee newspaper.

[BarbD]

87. No, but my grandmother had a party line and we loved listening in.

Although, when caught, we were properly chastised.

[colsohlibgal]

60. The Changes Have Been Amazing

On my 16th Birthday, my Sister had turned 13 the day before....we both got our own phones but of course it was all on the same family line.

I am barely old enough to remember Party Lines.

I moved to where I now live about 20 years ago, there was still a Blockbuster in the Shopping Center near me, renting Video Tapes. I had a flip phone but my main phone was a landline.

Who knows what 2041 will be like, hope I am still here to experience it.....I think.

[Dagstead Bumwood]

66. I wasn't around in the 1950s

or even born until the following decade, but if I had to venture a guess on what would most astonish someone from that time, I'd have to say it would be people's attitudes about two things: gambling and pornography.

In the past 60+ years, they've gone from being "dirty" activities that are looked down upon to becoming downright mainstream. My family regarded gambling as a sin, as did many, yet casinos are popping up like pharmacies, and online gambling is exploding. And porn? Gens Y and Z are all to happy to photograph themselves nude and engaged in all manner activities, and then rush to share it with the rest of the world.

I believe the acceptance and participation in those two activities would be most shocking. Hell, I find it hard to believe at times.

[BobTheSubgenius]

80. And there it is!

One of my favourite Interwebs quotes of all time.

But, lest we snicker too convincingly, we should remember that one of the very best parts of Sundays around here is SEC' LOLCats.

[hunter]

82. I'm thinking my grandparents made a lot of the modern world happen. They'd love it.

None of them lived into the 21st century.

Wanting nothing to do with the dairy business, one of my grandmas and her sister ran wild in 1920's Hollywood. She had friends who were homosexuals, Jewish, Black, Asian... My siblings and I met some of them when we were children. She married a handsome Army Air Corp mechanic who'd joined the Army to get the hell out of Wyoming. It wasn't his dream to be a rancher, miner, or shopkeeper. After World War II he was an engineer working in the aerospace industry. A lot of his work was secret Cold War stuff he didn't talk about, but he was immensely proud of work he did for the Apollo Project.

My other grandma was one of the few women who continued working after World War II. She was a welder. She must have been good at it, and damned tough. My other grandpa was a skinny-dipping "bohemian" in the language of the day. He was a welder too. During World War II he got beat up by the cops for protesting the internment of his Japanese neighbors. These grandparents were Pacifists but had largely rejected the religions that brought them there.

My parents are artists, very much at home in the modern world. They use cell phones, they've been enthusiastic guests at gay marriages, and their friends are cosmopolitan. They were always artists with day jobs but became full time artists when they retired. In the 'fifties my dad was a nearsighted Radar O'Reilly medical clerk at risk of serving in the Korean Conflict but he was never sent overseas.

[yellowdogintexas]

83. I think they would be aghast at the number of mixed marriages

and friendships among the various races. Integrated schools in many areas, TV programs featuring black families as the main characters and not "the help' or the bad guy

Walking into an examining room at a new doctor's office and your new doctor is black, South Asian, Vietnamese or

Especially where I grew up. Back then if a black man even got within 6 feet of a white woman he risked repercussions if anyone knew about it.

[BarbD]

88. A "mixed marriage" according to my mother was someone of German heritage marrying an Irishman.

But, for most people it meant someone marrying outside of their religion. Heaven forbid a Catholic married a Protestant -- which is exactly what I did.

[TrogL]

90. I'm from the 1950's

I got totally bamboozled when my garage door emailed me demanding a new battery and knew which one. I have better luck opening my garage door with my phone than the remote or push button.

[pfitz59]

96. I was born in the '50's

My mom had an agitator washer with a ringer on it. Wet clothes were hung to dry. The phone was a party line. TV black and white, and we only had 3 channels. There were no zip codes. Records were mono. Sputnik was the only satellite in space. My mom had to sign her checks with my dad's name. My Dad drove a Nash, and my mom a Rambler. School dress codes required below-the-knee dresses or skirts and blouses for girls. Slacks and collared shirts for boys. No jeans or t-shirts. All the boys expected to get drafted at 18, and girls expected to marry young and be a housewife. The Russkis and Commie China were enemies. We did 'duck and cover' drills because nuclear war was coming. The Civil Defense siren was tested weekly. Seatbelts were non-existent. Cigarettes filter-less. We all liked Ike. Every race, religion and ethnic group had a derogatory nick-name, which was spoken as easily, and often. Yep, different times...

[misanthrope]

98. As these lads put it