the 1950s
what a terrible time! the Red Scare: communists everywhere, under your bicycle and your bed, behind the door and the rose bush, especially if the bush bore red roses, in your teapot, in your radio and your television if you had a television, in your tractor, under the hay wagon, inside service vans, everywhere, man! uptightness was so busy that women wore girdles and men went about looking Very, Very Serious. the President was allowed to smile, but only if his name was Eisenhower. men owned their women and children and that was A Good Thing. men had their wives committed. parents had their daughters committed. conformity was so strong that suburban men put on their grey flannel suits in unison on weekday mornings. every family had a car, but it was an American car. the first people to drive home Volkswagens were reported to the FBI. if you wanted people to think you were a grownup, smoking was mandatory. I smoked Pall Malls or Camels or Lucky Strikes. innovation was permitted, but inventers were listed by the FBI. segregation was rampant. lynchings were commonplace. and the USA was still somehow a better, more hopeful place to live than some parts of the world. and the USA somehow came up with Elvis Presley, with the Beats, with jazz musicians who fled to France where people could hear their music without going to jail. where minor chords were allowed. under thick clouds of oppression and suppression, hope bubbled and gurgled. it would erupt and explode in the sixties, but we didn't know that. we thought the clouds would last forever. I try to remember that when I read or hear what Trump's supporters want for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment