The Fifties

 

The photo is of mom in the 50s and that’s me looking every bit the little psychopath that I was. The rest of the words here are all mom’s…

This was the decade I became a responsible adult; partly by choice, partly because I had married a man who was adult the day he was born and partly because my parents made me. After a lavish wedding and a first class honeymoon Paul and I went home to pick up our wedding gifts. As we were leaving my parents said “You are now the responsibility of your husband. Have a good life.”

Then they put my sister through college, gave her a three month trip to Europe and when she came home and set up squatter’s rights in the family room, Daddy handed her $300 and said “Go to Seattle and start your adult life.” Then they proceeded to build their dream house.

Paul and I moved into a one room apartment with cast off furniture from our parents; a double bed , two dressers, a comfortable chair and a day bed and a closet full of sterling silver wedding gifts, service for twelve in Lenox china, Kusak crystal and Grande Baroque sterling. Our dining table was a large cardboard box with a table cloth, two old kitchen chairs and a couple of cases of canned peaches for seats for when we had company. We had a new pale green Chevrolet coupe which Paul took to work at the sawmill. He came home each night smelling good but covered in sawdust. He made just enough money to cover his union dues, our rent, food and gas. I had no car, no money to shop and nothing to do but sit in the apartment, listen to the radio and feel sorry for myself. Mother would write me occasionally but how I wished she would include just $2 in the envelope. She didn’t. I suspected she enjoyed my misery knowing she had done the right thing.

I opened my Joy of Cooking and began to teach myself how to cook. One night I served Paul one of my favorite dinners; liver, bacon and onions. He took one look, got up and left for two hours. He had gone to a bar for beer and a hamburger. I sat home and cried. The honeymoon was over. One morning I was fixing him bacon and eggs before he went to work and accidentally poured the hot grease over my hand. He rushed me to the ER but all the skin came off my hand. Once you do something like that you never have to do it again. The Vice President of the lumber company and his wife, who were close friends of Paul’s parents, invited themselves over for dinner. I baked a potato, fried some pork chops, opened a can of green beans and made a cake. I put my most ornate bridge table cover on the box and got out my best wedding gifts. I think they were amused.

We were married in 1950 and since I had nothing else to do, by 1954 we had three sons under the age of three. The three handsomest, funniest, smartest and best behaved sons in the history of the world. Doesn’t everybody? By that time Paul had figured out a way to make particle board plants and his career took off. I had also learned to cook, clean and, being a Fifty’s kind of Woman, stayed home. We bought a second car, and I began my serious career in civic volunteerism. With a useless degree in General Art I had no employable skills. But the only jobs a woman could aspire to were nursing, teaching, secretarial and store clerk. A woman’s place was in the home unless it was necessary to earn a living. In spite of women having built the war machinery and negroes [then] and Nisei Japanese soldiers having distinguished themselves in the war, racism and sexism were the norm. The word sexism did not exist nor did it occur to women to question their place.

In spite of the Korean War and the H bomb, the Fifties were actually a peaceful time. Our generation had saved the world, received an education, got married, raised families, built houses, created jobs, turned America into the Super Power of the World, made a good life for our children, educated them and bought TV sets and lots of toys. We thought we were doing the right thing. We were proud of our accomplishments. No country in the world had ever had it so good. Who could imagine that a decade later our children would rebel against everything we stood for, and instead of being grateful for what we had provided, they said we couldn’t be trusted and that we had destroyed the planet among other things? They totally upset the applecart and were even partly right. We had gotten some things right and some things wrong. And so did they.

-Jean Clarice Walsh