I have been incredibly busy and this will continue for at least the next month. In addition to work, I am taking another fire department class (pretty soon, if I wanted to which I don't, I could become a paid firefighter). I am enjoying the class even though it is taking 8-10 a week out of my limited time. Besides work, I am also taking a class in memoir writing and our first assignment is to write an essay (800 word limit) on the year we were born. I have to cut this down, but this is my first draft (it's at 1100 words). What do you think? My baby picture arrived in blogger upside down, don't know what's up with that but is seemed to go with the theme so I left it that way.
I arrived at the Moore County Hospital, just outside of
Pinehurst, on a Wednesday morning in mid-January 1957. The highways through the
Sandhills of North Carolina were all paved by then, but many of the county
roads were still dirt. Longleaf pines surrounded
the golf courses around Pinehurst and the rest of the county were dotted with
small farms raising bright-leaf tobacco that was still mostly cured in barns
heated by wood. It was a simpler
time. The average family income had
doubled since World War II and was now was a little over six thousand dollars a
year. It was lower than that in the
South, but on paper Moore County appeared prosperous thanks to its numbers
being inflated by rich Yankee golfers. Six thousand could go a long ways as the
average house cost $12,000, although furnishing it with a pair of Rembrandt
portraits was still out of reach for the most. A pair of his portraits would sell for an even half a million later in the year. For the non-golfers in the Sandhills, such as
my Highland Scot relatives, tobacco was king (and considered safe) and selling
for 59 cents a pound. There were nearly
a half million acres of the crop being raised in North Carolina, producing over
1700 pounds an acre. You can do the
math.
The year began with a meeting of African-American pastors who
formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We’d hear more about them in the next
decade, but integration was moving into the forefront and before the year was
out, we’d have the incident in Little Rock and the Senate under the
leadership of Lyndon Johnson would pass the first (but mostly benign) civil
rights legislation since the Reconstruction. We’d be hearing more about civil rights
and Johnston in the years ahead.
Two days after my arrival, three B-52s made the first non-stop
around-the-world flights and General Curtis LeMay bragged that we could drop a
hydrogen bomb anywhere in the world. The
one place we did drop one, accidentally, was New Mexico. Thankfully, it didn't detonate which is why
no one knew about it. The military were
exploding bombs in Nevada but said everything was safe and no one knew
differently except for the sheepherders whose flocks began to lose their wool
and die off. There were other nuclear
accidents in ’57 in the US and UK, but only a few knew about them. What you don't know won't hurt you, right? And we all knew our government would never do anything
to harm us.
Although there were no major wars going on, the world was tense. There was the Suez Crisis and the threat of a
Soviet nuclear attack loomed. Our
government, working with the Canadians, established the DEW line in the arctic
in order to give us six hours warning before the first Soviet bomb could be dropped
on an American city (Canadian cities
would have a little less time to prepare).
By the time the work was completed, the margin was cut to three hours as
Soviet jets had doubled their speed. In a
few months it all became extraneous as the Soviets launched the first
intercontinental ballistic missile.
Later in the same year, they'd launch Sputnik and we'd spend the next
decade in a space race. Amidst this, some yo-yo created the first plastic pink
flamingo. The end was near as prophesied
by Nevil Shute in his post-nuclear war novel, published in 1957, On the Beach. I'd read it in high school.
To save us from calamity, we placed our faith in Ike, the
President, who many thought I resembled as I too had a bald head. Ike wasn’t
Herod and didn’t waste any time worrying about a newborn impostor as he perfected his golf swing while supposedly preparing himself for a
second term as the leader of the free world.
Jack Kerouac published On
the Road in 1957, and people were heading out on the road as a new line of
fancy cars with high fins and excessive chrome were revealed. The ’57 Chevy would become an icon of the
era as Ike announced the building of interstates to connect the cities of our
nation. Off the radar was an unknown
Japanese company, Toyota, with a ship on the sea loaded with their first vehicles for
the US market. People were flying more
and taking the train less. New York City
abandoned its trolley cars in 1957, and shortly afterwards the Brooklyn Dodgers
(originally named the Trolley Dodgers) announced they were moving to Los
Angeles. The last of Las Angeles
trolleys were taken out of service six years later I started the first grade. Now
people think the Dodgers must either be named from their ability at dodging
wild pitches or maybe an obscure reference to a Charles Dickens character. In other sporting news, the
University of North Carolina beat Kansas in the NCAA basketball finals. These teams have remained at the top
throughout my life. The Milwaukee Braves
led by a young Hank Aaron beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. We’d hear more from Aaron and the Yankees, but Milwaukee faded in the next decade when the Braves high-tailed it to Atlanta. The
Detroit Lions, a team whose demise parallels its city, won their last NFL championship.
Ayn Rand published Atlas
Shrugged in 1957. Nearly six decades
later, “Who is John Galt?” bumper stickers are occasionally spotted
on American highways. In the theaters,
the Ten Commandments was the top box office success. For a country that seems so religious, the
last commandment about not coveting appears overlooked. Rand launched a frontal assault on this commandment with her godless "look out for me" philosophy. Other commandments were also being broken as as the movie “Peyton
Place,” which debuted in theaters, reminded us.
Radios in 1957 were playing the music of Elvis, Buddy Holly,
Debbie Reynolds, the Everly Brothers, Pat Boone and Sam Cooke. In Philadelphia, love-stuck
teenagers danced for the first time on American Bandstand as more and more
homes acquired televisions. And in England, two chaps named Lennon and McCarthy
met and would go on change music as we know it.
Humphrey Bogart died just two days before my arrival, but it was still a
good year for Hollywood. Not only was
Moses selling, but so were dogs as children everywhere cried watching Old Yeller. Another movie released was the Bridge
over the River Kwai which inspired whistlers with its catchy theme music (an
old British army tune). That tune would
later be used in a commercial for a household cleanser and then inspired one of
the ditties of my childhood:
Comet - it
makes your teeth turn green!;
Comet - it
tastes like gasoline!;
Comet - it
makes you vomit;
So buy
some Comet, and vomit, today!
