The UGLY Side of the 1950s - Life in America

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#recollectionroad #nostalgia #1950s

[terrancewilhite]

I grew up in the 50's. The cold war was not a joke to us.

[allen_p]

A personal story about the Korean war. My father grew up very poor on a rural Texas farm. He left home after the 9th grade, because he didn't want to pick cotton by hand in the Texas sun anymore. He drove commercial trucks. He joined the U.S. Army during the Korean War and trained at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX.
His unit (forgive me I've never been in military if unit is wrong) was loading onto trucks to go to Air Force base to leave for Korea. Before leaving their Sargent got orders for a driver who could drive the large trucks as they had run out of ambulances for wounded from Korea. The Sargent yelled, Pape! Didn't you drive commercial trucks? Yes Sargent! Git down here!
My father went to drive the large trucks with wounded from the airport to the hospital. When finished he returned to find his unit had already taken off for Korea. He spent his time during the Korean War driving the wounded from the Air Force Base to the Hospitals.
I have often wondered if my two older brothers and I would be here if not for that event. One event in life can change everything.

[junbug]

If you knew you were going to be spanked for doing something you knew you weren’t supposed to you took pause and usually decided not to do it. Back then we feared our parents and teachers, not because they were mean but we didn’t want the consequences.

[fobxxl]

I remember getting a smack on my butt once or twice, but never a spanking. I was a pretty good little guy growing up, but it was different back then. My family was Italian and you showed RESPECT for your parents. I never spoke when not being spoken to when we had company. We didn't say, "Why do I have to do that" ? We obeyed and that included teachers as well. Only once in school, I think it was the 2nd, or 3rd grade at St Joseph's Catholic School was I smacked on my hand with a ruler for talking in class. Once I was talking after the SISTER said "NO TALKING" and she asked those that were talking to stand up. I stood up and WAS THE ONLY ONE ! I was asked to come to the front of the class. Of course I got the usual, " Oh now you're going to get it" ! Laughter from those who didn't stand up as I walked to the front of the class. The SISTER told me to open a drawer in her desk and take out what was in there. Well it was a box of SEE'S CANDY ! She told me to take two pieces of candy and then sit down. She turned to the class and stated, " That's what happens when you tell the truth" !

[ohyikes]

Corporal Punishment was mentioned; however, bullying in schools was also prominent and always overlooked by teachers and school administrators.

[jameswitt]

At 73 years of age....
Yup got mt rear thumped a few times..
But I deserved everyone of them and "finally" got through grey matter ... change your ways....

I hold NO ANGER for it molded my life in a good manner.

[jtmoore]

My dad grew up in the 50s and when me and my brother we kids, if we got out of line we got the spankings. The thing about that was, it stopped by the time we were in about 5th grade or maybe 4th is because when he and I would fight, my dad would yell from the front room and if we kept it up, all he had to do was put his recliner up and that sound of it folding up would make us stop fighting. Result of it is, we respected our parents and still do to this day. Kids these days are out of control. You know what ADHD was when I was a kid? It was called being a kid and some doc didnt dope us up on speed to make us calm down. Usually a spanking did that.

[Mari-tecc]

I love how the comment section is made by memories of real people ❤and not a bunch of info collected from the Internet.

[johnnyangel]

"A nation that forgets its past has no future"....Sir Winston Churchill

[MrOnyxRaven]

My grandmother was born in the mid 1920's. She told me in the mid 1990's during all the tobacco company lawsuits that she knew when she was a child (mid 1930's) that smoking was bad for you. She told me that people used to tell smokers "That is another nail in your coffin", and "Those are going to kill you". She never smoked and couldn't belive people in the 1950's, 60's, 70's, 80's, et al. would think it was harmless, when she knew in the 1930's it wasn't.

[MisterMikeTexas]

There is "best and worst" in every part of history. We had it better here than the Soviets and Chinese. Today, we're hanging by a thread, and I'm hoping we can turn things around at the midterms.

[ynp]

I love your channel....but respectfully disagree with the corporal punishment aspect that was presented. Even in the 1970's the principals in the schools I attended used "the board of education" to discipline unruly students. It was used very seldom but the very threat was enough in most occasions. Students...and young people in general were far more respectful then than now. Nary a whisper of anyone coming in to shoot up the school. I am sorry but Ritalin, quiet rooms and time out's are a poor excuse of an alternative. IMO

[OfficerLarryNMSE]

One of the biggest things that occurred in the 50's, was the "Respect" that most people had for each other, children respected their elders. We grew up trusting that we can go to school without worrying about some psychotic idiot's shooting everyone....

[candysmith]

My first grade teacher hated me. She would take me out in the hallway to paddle me for talking. No permission or notification to my parents, just whenever she wanted. I was raised that adults were the authority, so I never spoke of this to my parents until years later. They were jaw-dropped, because this lady singled me out, everyone was talking, in-between lessons sorta thing. I was 6 years old. Mid 70's Ohio public schools. I never liked teachers since.

[fredwood]

One thing I remember, growing up in West Virginia in the 1950s was that we kids had no rights at all, we were property and almost anybody could whip a child who they thought was acting up. Only parents could whip a kid, leaving scars, anybody else had to be careful not to break the skin. Teachers, school bus Drivers, store clerks, Preachers, Neighbors and family friends as well as perfect strangers were allowed to administer paddling or hand spanking, mostly to little boys, to any unruly child. Even Churches had places, usually the cloak room, where a fidgeting child could be spanked to "Calm them down". It wasn't until the late 60s that all this began to change. "If you get a paddling at school, you get a worse one at home" was an often used montra and some of the worst families had a policy that, "as long as you live under this roof, you will take your punishment", no mater how harsh and child who refused to be whipped would spend at least the night outside, sometimes for several days. Red Neck boys were expected to submit to their Father's belt until they were big enough to take it away from him, then they would leave home for good.
My Step Daughter had a boy in the 1990s, with severe ADHD and she put him on "Time out" for ten minutes. That's all it took! Just enough to break his train of thought, (which is what the whipping did), without breaking his spirit. Sometimes she had to do it two or three time in a row, but it usually worked. Such a simple thing, but a radical change from generations of abuse and she ended up with a good adult son who never hurt anybody. My Grand Kids tell me that they all respond to being told not to do something and then WHY they shouldn't do it. "Because I said so" was all the explanation I ever got. Respect was the missing element to those old punishments, respect for the humanity of the child.

[corrion]

Sure there was alot of shady stuff behind closed doors, commercial and industrial worries but society in a whole flourished, everyone had a job and could afford to live without taking on copious amounts of debt

[talkcommonsense]

All the children who grew up knowing that spanking was one of the alternatives for punishment, were more respectful and considerate adults... they realized that there are rules and the world does not revolve around them... and bad actions have undesirable consequences... we need more spanking in today's world...

[wantingoneangel]

I was not alive during the 1950s, but my Mom grew up during that time. She told me that she was not allowed to go swimming during August due to the scare of Polio. My Mom talked about Children being in "iron lungs" just to be able to breathe from this awful Polio disease. And my Mom talked about how she and her friends would, "duck and cover" during the 1950s in her Elementary School for fear of a nuclear bomb going off and how scary that was. I also know that smoking was shown in movies during the 1950s. Being that I was diagnosed with learning disabilities in Elementary School, the lead paint during that time is very scary and very upsetting to me, even though that was not the cause of my LD. And God Bless Rosa Parks for her bravery!!! Although my Mom and I did not grow up in the South, the Jim Crow laws were hurtful and untrue because we are all Children of God. And it is sad about the adoptions that were talked about in this video, but adoption should NOT have been seen as a thing to be ashamed of. Adoption is a gift to be able to love a Child who does not look like you and does not have your genes which is beautifully noble!!!! However, the baby should not be thrown out with the bath water when talking about the 1950s. The good things about the 1950s were the love of Family and the promotion of the love of the Father. The fact that Children were expected to have good behavior and that Fathers were not sperm donors, but most Men were expected to be responsible enough to financially provide for their Families as did my Late Grandfather who was a Supervisor at a Steele Plant and my Late Grandfather only had a High School diploma. Today a Person has to go to College and get into a lot of debt for the same job. So, the point of any time period is to throw out the bad and keep the good, but to remember that no time period is innocent and no time period is perfect, including growing up from the 1970s to the 1980s which is my Childhood!

[azmike]

"Swatting" for corporal punishment was no big deal. it didn't hurt. But the act of getting swatted mostly embarrassed one into a correction. It should have never been banned. God wouldn't have it any other way.

[JTM]

I grew up in the 1980's and 1990's and my parents would spank us when we'd go way out of line. Neither of them enjoyed it, and we didn't fear them or question their parental love, but we learned a lesson about actions and their consequences.