4h Classics: A Look Bach at the 1950s Michael Baxter Mr. Mike Baxter was born on June 28, 1947. He grew up in Montreal, Wisconsin. He was young during the Jifties, so his jobs included mowing lawns and picking night crawlers. Did you support a political candidate in the election of 1952? In 1952, I was too young to support a presidential candidate. In 1956, I remember Dwight Eisenhower ran and my father was a Republican so he supported Mr. Eisenhower. His name at the time was General. So, from what I understand, he didn’t like Truman, but that’s what I found out later. I think Eisenhower was a good president, Was your mom a Democrat or a Republican? My mother used to cancel my dad’s vote. She was a Democrat. My dad was always Republican. He used to vote one Democrat on the ticket, but it might be something like "Dogcatcher." Looking back, he thinks that Truman wasn’t a bad president, but that’s the best that he’d ever say about any Democrat, What did you think of John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon when they debated in 1960? Who did you support and why? 1 supported John F. Kennedy. I was only thirteen when this election went on, but I remember Kennedy was the more charismatic of the two. Nixon was pretty much a "stuffed shirt.", Did the race for nuclear weapons cause you to think about building a bomb shelter? What did your community do for civil defense? We didn’t think about building a bomb shelter, but the community did have specific locations that we could go to in case there was a war. We were a mining community, so a lot of people were thinking we would go down into the first level of the mine. Where was this? Montreal, Wisconsin. I don’t know if the shelters were ever official. [know people talked about that we would be safe because we could go in the ground. How did you feel about the Cold War against the Soviet Union? It seemed like you were always on the edge of going to war when I was a kid. It was kind of scary. I remember seeing Khrushchev on television, pounding his shoe at the United Nations, and talking about how he was going to bury us. I think that might have been under Kennedy. Khrushchev was kind of a crazy man. It was scary to think that you had this person that had the capability of nuclear weapons, and he was kind of unstable. ane she (22005 DC. Hres Ar Schools PliesClassics: A Look Bach at the 1950s Did you have any experience with the Korean War? Inever even heard about the Korean War. I don’t know if, they didn’t teach it, or what, but we never heard about it, Weren’t you in Vietnam? No, I was in during the Vietnam War, but I think part of the stuff about the Vietnam War was started during the time of the Korean War. I can’t remember the history on that either. What opinion did you have regarding General Douglas MacArthur? Do you think he should have been fired? Tremember reading about General MacArthur and how he was in office. The only thing I thought of was, and I don’t know if it was told to me or what, is just that you had a political government. People are elected, and the President wer the military, and if the general did not follow the orders, then he should be fired. Do you remember the U2 spy plane incident in May of 1960? What was it about? Iremember the U2 spy plane. Let’s see, I would have been thirteen at the time, and people in the United States didn’t know we were flying over Russia and taking pictures. When the Russians shot down the spy plane it was one of the first times I realized that the government doesn’t tell us stuff. If they don't want us to know, they just keep it quiet. Well, what was it about? Well, they shot down a spy plane. Gary Powers was traded for another spy, I remember that. Can you remember the Cuban Revolution in 1959? How did you react? When Castro came to power, my brother was in the National Guard, and his unit was activated because they thought, some people thought at least, that we would be invading Cuba. And his unit was stationed in the state of Washington; he was in the 32nd division. At the time, or later, there was the Batista regime. It was pretty much supported by a lot of businesses in the United States. So maybe there was a reason that Castro came into power as quickly as he did, because they had no use for Batista. It seemed like you were always on the edge of Did you live in Suburbia? Describe it. going to war when I was I was in a town with about three thousand people. ‘. . ‘Tt was a mining town. All the houses looked alike, a kid...| remember seeing and everything was owned by the mine, Khrushchev on television | Everybody worked for the mine. Tt was a neat pounding his shoe at the little town. Everybody knew everybody. I don’t * ‘ think there's three thousand people there now. 4 United Nations, and When the mines closed, they sold the town. ‘They } talking about how he sold each house, a thousand dollars for each i was going to bury us. bedroom. So, a two-bedroom house went for two thousand dollars, a three-bedroom house went for (0205 1. eet Are shanks ablations Bane eal46 Classics: A Look Bach at the 1950s three thousand dollars, and a four-bedroom house went for four thousand dollars. My house was a six- bedroom house. We needed a big house because my dad was an engineer, and we had five kids. It depended on how good your job was what size house you lived in. So you had certain blocks that the engineers lived in, and other blocks that the workers lived in. And many of my friends were sons of the miners, as opposed to the engineers. And my dad was not supposed to fraternize with the workers, so his friends all had to be engineers. | was in a town with about three thousand Historians say people of the 1950s were conformists, Do you agree? Yeah, I guess they probably were. The Beatniks living in the fifties in the Dobie Gilles Show. They had @ man named Mainard G. Krebs, and he was the only Beatnik that I knew of, He had a beard, a goatee, and he talked funny. He would say dumb things like, "Work!" Just weird things from the Dobie Gilles Show. That was the beginning of the people. It was a mining town. All the houses looked alike, and everything was owned by the mine. Everybody worked for the mine. hippie movement, I believe. Do you remember a MeDonald’s as a child? Describe your experience. They did not have a McDonald’s anywhere when I was a child. They had an A&W Root Beer stand. It wasn't really considered fast food, like now. And we had ice cream parlors, and you'd go in and get a malt, or whatever, and sundaes. We'd sit and eat ice cream and listen to the jukebox. Our parents probably thought it was decadent. How were women treated in the 1950s? Were they equal to men? Tremember with women, wearing pants was not acceptable. If it was really cold, they would wear skirts, and then wear pants under them, Then, if they went inside, they would just get in a big circle, like at school for instance, and all the girls would take off their pants, and all they'd have left was a skirt on. At the end of the day, they'd put their wool pants back on so they could walk home in the snow, or whatever. Were they equal to ‘men? Idon’t think so. The town I grew up in, men worked and women did not. Women stayed at home. My mother was a teacher, but she didn’t teach from the time she was married. A man could eam enough to raise his family. He didn’t need two incomes. Where did your mom work before she got married? Was it in Montreal? No, she worked in a town near Rock, Michigan, and my dad and my mother met because my mother’s father lived next door to my father’s grandfather. My mother’s father was the doctor of the neighbor, which was my dad’s family, so the relatives knew each other. Does that make sense to you? It’s a genealogy kind of thing, ‘The tree didn’t branch. Just kidding on that.Classics: A Look Bach at the 1950s AT Was it socially acceptable for her, for a person who was young to work, or even in your town? Single women worked. If you were high enough in the mine, it was acceptable for you to have, like a housekeeper. My mother had housekeepers, My mother had five children that lived, and I think three or four that did not, And I don’t know if that was normal then, or if she just had a hard time carrying children. In order to make it easier on her, whenever she got pregnant, there would always be a housekeeper. You mean like miscarriages, or death after birth? She had one miscarriage and two for sure that were born alive and died shortly after. And I think there might have been two miscarriages. Because I have two siblings that are buried in Ironwood, Michigan, and I didn’t know what they did with them, and I don’t think, they didn't do anything with miscarriages. i So they must have been born, in order to have been buried. The medical conditions were not as good as they are now obviously. Describe your job in the fifties. Tell us a story that depicts life in the fifties? I didn’t have any jobs in the fifties, but my father did. Well my dad worked in the fifties, so he would i get up in the morning and go ina mine. He would go to a place they called a dry. A dry was where all ' the miners would go and they would have lockers and things and they'd have their separate clothes. Then they would change into their mining clothes and they would go down in the mine, and they would work an eight hour day or ten hour day, and then they would come back up into the dry, and they would shower and then change clothes, and then go home. When a person went into the mine, each person in the mine } had a number. They would take their number from one hook on one side, and they would put it on the other side, and then they would know who was in the mine. So in case there was a cave in, they would i know who was down there, And my dad worked in the mine, and he also worked in an office because he was the engineer in charge of underground work. So he went down in the mine everyday, and then he ‘would wind up in his office. And he would come home at lunch, and we would go home at lunch. It was three blocks from school, and we would walk home and have lunch and then we would go back to school and he would go to work. What about the fashion in the fifties? In the later fifties when I was in school, boys had jeans A : with really tight ankles, Ithought girls were just funny | BOYS had jeans with looking boys, so I didn’t pay attention. If you were | really tight ankles. If really cool, you had a black leather jacket with a whole you were really cool bunch of zippers on it. I remember I had one of those. you had a black £ You were really cool? leather jacket with a \ I think I got it handed down from my brother, so he | whole bunch of was cool, I wasn’t, I remember you rode your bikes 7 7 with your handlebars up high. Let's see, we had ator | Zippers on it. of t-shirts. What about hairstyl Well, we had kids they called "Greasers," and those were people who would grease their hair back, or whatever look, kind of like maybe an "Elvis Presley” kind of style. Your hair couldn't move. They had ‘6105 D.C. Everest Ar Scho Pubcon Ban, chatClassics: A Look Bach at the 1950s Bryl cream, and if it got cold and you had Bryl cream in your hair, you wound up with streaks of white in your hair because the cream would turn back to its original color. Yeah, and it was pretty bad. You weren’t a Greaser? Yeah, I was a Greaser, and there were other kids who had flattops. A flattop was a crew cut, and it was totally flat on the top. I remember kids who had their hair combed up the sides and down the front. They'd have it really greased up and they’d look like an aircraft carrier. 11d stick out the front. You had to have a lot of grease to keep it like that. You didn’t wash your hair every day because you'd bathe about three times a week, just because you didn’t have a big enough water heater. You know you could build up a good head of grease by the end of the week, If you had it just right, it could have probably kept your head off the pillow. What were the girls’ styles like? Girls? Let's see. They had big, kind of poofy dresses. I’m thinking of my sister and what she used to wear. More was covered at that time I think, in girls, than it is now, a whole lot more. I remember my grandmother telling my sister she wasn’t supposed to cross her ankles anything above the knee. She could cross her legs only down at the ankles. It was not appropriate for a girl to cross her legs anywhere else. And you had to sit up straight. You didn’t sit back in chairs. Just the girls, or everyone? Just girls, guys could slouch. I think it had something to do with reproduction. It was my grandmother you know. What do you remember about your classes and A flattop was a teachers? *. Thad a teacher that taught third grade, two courses, and crew cut, a nd it was totally flat on the top. then in fifth grade, she taught another course. Another teacher, a woman teacher, flip-flopped with her. So you | | remmember kids who had Miss Mellon for a couple of classes, and Miss i j ‘McCabe for a couple of classes. And later on, I think it had their hair combed was the next year, you had Miss Mellon and Miss up the sides and down McCabe for every class, and they would switch. And | the front. They’d Miss McCabe was mean. Well they were both, I guess . now they'd be called "Old Maids." But at the time, have it really greased Miss Mellon probably would have been in her forties. | UP and they’d look like She was really old. Miss McCabe was really, really old. | gn aircraft carrier. She might have been in her fifties. If you misbehaved in Miss Mellon’s class, she’d call you up to the front of the room and she'd grab you by the chin, She’d bounce your chin back and forth and shake your headClassics: A Look Bach at the 1950s until your tongue came out and then she’d slam your mouth down on your tongue, Miss McCabe would have you sharpen her pencil and then pound it into the tip of your head, if you misbehaved. Did that ever happen to you? Yeah, if you got called up in Miss Mellon's class, it was not unusual to see fifth and sixth grade boys ery after they were done because she was just mean. T was told to stay after class for Miss McCabe one time, and when she went out in the hallway, I climbed out the window. And I walked along the ledge outside the building, until I got so I could jump down to the ground to the next floor, because there was a second story window, but I wouldn’t stay in the room with her. I was so afraid. Did you get punished for doing that, the next day? By the time I got home, my parents had been called already that I had skipped out on like, a detention. told my mother why, but I don’t remember if I served that one or not. But usually if you got in trouble then, with the teacher, you got home and you got it worse. I spent lot of my summers yarded. They called it yarding. You weren’t allowed out of the yard. I don’t know if you have that now a days. I guess now they call it grounded, We used to get grounded a lot. We had a teacher by the name of Mr Sullivan, and teachers then, men teachers, had to wear suits every day. Teachers then probably made fifteen hundred dollars a year. So Mr. Sullivan's suits would get pretty rank. He had a B. O. problem. ‘Then we had a principal in our elementary school by the name of Mr. Sullivan. He was a nice guy, but he had a discipline problem. He had a meter stick that had a cross section of a square. If you misbehaved ot got a referral from any teacher, he would take you into the other room, and you had another teacher there to witness. He would read the infraction, and then you'd grab your ankles, and he'd hit you across the rear end with that stick. It might be one, two, three, or four times, depending on how bad you were. Did that happen to you? No, I never got hit. The principal would ery every day when all the students would get together on the first floor in our elementary school, and he’d say the pledge. I didn’t find out until later that one of his kids died in the military. He'd have big tears that would come out of his eyes. Every day? Every day. Five days a week you'd ook at him, and he'd be crying. He had big feet. He'd walk home in the snow, and T knew where he was walking because his feet pointed out. And you'd try to walk and put your feet in the same place because if the sidewalks weren't shoveled, then you didn’t get your feet full of snow. People got hit in school then, You could beat up a kid and not have a problem. When I was in class, the only thing I remember about one of my classes is when I went to, I think it rest ce Seo Paco Bowes, 4950 Classics: A Look Back at the 19501 was first grade, my mother asked what my class was like and who T had in my class, and I just told my mom I had five boys and a Ciotti, because the Ciotti's only had girls. So there were five boys and one irl in my class. You mean that was their last name? Yes, last name was Ciotti. Yeah, the area was mostly Italian, Lot of Italians. Did you have any girlfriends? Tdon’t think Ihad any, By 1960, I was only thirteen. i j I grew up with the Ciott's, and then there were some Basically we didn Calvies and then there's some Saris. And basically see a whole lot of we didn’t see a whole lot of difference between the difference between the | boys and the girls at that time. Girls were just funny boys and the girls at looking boys that didn’t hunt. that time. Girls were What kind of differences do you see with teenagers just funny looking boys today, compared to when you were younger? that didn’t hunt ‘Teenagers today are too preoccupied with sex and the heavy relationships. You can’t be a friend. A girl cannot just have a friend that's a boy. It’s got to be a boyfriend, And a boy can’t just have a friend that's a girl, that he chums with or they do things with. It's not acceptable for a boy. Back then, where we were brought up, you could get together with a group of friends and go to a movie together, maybe ten or twelve. Now, you can’t do that. It doesn’t seem to be acceptable. What can you remember about your first television? Television wasn’t on. I remember when we got our first television. It was black and white, and a lot of times during the day there were no programs. But the television was not on when we ate, We all sat down to eat at the same time, and there was no question about it. You did dishes, you mowed the lawn, Each of us had different jobs. My sisters never mowed the lawn and they never shoveled the snow. It was my job. I don’t know what the girls did, They cleaned house I guess because I never cleaned house. What do you remember about the origins of rock and roll in the late 1950s? Do you recall Elvis Presley? I remember seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. 1 had a two transistor radio and could pick it up. It was on the A.M, station, and I could pick up rock and roll. I don’t know if we ever really said much about it in my family. I said we had a television. What year did you get that? Iwas thinking about that. I can’t really remember when we got it. Ican remember Howdy Doody which was a kind of a puppet show. When it was later in the 1950s, I was about twelve or thirteen, my grandfather came to live with us because he was sick. He had a bed on the ground floor, inthis one room. We set mirrors up so that we could see the television from his bedroom. We would sit in his bedroom on his bed and watch television because my mother would let him watch any western gun shows he wanted. Bases, Miche ‘©7005 D.C. eet re Sets PatonClessies: A Look Bach at the 1950s He liked westerns, so we would watch Gunsmoke, Palidan, and Have Gun, Will Travel. All these, even though they were violent, she wouldn’t tell us not to because we were sitting with my grandfather, So it was kind of neat. What were your favorite television shows of the 1950s? The Ed Sullivan Show was a popular one. 1 think I Love Lucy was in the 1950s. And The Honeymooners, must have been in the 1950s. Early 1950s was like, Howdy Doody. Then there were the westerns. I can’t remember any of them. though. We didn’t go and sce many movies. We did go and see that movie with the guy on a rocket. They'd shoot him off, and then he’d go travel off into space and stuff. His ship Lag looked like a big bullet. I can’t remember the name of the film. You could buy a weeks worth of tickets and they were very short films. Do you remember the game show fraud? I remember the game show fraud, but I don’t remember much about it, Who were your sports heroes of the 1950: Sports heroes? I didn’t really have any. I 8? ‘wasn’t into sports, Do you remember any games or activities you played in the 1950s? We played Marbles, and we had a game where we'd use our pocketknives. Everyone was in Boy Scouts, so everybody had a little Boy Scout pocketknife. It had two blades. You'd put one down and one up, and you would flip it somehow, and you'd get points for how it was stuck in the ground, Then we used to play a game called Stretch. You'd take your knife and throw it, and the person had to try to...they’d move their foot so it would reach the edge. Then they'd take the knife and then they'd throw the knife at you, and you had to stretch your legs until you could reach, and then if it didn’t stick in you wouldn't get points. I can’t remember how it worked. But then you could go the other way, and you would see how close you'd get to the person’s foot. | remember seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. | had a two transistor radio and could pick it up. That sounds fun! Idon’t remember it ever getting stuck. So we must have been pretty good with knives. Let's see...other games, We had thing in town called the Hamilton Club, and you would go there and you could play shuffleboard, basketball, and volleyball, and then they had bowling, and pool in this one place, It was owned by the Mining Company, and it kind of kept the kids off the streets. We'd build forts and we’d have big elaborate snowball fights. We would save up snowballs, and we'd build them for like a week and then we'd have a great big fight.52 Classics: A Look Bach at the 1950s What did you know about the Brown vs. Board We'd build forts and decision of 1954? we'd have big Civil Rights. I don’t remember the Brown vs. the Board decision of 1954, I just remember later on when elaborate snowball they finally desegregated schools, and they were fights. We would save | bringing in federal marshals o allow, I can’t remember up snowballs, and we'd | Masi?sname-- build them for like a Elizabeth Eckford from the Little Rock Nine? week and then we’d No. have a great big fight. Oh, was it the one in Alabama? Yes, a little girl was allowed fo go to school and they had federal marshals escorting her. I remember that How were blacks treated in your hometown? We didn’t have any blacks in our community. Do you remember the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1954 and 1955? Montgomery Bus Boycott. Tread about it, but I think I might have read about it much later. Did you have an opinion on Martin Luther King? Martin Luther King. I didn’t know much about Martin Luther King until later when I got to college, because there were no blacks so nobody even talked about them. Do you remember when the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957? Did you see any real changes as a result of this? I remember Sputnik, and I remember reading about it, and thought the Russians were really ahead of us and that they could go up there. I remember people saying that then they'd be able to spy on us, and look down on us, and see what we were doing. But I didn’t see any real changes. Were you aware of the US's ability to drop a hydrogen bomb? No, I was not aware of the ability to drop a hydrogen bomb. What types of new technology came out in the 1950s? Fifties? Transistor radios, televisions, ...Was there technology in the fifties? I’m thinking of the 1957 Ford, and there wasn’t a whole lot of, you know it was just an A.M. radio. Lucky it had windshield wipers on both sides. Following high school, Michael joined the Army. He went to college and is now a science teacher at the DC. Everest Jr. High School in Schofield. Base Micha ‘©2105 D.C. reset re Ssh Passions