SOCIALVIBES/THE FIFTIES/ 56THST.COM/

5647 Corby St.

I grew up in the same house in the same town that few others experience. My family  included my mom, dad, sister, and brother. I was the youngest. The folks who were born in 1943 are claimed by no one in terms of generations. The boomers started their lives in 1946 and the Silent Generation are phased out by historians just before the beginning of World War II.

So, I always remembered that folks in authority talked in a condescending way to us. They were experts on everything and the “American Way” was to be appreciated by  all the people who were yet to born and the folks all over the world.

As I recall, I just kept my mouth shut. I did not know that the America that I came to know would not get richer and richer. The fifties, most of the middle class did pretty good. My family was middle class and my father who was the only pay check made his largest commision in adjusted dollars in 1955. We had a nice  modest house on the tip of the connection between Country Club and Benson. Even today, I can put  the street number between on my url and I can see the home of my family. Not only can I see the outside, but much of the inside.

In 1950,America was about 150 million people and my hometown of Omaha was 250,000. The city started at the Missouri River and ended at 72nd Street. My mother lived in the same house from 1944 until 1994. Ironically, the day that she left her home Harriet Nelson of “Ozzie and Harriet” passed.

During the fifties I was about 5 feet 1 inch and one hundred and fifteen pounds. By 59′ I was 5′ 10 inches and the same weight. So I was sort of tall and skinny.

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3020 MERIDITH

I was sitting in my 1948 Blue Anglia. It was the same kind of car that Sir Paul McCartney used in” Give my Regards to Boardwalk. I was junior in high school. I left the car running so that I could gently move away from the curb in case the police came by. I looked at the porch where I got stung by a bee as a child. It was cold out and I could barely see with tears bluring my sight. My grandmother’s house was dark with a front porch, two stories with a big tree out front. I turned off the radio. It was KOIL or KOWH in Omaha. As I sat alone, I thought that time was a puzzle. What I wanted to happen was for time to somehow go backward.
I hope that heaven had a place for Grandma Annie and myself and everybody else. Maybe we would get along better over there. I wanted to go back about two decades to when Grandma was alive. Her last day, she had been to the medical doctor for an annual checkup. She took the trolley downtown and into his 2nd floor MEDICAL ARTS building. He indicated that she was in great shape for her age (somewhere in her late 70’s) and he WOULD be happy to see her next year at the same time.
She got back on the trolley, took her coat off and hung in the vestibule. She went over to the landing and decided to get something to eat from the converted ice box. There she turned around and walked up the stairs. About the 5th step, she slumped on the stair step and died. Friends and neighbors attended a service held at the mortuary. My parents minister gave the eulogy. It took me a few years to figure out that the eulogy given was one said all over the country. “Mom” is dead. Mothers meant so much to all of us. I saw my dad cry for the first time. My Uncle Bill’s head was down. Annie appears to have passed from this world.
When Grandma Dode came to the front door after I had been to a movie and let me in, I had a funny feeling, Grandma Dode was a wonderful lady who took care of me when my parents traveled. She came over to me and put her arms around me. Grandma is dead. I was 5 years old and a part of my world collapsed. There was a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall. I was crying and shaking my fist at Jesus. Grandma Dode was trying was trying to explain to me, that Jesus was just taking her home. That he did not take away my grandmother. I didn’t get the logic. Jesus takes Grandma home and I won’t see her.
So I am out in front of my grandmother’s house. I just got off a date and the young lady lived near my grandmother’s house. So now I have 16 or 17 years and I so want to go back. I think that she was perfectly happy with the life that she has just ended. My grandfather George owned a business downtown. It was a print shop. He was George who many on the trolley thought was the greatest. He always had joke. I know so little about him except that after he died Granma took the trolley out to Forest Lawn. There was many Sunday spent that way. Annie opened up her house. Her master bedroom was cleaned out and rented by the week. Two brothers live in the front overlooking Meredith, and the painter man lived in the back room.
Annie washed their clothes, cooked breakfast and dinner for them and took in mending. George had left some money, but the rest of the money came from the partners who bought the building. There was
Bill Wakefield Sr. in the basement, Gustaf Wallin in the first floor along with his son Bill. Grandpa George died of a nervous condition caused by hot lead print. When he could no longer go to work, Annie and my Uncle Bill laid him on the dining room table. There he slowly passed away. The nervous breakdown, it was later discovered came from the hot melting leading fumes that cooled into new letters. It was called hot type and after it started to cool, a new letter would be formed. My grandfather inhaled that junk day after day. It killed him.
So Annie went to work. She started a boarding house, watched over 3 adult men, sewed, and raised 2 kids, my father and his brother. Dad’s brother was a juvenile delinquent. He was driving 75 miles an hour on Fontanelle Blvd. when the police caught him. Along the way, he aged out. He raised 2 kids. The second was very retarded and he spent the rest of his life taking care of her and fixing furnaces.

At any rate, Annie worked so hard and all of her men were her flock. However, she still needed help with the Painter man. He came home drunk all the time so that Grandma had him thrown out. That was not too hard because he stayed at Grandma’s to get away from his wife who lived in another part of the city. There are flashes of those days. There were grapevines in the back, a garage, and a clothes line. Grandma quickly filled the room upstairs with her things and that was probably the last summer before she died. Something died in me.

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